The Most Illiberal Vice

Gibbon, citing Tacitus, Plutarch, and Jean-Baptiste Dubos, on “the state of Germany till the invasion of the Barbarians, in the time of the Emperor Decius:”

“Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterward of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication. They attempted not, however (as has since been executed with so much success), to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what might be ravished by arms was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate thirst of strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents. The Tuscan who betrayed his country to the Celtic nations, attracted them into Italy by the prospect of the rich fruits and delicious wines, the productions of a happier climate. And in the same manner the German auxiliaries, invited into France during the civil wars of the sixteenth century, were allured by the promise of plenteous quarters in the provinces of Champagne and Burgundy. Drunkenness, the most illiberal, but not the most dangerous, of our vices, was sometimes capable, in a less civilized state of mankind, of occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.”

Beer corrupted into a semblance of wine “sufficient for the gross purpose of German debauchery” even as the lucky few “sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication” is good, and at last we have a historian willing to pronounce that drunkenness was – and presumably is – capable of “occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.” Cleopatra’s nose, my arse! Offended Germans might find consolation in the fact that Decius’ reign was short of three years long.