Antiquity's LESSON

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 11, 1 March 1953, Page 1

Antiquity's LESSON

DRINK MEANS DECAY

Antiquity, writing with lurid letters of lost empires, bears its mute and mighty witness to the fact that each civilization that has abandoned the principles of total abstinence and officially encouraged and abetted the so-called moderation theory has found itself becoming the victim of its own excesses, which have written a bitter finale to its existence. Luxury, idleness, voluptuousness and debauchery wrote their lurid chapters in the disintegration of the ancient empires. Of ancient Babylon, Rawlinson wrote, “the drunken revellers could make no lesistance,” and commenting on Egypt’s period of

J. A. BUCKWALTER

decline lie observed, “Drunkenness was a common vice among the young.” Most historians agree that one of the major causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was its intoxication with drunken pleasures. Rome perished in intemperance. The period of decay in every great empire of antiquity was marked with drunkenness r.nd licentiousness. The final chapters of their national histories were w’ritten in self-indulgence and dissipation. This is antiquity’s lesson to modern man, one which he would do well to heed. —Alert.