Translated by H.Rackham (1952), with some minor alterations. Click on the L symbols to go to the Latin text of each chapter.
{10.} L [77] Up to this point the goodness of a wine is credited to the countries of its growth. Among the Greeks, the wine they have called 'life' has justly won a very distinguished name, having been developed for the treatment of a great many maladies, as we shall show in the part of our work dealing with medicine. The process of making it is this: the grapes are picked a little before they are ripe and are dried in a fierce sun, being turned three times a day for three days, and on the fourth day they are put through the press and then left in casks to mature in the sun. [78] The people of Cos mix in a rather large quantity of sea-water - a custom arising from the peculation of a slave who used this method to fill up the due measure, and this mixture is poured into white must, producing what is called in Greek 'white Coan.' In other countries a blend made in a similar way is called 'sea-flavoured wine,' and 'sea-treated' when the vessels containing the must have been thrown into the sea; this is a kind of wine that matures young. [79] Also with us as well Cato exhibited a method of making Coan wine out of Italian, his most important instruction being that it must be left in the sun for four years to ripen. The Rhodes vintage resembles that of Cos, but the Phorinean is salter. All the overseas wines are thought to take seven years to reach the middle stage of maturity.
{11.} L [80] All sweet wine has less aroma; the thinner a wine is the more aroma it has. Wines are of four colours, white, brown, blood-red and black. Psithian and black psithian are kinds of raisin-wine with a peculiar flavour which is not that of wine; Scybelites is a kind of must produced in Galatia, and Aluntium another, produced in Sicily. Siraeum, by some called hepsema and in our country sapa, is a product of art, not of nature, made by boiling down must to a third of its quantity; must boiled down to only one-half is called defrutum. All these wines have been devised for adulterating with honey; but the wines previously mentioned are the product of the grape and of the soil. [81] Next after the raisin-wine of Crete those of Cilicia and of Africa are held in esteem. Raisin-wine is known to be made in Italy and in the neighbouring provinces from the grape called by the Greeks psithia and by us 'muscatel,' and also scripula, the grapes being left on the vine longer than usual to ripen in the sun, or else being ripened in boiling oil. Some people make this wine from any sweet white grape that ripens early, drying them in the sun till little more than half their weight remains, and then they beat them and gently press out the juice. [82] Afterwards they add to the skins the same quantity of well-water as they have pressed out juice, so as also to make raisin-wine of second quality. The more careful makers, after drying the bunches in the same manner, pick off the berries and soak them without their stalks in wine of good quality till they swell, and then press them - and this kind of wine is the most highly praised of any; and then they repeat the process, adding more water, and make a wine of second quality.
[83] Between the sweet varieties and real wine is the liquor that the Greeks call aigleucos - this is our 'permanent must.' Care is needed for its production, as it must not be allowed to 'boil' - that is the word they use to denote the passage of must into wine. Consequently, as soon as the must is taken from the vat and put into casks, they plunge the casks in water till midwinter passes and regular cold weather sets in. There is moreover another kind of raisin-wine known in the province of Narbonensis, and there particularly to the Vocontii, under the name of 'sweet wine.' For the purpose of this they keep the grape hanging on the vine for an exceptional time, with the foot-stalk twisted. [84] Some make an incision in the actual shoot as far as the pith and others leave the grapes to dry on tiled roofs, the grapes in all cases being those from the helvennaca vine. To these some add a wine called in Greek 'strained wine,' to make which the grapes are dried in the sun for seven days raised seven feet from the ground on hurdles, in an enclosed place where at night they are protected from damp; on the eighth day they are trodden out, and this process produces a wine of extremely good bouquet and flavour. [85] Another wine of the sweet class is called honey-wine; it differs from mead because it is made from must, in the proportion of thirty pints of must of a dry quality to six pints of honey and a cup of salt, this mixture being brought just to the boil; this produces a dry-flavoured liquor. But among these varieties ought also to be placed the liquor called in Greek protropum, the name given by some people to must that flows down of its own accord before the grapes are trodden. This as soon as it flows is put into special flagons and allowed to ferment, and afterwards left to dry for forty days of the summer that follows, just at the rise of the Dog-star.
