Consilium retegis Lyaeo."

["Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret
counsel of the wise."--Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.]

[Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.]

Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him
his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus,
committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who
conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than
Tiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we
know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to
carry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate:

"Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo."

["Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday's wine."
--Virgil, Egl., vi. 15.]

And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber,
though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing but
water.

[As to which Cassius pleasantly said: "What, shall I bear
a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?"]

We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember
the word, and keep to their ranks: