Xenia DUI Salutes Philopotes & Dionysus
Xenia, Ohio is named after the Greek word for “hospitality.” Besides the name for Greene County’s seat of government, we owe a great debt to Greek culture and ideals.
If you could wander around the Aegean coast around 700 B.C. you would find an abundance of alcohol; wine specifically. The libation was a mainstay of Hellenistic society and it was used to honor the gods, as currency, as medicine, as a thirst-quencher and to get drunk. In fact, using alcohol was considered a civic duty in Athens. At great gatherings and feasts officials, known as oinoptai made sure that the wine was distributed fairly. By showing the citizens that government could be trusted with something as important as wine, the Greeks ushered in demokratia or “people power” and entered a classical age marked by an unparalleled creativity unmatched in the history of mankind. According to epic poet Panyasis: “Wine is like fire, an aid and sweet relief, Wards off all ills and comforts every grief, Wine can of every feast the joys enhance, It kindles soft desire, it leads the dance.”
The word philopotes means “lover of the drinking session” and is used to distinguish the children of the god Dionysus from those lowly “water drinkers” who lacked passion and were believed to give off a terrible odor. As our modern philopte Frank Sinatra pronounced whenever a waiter brought him water… “Get that stuff outta here, you could drown in that stuff.”
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We salute philopotes, wine and Dionysus. If you are in need of an attorney in the city of hospitality (Xenia), contact Charles M. Rowland II 1-888-ROWLAND.
Sources: Drink by Iain Gately, Gotham Books, 2008; various sources of the Sinatra quote and Ambitious Brew, Maureen Ogle, Harcourt; and Good Spirits, Gene Logsdon