{12.} L [86] The liquors made from grape-skins soaked in water, called by the Greeks seconds and by Cato and ourselves after-wine, cannot rightly be styled wines, but nevertheless are counted among the wines of the working classes. They are of three kinds: one is made by adding to the skins water to the amount of a tenth of the quantity of must that has been pressed out, and so leaving the skins to soak for twenty-four hours and then again putting them under the press; another, by a method of manufacture that has been commonly employed by the Greeks, i.e. by adding water to the amount of a third of the juice that has been pressed out, and after submitting the pulp to pressure, boiling it down to one-third of its original quantity; while the third kind is pressed out of the wine-lees - Cato's name for this is 'lees-wine.' None of these liquors is drinkable if kept more than a year.
{13.} L [87] Among these topics, however, it occurs to me that while there are in the whole world about eighty notable kinds of liquor that can properly be understood as coming under the term 'wine,' two-thirds of this number belong to Italy, which stands far in front of all the countries in the world on that account; and further investigation going into this subject more deeply indicates that this popularity does not date back from the earliest times, but that the importance of the Italian wines only began from the city's six hundredth year { 154 B.C. }.
{14.} L [88] Romulus used milk and not wine for libations, as is proved by the religious rites established by him which preserve the custom at the present day. The Postumian Law of King Numa runs: "Thou shalt not sprinkle the funeral pyre with wine" - a law to which he gave his sanction on account of the scarcity of the commodity in question, as nobody can doubt. By the same law he made it illegal to offer libations to the gods with wine produced from a vine that had not been pruned, this being a plan devised for the purpose of compelling people who were mainly engaged in agriculture and were slack about the dangers besetting a plantation, not to neglect pinning. We learn from Marcus Varro that Mezentius, king of Etruria, gave help to the Rutuli against the Latins at the price of receiving all the wine then in the territory of Latium. [89] At Rome women were not allowed to drink wine. Among various instances we find that the wife of Egnatius Maetennus was clubbed to death by her husband for drinking wine from the vat, and that Romulus acquitted him on the charge of murder. Fabius Pictor has written in his 'Annals' that a matron was starved to death by her relatives for having broken open the casket containing the keys of the wine-cellar; [90] and Cato says that the reason why women are kissed by their male relations is to know whether they smell of 'tipple' - that was then the word denoting wine, and also the word 'tipsy' comes from it. Judge Gnaeus Domitius once gave a verdict that a certain woman appeared to have drunk more wine that was required for the sake of her health without her husband's knowledge, and he fined her the amount of her dowry. And great economy in the use of this commodity prevailed for a long time. [91] General Lucius Papirius before his decisive action against the Samnites vowed to give a small goblet of wine to Jupiter if he were victorious. Lastly among votive offerings we find mention of gifts of pints of milk but nowhere of wine. Moreover Cato, when sailing on his expedition to Spain, whence he returned with a triumph, drank no other wine than what was drunk by the crew of his galley, so little did he resemble the gentlemen who give even their guests other wines than those served to themselves, or else substitute inferior wines as the meal progresses.
{15.} L [92] The finest wines in early days were those spiced with scent of myrrh, as appears in the plays of Plautus, although in the one entitled 'The Persian' he recommends the addition of sweet-reed also. Consequently some think that in old times people were extremely fond of scented wine; but Fabius Dossennus decides the point in these verses:
I sent them a fine wine, one spiced with myrrh,
and in his 'Acharistio' :
Bread and pearl-barley and wine spiced with myrrh.
[93] I also observe that Scaevola and Lucius Aelius and Ateius Capito were of the same opinion, inasmuch as we find in 'Pseudolus' { ll. 740-741 }:
A. But if he has to bring out a sweet wine
From that same cellar, has he got one?
B. Got one?
Myrrh-wine and raisin-wine and boiled-down must
And honey
- which shows that myrrh-wine was counted not only among wines but also among sirops.
{16.} L [94] The existence of the Opimian wine - Italy already understanding the blessing she enjoyed - affords an undoubted proof that wine-lofts existed there and it was usual for wine to be racked off, in A.U.C. 633 { 121 B.C. }. Nevertheless the vintages referred to were not yet celebrated; and accordingly all the wines grown in that year bear the name of the consul only. [95] Similarly also afterwards wines imported from overseas held the field for a long time and right down to our grandfathers' day, indeed even after Falernian had already been discovered, as appears from the line of the comedy playwright:
I'll broach five casks of Thasian, two of Falernian.
