[60] This would have been 18 per cent. Three drachmæ were about 36 per cent. The former appears to have been the usual rate of interest at Athens in the time of Lysias; for we find in Demosthenes that interest ἐπὶ δραχμῇ, that is to say, a drachma a month interest for each mina lent, was considered low. It was exceedingly common, however, among the money-lenders, to exact an exorbitant rate of interest, going even as high as a drachma every four days.—See Smith's Dict. Ant. v. _Interest_, p. 524. BOOK XIV. 1. MOST people, my friend Timocrates, call Bacchus frantic, because those who drink too much unmixed wine become violent. To copious wine this insolence we owe, And much thy betters wine can overthrow The great Eurytion, when this frenzy stung, Pirithous' roofs with frantic riot rung: Boundless the Centaur raged, till one and all The heroes lose and dragg'd him from the hall; His nose they shorten'd, and his ears they slit, And sent him sober'd home with better wit.[61] For when the wine has penetrated down into the body, as Herodotus says, bad and furious language is apt to rise to the surface. And Clearchus the comic poet says in his Corinthians— If all the men who to get drunk are apt, Had every day a headache ere they drank The wine, there is not one would drink a drop: But as we now get all the pleasure first, And then the drink, we lose the whole delight In the sharp pain which follows. And Xenophon represents Agesilaus as insisting that a man ought to shun drunkenness equally with madness, and immoderate gluttony as much as idleness. But we, as we are not of the class who drink to excess, nor of the number of those who are in the habit of being intoxicated by midday, have come rather to this literary entertainment; for Ulpian, who is always finding fault, reproved some one just now who said, I am not drunk (ἔξοινος), saying,—Where do you find that word ἔξοινος? But he rejoined,—Why, in Alexis, who, in his play called the New Settler, says— He did all this when drunk (ἔξοινος). [Sidenote: JESTERS.] 2. But as, after the discussion by us of the new topics which arise, our liberal entertainer Laurentius is every day constantly introducing different kinds of music, and also jesters and buffoons, let us have a little talk about them. Although I am aware that Anacharsis the Scythian, when on one occasion jesters were introduced in his company, remained without moving a muscle of his countenance; but afterwards, when a monkey was brought in, he burst out laughing, and said, "Now this fellow is laughable by his nature, but man is only so through practice." And Euripides, in his Melanippe in Chains, has said—