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The first part of this custom is ascribed by Tacitus (Germ. 22) to the Germans; he gives the reason ‘Deliberant dum fingere nesciunt, constituunt dum errare non possunt’ (cf. Mrs. Nickleby, ‘Wine in, truth out’). Lack of humour in historians has erected into a system what was merely due to excess.

For Persian drinking cf. Curzon, ii. 506, (The Persian) ‘is not a tippler but a toper, not a drinker, but a drunkard’, quoting other authorities for the same view.

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