In A.U.C. 665 { 89 B.C. } the censors Publius Licinius Crassus and Lucius Julius Caesar promulgated an edict prohibiting "the sale of Greek and Aminnian wine at a higher price than 8 asses for one quadrantal" - those being the actual words of the edict. But Greek wine was so highly esteemed that only one cup was given to each guest at a banquet.
{17.} L [96] Marcus Varro records in the following words the wines that ranked highest in his own younger days: 'When Lucius Lucullus was a boy he never saw a full-dress banquet in his father's house at which Greek wine was given more than once, but when he himself came back from Asia he distributed more than 100,000 jars in largess; also Gaius Sentius, who was praetor in our time, used to say that the first time that Chian wine entered his house was when the doctor had prescribed it for him for heartburn; but Hortensius left over ten thousand jars to his next-of-kin.' So far Varro. [97] And besides, did not Caesar also, when dictator, at the banquet in celebration of his triumph apportion to each table a flagon of Falernian and a jar of Chian? Caesar also gave Chian and Falernian at his triumph over Spain, but at a banquet during his third consulship { 46 B.C. } he provided Falernian, Chian, Lesbian and Mamertine: this is known to be the first occasion on which four kinds of wine were served. It follows that all the rest of the vintages came into fame afterwards, and about A.U.C. 700 { 54 B.C. }.
{18.} L [98] I am not surprised therefore that many centuries ago almost innumerable kinds of artificial wine have been invented, which we will now specify, all of them being used for medicinal purposes. In an earlier volume we stated the method of making omphacium, which is used for unguents. What is called vine-flower wine is made from the claret vine, that is the wild vine, by steeping two pounds of the flowers of this plant in a jar of must; 30 days afterwards they are changed. Beside this the root and the grape-skins of the claret-vine are used in dressing leather. [99] These grape-skins, a little after the blossom has gone off, provide a remarkable specific for cooling attacks of feverish heat in cases of disease, being said to be of an extremely cold nature. A portion of these grapes die off from the heat before the rest - these are called midsummer grapes; the whole of them never come to maturity, and if a bunch in an unripe state before it completely withers is fed to poultry it produces in them a distaste for stealing grapes.
{19.} L [100] The first of the artificial wines, which is called weak wine, is made from real wine in the following manner: 20 sextarii of white must and half that quantity of water are kept boiling till a considerable amount of the water is boiled away. Other people put in sextarii of sea-water and the same amount of rainwater and leave the mixture in the sun for 40 days to evaporate. This drink is given to invalids for whom it is feared that wine may be harmful.
[101] The next kind of artificial wine is made from ripe millet seed, by putting a pound and a quarter of the seed together with its straw to soak in 2 congii of must and after an interval of seven months pouring off the liquor. It has already been stated where the varieties brewed from the lotus-tree, lotus-shrub and herbaceous lotus are made.
[102] There are also wines, made from fruit, which we will specify, adding only the indispensable explanations: First the wine made from date-palms, which is used by the Parthians and Indians and by the whole of the East, a modius of the rather soft dates called in Greek 'common dates' being soaked in 3 congii { 9¾ L } of water and then pressed. Also fig syrup is made from figs by a similar process, other names for it being pharnuprium and trochis; or if it is not wanted to be sweet, instead of water is added the same quantity of grape-skin juice. Also excellent vinegar is made from the Cyprus fig, and an even better quality as well from that of Alexandria. [103] Wine is also made from the Syrian carob, and from pears and all kinds of apples (one from pomegranates is called rhoites) as also from cornels, medlars, service berries, dried mulberries and fir-cones; the last are soaked in must before being pressed, but the juice of the preceding fruits is sweet of itself. [104] We will indicate a little later instructions given by Cato as to how to make myrtle-syrup. The Greeks also employ another method: they boil tender sprigs of myrtle with the leaves on in salted must, and after pounding them boil down one pound of the mixture in 3 congii { 9¾ L } of must until only 2 congii are left. The beverage made by the same process from the berries of the wild myrtle is called myrtle wine; this stains the hands.
