The Romans of the Decadence (detail), by Thomas Couture, 1847. Musée d’Orsay.
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Miscellany
In the United States around 1787—the year that Thomas Jefferson took a three-month sabbatical to tour the vineyards of France and Italy—the average drinking American consumed the equivalent of an estimated six gallons of pure alcohol per year. The figure today is 2.2.
It is impossible to live pleasurably without living wisely, well, and justly, and impossible to live wisely, well, and justly without living pleasurably.
—Epicurus, c. 300 BC
