Drown Your Sorrows

A. Why is Dionysus the god of wine?

B. Because understanding of the mysteries causes one to forget their sorrows: the revelry of the Mainads is the freedom from the fear of death. As Socrates says [in the Phaedo], "He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world."

Pythagoras' First Axiom

This, I tell you, was for [Pythagoras] the first axiom of wisdom: "Meditation is learning, speech is unlearning."

(Apuleius, Florida XV)