[105] Among the plants grown in gardens, wine is made from the root of asparagus, and from savory, wild-marjoram, parsley-seed, southernwood, wild mint, rue, catmint, wild thyme and horehound; they put two handfuls of herb into a jar of must, together with a sextarius { ½ L } of boiled-down grape-juice and a hemina { ¼ L } of sea-water. [106] A wine is made from rapini by adding two denarii's weight { 7g } of rapini to 2 sextarii { 1 L } of must, and in the same way from the root of the squill; and, among flowers, from pounded rose-leaves wrapped in a linen napkin and thrown into must with a small weight attached to make it sink, in the proportion of 50 denarii { 175g } of rose-leaves to 20 sextarii { 11 L } of must - they say the jar must not be opened for three months - and also wine is made from Gallic nard and another from wild nard.
[107] I also find that aromatic wine is constantly made from almost exactly the same ingredients as perfumes - first from myrrh, as we have said, next also from Celtic nard, reed and aspalathus, cakes of which are thrown into must or sweet wine; and in other places, from reed, sweet rush, costus, Syrian nard, cardamom, bark and flowers of cinnamon, saffron, dates and hazelwort, similarly made up in the form of a cake; [108] and among other people also from a mixture of half a pound of nard and cinnamon-leaf added to 2 congii { 6½ L } of must; and this is also how at the present day what some people call savoury wines and others peppered wines are made by adding pepper and honey. We also find mention of nectar-wine, extracted from the plant which some call sunflower, others herb of Media, or symphyton or herb of Ida or Orestion or nectaria, the root of which is added in the proportion of 50 denarii { 175g } to 6 sextarii { 3⅓ L } of must, after being similarly wrapped in a linen napkin. [109] Of the remaining herbs, wormwood wine is made by boiling down a pound of Pontic wormwood in 40 sextarii { 22 L } of must to one-third of its amount, or else by putting shoots of wormwood into wine. Similarly hyssop wine is made of Cilician hyssop by throwing three ounces of hyssop into 2 congii { 6½ L } of wine, or, if the hyssop is first pounded, into one congius. Each of these wines may also be made in another way, by sowing the plant round the roots of vines. [110] Also Cato shows how to make hellebore wine in the same way by using black hellebore; also the same method is used in making scammony wine, vines having a remarkable property of drawing into themselves the flavour of some other plant, which explains why the grapes plucked in the marshes of Patavium actually have a flavour of willow. Similarly in Thasos also hellebore is planted among the vines, or else wild cucumber or scammony; the wine so obtained is called by a Greek name denoting miscarriage, because it produces abortion.
[111] Wine is also made from herbs the nature of which will be described in their proper place; for instance from lavender and from gentian root and goat-marjoram and dittany, hazelwort, carrot, sage, all-heal, acorus, thyme, mandragora, and sweet rush. There is also mention of scyzinum and itaeomelis and lectisphagites, for which the recipe is now lost.
[112] From the shrub and tree class, use is made of both kinds of cedar, the cypress, the laurel, the juniper, the terebinth, the reed and the mastic-tree, the berries or else the new wood being boiled down in must; and similarly is used the wood of the dwarf olive, the ground-pine, and the germander, and in the same way wine is also made from their blossom, by adding ten denarii's weight { 35g } of it to one congius { 3¼ L } of must.
{20.} L [113] A wine is also made of only water and honey. For this it is recommended that rainwater should be stored for five years. Some who are more expert use rain-water as soon as it has fallen, boiling it down to a third of the quantity and adding one part of old honey to three parts of water, and then keeping the mixture in the sun for 40 days after the rising of the Dog-star. Others pour it off after nine days and then cork it up. This beverage is called in Greek 'water-honey'; with age it attains the flavour of wine. It is nowhere rated more highly than in Phrygia.
{21.} L [114] Also honey used even to be mixed with vinegar, so exhaustive have been men's experiments in living. This mixture was called in Greek 'sour honey'; it was made with ten pounds of honey, 5 heminae { 1⅓ L } of old vinegar, one pound of sea salt and 5 sextarii { 2¾ L } of rainwater, heated to boiling ten times, after which the liquor was drawn off and so kept till it was old. [115] All these wines are condemned by Themison, who is a very high authority; and, I vow, the employment of them does appear to be a tour de force, unless anybody believes that aromatic wine and wines pounded of perfumes are products of nature, or that nature gave birth to shrubs in order for them to be used for drink! Contrivances of this sort are amusing to learn of, owing to the ingenuity of the human mind that investigates everything. There can be no doubt that none of these wines will keep a year, except those which we have stated to be actually the products of age, and that the larger number of them will not keep even a month.
