Grice's Cleanliness (Next to Godliness)

From:

http://lsv.uky.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0811B&L=CLASSICS-L&P=R669&I=-3

M. Davidson is discussing the evidence-based research on, well, you know what. M. Davidson writes, "I can't help thinking ...". Ditto: I can't help thinking of the
_difference_ between _philosophy_ and _classical studies_. We never knew in
philosophy that you had to provide _evidence_ in a PhD (say, mine) dissertation! It's like Puccini and hisself, "Puccini, interprete di se stesso"!

Anyway, I just asked my friend, what _is_ absith_; in any case, a composer
of opera died of it: "Emilio Praga, drinker of absinth, blasphemer, depictor
of orgies, bard of doubt, and of tedium", etc. But then, it is a pretty
_detailed_ history of Italian Opera ("Cambridge, National Schools").

I would think that there must be _some_ evidence of drug use. If there is
not, it's possible a political thing, wishing us to see the Greekliness as next
to (Apollonian, of course) godliness! -- blaming on the other hand the
barbarians for having brought the drugs in the first place!

(On the other hand,
one of my favourite C. of E. -- indeed the whole of England's favourite -- ever
is "Dear Lord and father of mankind", which was Parry's setting to a
drug-manifest thing in Massachussets. And wasn't J. L. Borges's favourite book, De
Quincey's Confessions of an Englishman?

----

M. Davidson: "I can't help thinking that if drug use was as widespread as [this or that author] claims, and if it carried as little stigma as he believes, it would be widely mentioned in ancient literature. In the article, he compares drug use with
homosexuality, but homosexuality is widely mentioned throughout ancient
literature, drug use isn't. He seems to confuse later prudishness about coarse
language and sexuality in ancient texts with suppression of knowledge. Even in
Victorian times, anyone who could read Latin or Greek could freely read about
[illicit] love affairs [...], and had access to plenty of passages with
explicit sexuality. They could also read a lot about wine and drunkenness. But
they couldn't read about drug use in ancient literature because there's nothing
there. I can well believe that there was some medical use of opium and other drugs,
and possibly even some use in mystery cults, though I would like to see some
hard evidence of that, rather than speculation. The author seems to have a
chip on his shoulder, and is perhaps trying to make a quick buck by writing a
sensational book with little basis in fact, as so many others have done."