When Aeneas set out for Milan, he found a nobleman from the great house of the Landriani had, by the order of the duke, been called through that chapter to the directorship and been led to its possession. Aeneas compelled this man to yield to him – so much did both the prince and the curia favor him. But, having obtained the directorship, he fell to the sick bed after being taken by a great fever. The duke Filippo sent his own doctor, a learned and cheerful man named Filippo of Bologna (who later served Pope Nicholas) to him every day.
When in the course of this illness Aeneas had taken a medicine and it had no effect, the doctor prepared a second medicine to be taken the next night. At the very hour when the second medicine was to be administered, his bowels began to move and so irritated him that he had to get up ninety times. Out of his mind because of this he rushed almost to death’s door, as they say. If he had taken the second medicine, he would have been weakened and consumed, and would have finally given up the ghost. Recognizing this as a sure sign from God, although he was disturbed by the continuous burning of the fever for 75 days, he could nevertheless not be prevailed upon to listen to the quacks even when a man was brought in who was said to have recently cured two thousand men in Niccolo Piccinino’s camp. Instead, trusting to God, by whose help he had been preserved in life, he took to the road though still afflicted with fever, and, liberated from it through bouts of horse riding, he returned to Basel.
Can we get a toilet put in here?
At Aeneas Mediolanum profectus nobilem quendam ex magna domo Landrianorum iussu ducis per capitulum ad eam preposituram vocatum et in possessionem adductum invenit, quem sibi mox cedere compulit: tantum Aenee et princeps et curia favit. Sed obtenta prepositura lectum egritudinis incidit ingenti febre correptus; ad quem Philippus suum medicum, doctum et laetum virum, Philippum Bononiensem – qui postea Nicolao papae servivit – singulis diebus mittebat. In hac aegritudine cum farmacum accepisset, neque id quicquam operatum esset, potionemque alteram sequenti nocte sumendam medicus preparasset, ipsa hora, qua ministrari secundum farmacum debuit, moveri venter cepit atque adeo vexavit hominem, ut nonaginta vicibus assurgere cogeretur. Ob quam rem mente alienatus ad portas – ut aiunt – mortis usque cucurrit. Quod si potionem alteram ebibisset, animam procul dubio extenuatus atque consumptus exalasset. Quod certissimum Dei beneficium intelligens, quamvis quinque et septuaginta dies continuo febris ardore quateretur, nunquam tamen adduci potuit, ut incantatoribus auscultaret, quamvis homo ad se duceretur, quem novissime in castris Nicolai Picinini duo millia virorum ex febribus liberasse dicebant. Sed Deo fidens, cuius ope servatus in vita fuerat, adhuc febricitans iter accipiens inter equitandum liberatus Basileam reversus est.
“Because he wanted to slander his enemies, [Hipponax] broke his meter and made it stumble instead of straight: he made the rhythm irregular. This is appropriate for surprise and attack. For rhythmic and smooth composition is more appropriate for praise than for blame. This is all I have to say about hiatus.”
“Philokles was a tragic poet, the son of Philopeithes and Aeschylus’ sister. Whoever calls him “Salt’s son” does it because he was bitter and salt is bitter.”
“My Epigenes, how important for health exercise is—and how it is right to engage in it before good—has been sufficiently explained by much earlier men, the best of the philosophers and doctors. But no one before has sufficiently explained how much exercises with a small ball are better than the others. It is right, for this reason, for me to explain what I know so that you may evaluate it as someone who is of all men most well practiced in these arts and also so that it may be useful for others—should you truly believe that they have been elaborated sufficiently—when you share the work with them.
For I say that he best of all exercises are not only those which thoroughly wear out the body, but can also delight the soul. Men who invented the practice of hunting with dogs figured out how to combine hunting with pleasure, delight, and competitive spirit—they were wise in respect to human nature. The soul may be moved so much in this activity, that many people are freed from disease because of pleasure alone while many others who felt sickness coming on were relieved of the pressure.
There is nothing of the experiences of the body which is so strong that it completely overpowers the soul. Therefore, we should not neglect the movements of the spirit—whatever kind they are—but, instead, we should make a greater consideration of it than of the body because it is that much more powerful. This is certainly a shared quality of all exercises which happen pleasurably, but it is a choice quality of those performed with the small ball, which I will now explain.”
