A Gross and Brutish Vice

Pausanius of Orestis had one of the most infamous hangovers in history. He had been very, very drunk, of course, but he had the aggravating misfortune of being so in the company of our old friend Attalus (he who had implied that Alexander was something less than a noble heir to his father's kingdom, thereby causing a barney in which Philip would have killed his son had he - Philip - not been three sheets to the wind). Just how drunk had Pausanius been? Well, Montaigne says that he "could not have believed in a drunkenness so deep, so dead and buried" if he had not read about it in the histories.

Montaigne recounts the tale as follows: "Attalus, having invited Pausanius to supper in order to do him some notable indignity ... made him drink so much that he could abandon his body insensibly, like the body of some whore under a hedge, to the muleteers and a number of vile slaves of Attalus’ household.” The good slaves were spared the dishonor, and that was about as good as it got for Pausanius.

Attalus certainly succeeded in his quest to visit a notable indignity on Pausanius. The hangover lasted for years and, setting in motion, as it did, a chain of events that resulted in the early succession of Alexander the Great to the kingship of Macedonia, was of no small significance. The more one reads of the "histories" so beloved by Montaigne, the more one thinks that this kind of thing just happened, causeless, rhymeless, for no particular reason. But on this occasion, the debauchery had a context. It was, in fact, the result of a love story of sorts.

Philip and Pausanias were former lovers; Pausanias was jealous (spurned and vengeful) over Philip’s new lover, also, confusingly, named Pausanias; the new Pausanias was a friend of Attalus; one Pausanias insulted the other Pausanias; the insulted Pausanias died in battle, defending Philip, to secure his honor; Attalus (who, as we know, could be superlatively insulting himself) punished the insulting Pausanias by getting him drunk and having him raped; the insulting, raped Pausanias went on to kill Philip, in part, it is said, owing to Philip’s failure to grant him justice against Attalus; the insulting, raped, murdering Pausanius was then killed, in turn, by Attalus, though, confusingly, not our old friend Attalus, but another Attalus altogether; and the other Attalus, our old friend who would now grow no older, was executed, along with much of his family, at the orders of Alexander.

Greek tragedy would have struggled to pile up the bodies as high. You could be forgiven for thinking that they were all drunk.

Montaigne’s preference was for moderation in all things, and his take on drunkenness is derived mostly from his reading and hearsay, but he clearly loved this stuff - “like the body of a whore under a hedge" is entirely his. His “taste and constitution” were inimical to drunkenness, he says, rather than his reason. He thought “[t]he worst condition of man is when he loses knowledge and control of himself,” so drunkenness, immoderate by definition and fulfilling both conditions for “the worst condition,” seemed to him, among other vices, a “gross and brutish” one: “The mind has more of a part in the others, and there are vices that have about them something indefinably noble, if we must call it that. There are some that involve knowledge, diligence, valor, prudence, skill, and subtlety; this one is all bodily and earthy … The other vices affect the understanding; this one overturns it …” It certainly overturned Pausanius.

A second example Montaigne offers of deep, dead and buried drunkenness also involves “bodily and earthy” matters: “And I learned from a lady whom I hold in singular honor and esteem that near Bordeaux (toward Castres, where here house is) a village woman, a widow of chaste reputation, feeling the first inklings of pregnancy, told her neighbors that she would think she was with child if she had a husband. But as the occasion of this suspicion grew from day to day and finally became evident, she brought herself to have it announced at the service in her church that if anyone would admit the deed, she promised to pardon him and, if she saw fit, to marry him. A young farmhand of hers, emboldened by this proclamation, declared that he had found her, one holiday when she had taken her wine very freely, so fast asleep by her fireplace, and in so indecent a posture, that he had been able to enjoy her without waking her.”

Drunkenness, in the end, is “a loose and stupid vice” for Montaigne, “but less malicious and harmful than the others, which almost all clash more directly with society in general. And if we cannot give ourselves pleasure without its costing us something … I find that this vice costs our conscience less than the others. Moreover, it is not hard to prepare for and find: a consideration not to be despised.”

Easy for the sober man to say. Easy too, perhaps, as it turns out, for the young farmhand and widow of chaste reputation: “They are still alive,” Montaigne wrote, “and married to each other,” living, as it were, happily ever after. But tell it to Paulanius.