After much of the night had passed, a great uproar was made by barking dogs and honking geese. Then all the women went forth in different directions, and even the guide of the journey took flight, and everything was a full-blown uproar as if enemies were at the gates. But to Aeneas, it seemed far better counsel to wait inside the bedroom (which was a stable) and expect the outcome there, fearing that if he were to run outside uncertain of the way, he would simply be giving himself up to be despoiled by whomever he came across first. Without delay, the women came back with the interpreter and said that there was nothing wrong, that it was friends and not enemies who had arrived. Aeneas reckoned that this was the reward of his firm resolve, and when day shone again, he commited himself to the road and arrived at Newcastle, which they say was founded by Caesar. There he saw once again the figure of the world and the habitable portion of the earth, for Scotland and the part of England closest to it have nothing at all like the land where we live – it is horrid, uncultivated, and not exposed to the winter sun.
Plutarch’s Moralia, “Advice about Keeping Well”, 10
“But, just as flowers’ scents are on their own weak but when mixed with oil they gain strength and tone, so too does an initial mass of food provide substance and body, so to speak, to the causes and origins of afflictions from outside the body. Deprived of this, none of these can be severe, but instead they wither away and decrease on their own, when simple blood and clean breath meet their entry. But in a mass and excess of food, it is just like some kind of churning mud which makes everything unclear, and dirty and hard to pass when it is stirred up.
We should not, then, be just like those praised ship captains who allow a massive cargo because of greed and are for this reason always occupied baling and pouring the sea out of their ship—no, we must not stuff our body and then apply medicine to make us purge it all, but instead we should keep our bodies slim so that if ever we are depressed, our body will rise up again because of its lightness, like a cork.”
Crapulous:def. 2: Sick from excessive indulgence in liquor.
From the Suda:
“Kraipalê: The pounding that comes from drinking too much wine. We also have the participle “carousing” which is when someone acts poorly because of drinking, or just being drunk. It derives from the word “head” (kara) and “pound” (pallein). Or, it could also come from screwing up (sphallesthai) timely matters (kairiôn)
Kraipalôdês: “Prone to drunkenness”: The ancients knew well the weaknesses of the spirit, weather it was a person who was prone to excessive drinking or a love-seeker who has his brain in his genitals.”
“If only we got hangovers before we drank
Then no one would ever drink more
Than is good for them. But now, because
We do not expect to escape drinking’s penalty,
We too eagerly drink unmixed wines”
“Wine (being of a wet nature) stretches those who are slow and makes them quick, but it tends to restrain those who are quick already. On that account, some who are melancholic by nature become entirely dissipated in drunken stupors (kraipalais). Just as a bath can make those who are all bound up and stiff more readily able to move, so does it check those who are already movable and loose, so too does wine, which is like a bath for your innards, accomplish this same thing.
Why then does cabbage prevent drunkenness (kraipale)? Either because it has a sweet and purgative juice (and for this reason doctors use it to clean out the intestines), even though it is itself of a cold nature. Here is a proof: doctors use it against exceptionally bad cases of diarrhea, after preparing it by cooking it, removing the fiber, and freezing it. It happens in the case of those suffering from the effects of drunkenness (kraipalonton) that the cabbage juice draws the wet elements, which are full of wine and still undigested, down to their stomachs, while the body chills the rest which remains in the upper part of the stomach. Once it has been chilled, the rest of the moist element can be drawn into the bladder. Thus, when each of the wet elements has been separated through the body and chilled, people are likely to be relieved of their drunkenness (akraipaloi). For wine is wet and warm.”
“If someone has head pain from a hangover, have him drink a cup of unmixed wine. For different head pains, have the patient eat bread warm from unmixed wine.”
“Those who are suffering bodily from drinking and being hungover can find relief from sleeping immediately, warmed with a cover. On the next day, they can be restored with a bath, a massage, and whatever food does not cause agitation but restores the warmth dispelled and lost from the body by wine.”
“But why am I standing here, a sweating fool?
Maybe I should leave here for Venus’ temple to sleep off this hangover
I got because I drank more than I intended?
Neptune soaked us with the sea as if we were Greek wines
And he hoped to relieve us with salty-beverages.
Shit. What good are words?”
sed quid ego hic asto infelix uuidus?
quin abeo huc in Veneris fanum, ut edormiscam hanc crapulam,
quam potaui praeter animi quam lubuit sententiam?
quasi uinis Graecis Neptunus nobis suffudit mare,
itaque aluom prodi sperauit nobis salsis poculis;
quid opust uerbis?
Plautus, Stichus 226-230
“I am selling Greek moisturizers
And other ointments, hangover-cures
Little jokes, blandishments
And a sycophant’s confabulations.
I’ve got a rusting strigil, a reddish flask,
And a hollowed out follower to hide your trash in.”
uel unctiones Graecas sudatorias
uendo uel alias malacas, crapularias;
cauillationes, assentatiunculas,
ac periuratiunculas parasiticas;
robiginosam strigilim, ampullam rubidam,
parasitum inanem quo recondas reliquias.
Advice more useful the day before
John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela 96.161:
“When the membranes become full of the vapors which wine produces when it is vaporized, the head is stricken with unbearable pains. No longer can it stay upright upon the shoulders, but it constantly drops this way and that, slipping around upon its joints. But who would say such things to those stricken by wine? Their heads are heavy from drunkenness (kraipale), they nod off, they yawn, they see through a fog, and they feel nauseous. On that account, they do not listen to their teachers yelling out to them all of the time. Don’t get drunk on wine, in which there is profligacy. Therein lie trembling and weakness, the breath is beaten out by immoderate indulgence in wine, the nerves are slackened, and the entire mass of the body is put into disorder. “
A woman holding the head of a man who is vomiting. Gouache painting.
“A life without parties is a long journey without inns.”
βίος ἀνεόρταστος μακρὴ ὁδὸς ἀπανδόκευτος.
Plato, Laws 653d
“Great. Now, since many of these kinds of education—which accustom us to correctly manage pleasures and pains—lose their effectiveness during life, the gods took pity on the human race because it is born to toil and assigned to us as well parties as vacations from our toil. In addition, they have also given us the Muses, Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus as party-guests so that people can straighten out their habits because they are present at the festival with the gods.”
“Certainly we have furnished our mind with the greatest reliefs from our labors, maintaining games and feasts throughout the year in public and in private living with care and finery, all those things which provide pleasure to expel our grief. Because of the greatness of our city, everything comes to us from the earth and we are lucky enough to harvest all of the goods from our own land with no less familiar pleasure than those we gather from other peoples.”
“Come on! Tell me why the new year begins in the cold
When it would be better to begin in the springtime.
That’s when everything blooms, when time renews,
And new life stretches out from the vine’s bud,
When the trees are clothed again in new leaves
And grain just starts to sprout from its seed in the ground.
Then birds warm the air’s chill with their songs
While flocks play and made life in the fields.
Then the suns rise kind and the traveling swallow
Alights to build her nest under the barn’s high beam.
Then the field gives way to the plow and finds life again–
This should have rightly been called the New Year.”
I pressed him much about this. And he did not delay
But answered with two verses in his own way:
“In winter the newest sun rises into the oldest one’s wane
And so Apollo and the year make their start the same.”
“dic, age, frigoribus quare novus incipit annus,
qui melius per ver incipiendus erat?
omnia tunc florent, tunc est nova temporis aetas,
et nova de gravido palmite gemma tumet,
et modo formatis operitur frondibus arbor,
prodit et in summum seminis herba solum,
et tepidum volucres concentibus aera mulcent,
ludit et in pratis luxuriatque pecus.
tum blandi soles, ignotaque prodit hirundo
et luteum celsa sub trabe figit opus:
tum patitur cultus ager et renovatur aratro.
haec anni novitas iure vocanda fuit.”
quaesieram multis: non multis ille moratus
contulit in versus sic sua verba duos:
“bruma novi prima est veterisque novissima solis:
principium capiunt Phoebus et annus idem.”
Jacob Philipp Hackert, “Fireworks over Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome”
“They celebrate the New Year for me daily and I make the day happy and helpful with good thoughts and an open mind—for the mind is never greater than when it puts aside all useless things and has created peace by fearing nothing and has made itself rich by desiring nothing at all.”
Cotidie mihi annum novum faciunt, quem ego faustum et felicem reddo bonis cogitationibus et animi magnitudine, qui numquam maior est, quam ubi aliena seposuit et fecit sibi pacem nihil timendo, fecit sibi divitias nihil concupiscendo.
Ptolemy, Tetrabilos 2.92
“Therefore, it is simply the case that no single point is the beginning of a circle and none is the first [the solstices or equinoxes]; those who have written on them before have used any one of the four dates differently, using each on as a starting point, following their own argumentation based on the nature of each point in time. Naturally, each on of these parts has some attractive reason for why it might rightly be the beginning of the New Year”