{22.} L [116] Even wine contains miraculous properties. One grown in Arcadia is said to produce ability to bear children in women and madness in men; whereas in Achaia, particularly in the neighbourhood of Carynia, there is a wine that is reported to prevent childbearing, and this even if women eat the grapes when they are pregnant, although these do not differ in taste from ordinary grapes. [117] It is said that persons who drink the wine of Troezen cannot become parents. The people of Thasos are reported to make two different kinds of wine, a wine that brings sleep and another that banishes sleep. The same place has a vine called in Greek the 'wild-animal vine,' the wine made from which and also its grapes cure snakebites, and another the 'frankincense vine,' with a scent like that of incense, the wine from which is used for libations to the gods. That of the vine called 'unconsecrated,' on the contrary, is banned from the altars; also it is said that no bird will touch it. Egypt gives the name of 'wine of Thasos' to an extremely sweet native vintage which causes diarrhoea; while Lycia on the contrary has one that has an astringent effect on the bowels. [118] Egypt also possesses a wine called in Greek 'delivery wine' which causes abortion. There are certain wines that, while stored in wine-lofts alter in quality at the rising of the Dog-star and afterwards change back again; the same is the case with wines shipped over sea, and it is observed that the effect of the motion on vintages that can stand it is merely to double their previous maturity.
{23.} L [119] And since life is upheld by religion it is considered sinful to pour libations to the gods, not only with wines made from a vine that has not been pruned, but from one that has been struck by lightning, or one in the neighbourhood of which a man has been hanged, or wine made from grapes that have been trodden out by someone with sore feet, or squeezed from grape-skins that have been cut round or have been soiled by something not quite clean dropping on them from above; and likewise Greek wines must not be used for libations, because they contain water. The vine itself is also eaten, the tops of the shoots being boiled; they are also pickled in vinegar and brine.
{24.} L [120] But it may also be proper to give an account of the method of preparing wine, as Greek authors have written special treatises on this subject and have made a scientific system for it - for instance Euphronius, Aristomachus, Commiades and Hicesius. The practice in Africa is to soften any roughness with gypsum, and also in some parts of the country with lime. In Greece, on the other hand, they enliven the smoothness of their wines with potter's earth or marble dust or salt or sea-water, while in some parts of Italy they use resinous pitch for this purpose, and it is the general practice both there and in the neighbouring provinces to season must with resin; in some places they use the lees of older wine or else vinegar for seasoning. [121] Moreover, medicaments for this purpose are also made from the must itself: it is boiled down so as to become sweeter in proportion to its strength, and it is said that must so treated does not last beyond a year's time. In some places they boil the must down into what is called sapa, and pour this into their wines to overcome their harshness. Still both in the case of this kind of wine and in all others they supply the vessels themselves with coatings of pitch, the method of making which will be described in the next volume.
{25.} L [122] Of the trees which distil a juice, some growing in the East and others in Europe produce pitch and resin, and the province of Asia, which lies between the two, has some of both sorts. In the East the best and finest resin is produced by the turpentine-tree, and next by the lentisk - the latter being also called gum-mastic; afterwards comes the juice of the cypress, which has a very sharp flavour - all of these trees producing a liquid juice and merely a resin, whereas the juice of the cedar is thicker and suitable for making pitch. Arabian resin is white and has a sharp scent, stifling to a person engaged in boiling it; the resin of Judaea dries harder and has a stronger scent than even that from the turpentine-tree; and Syrian resin has a resemblance to Attic honey. [123] The resin of Cyprus excels all other kinds; it likewise is the colour of honey, and has a fleshy consistency. That of Colophon is yellower than the rest, but if ground up turns white; it has a rather oppressive scent, and consequently the perfumers do not make use of it. In Asia a very white resin is made from the pitch-pine; it is called psagdas. All resin can be dissolved in oil, and some people think that potter's chalk can also be so dissolved; and I am ashamed to confess that the chief value now set on resin is for use as a depilatory for men.
[124] The method of seasoning wine is to sprinkle the must with pitch during its first fermentation, which is completed in nine days at most, so that the wine may be given the scent of pitch and some touches of its piquant flavour. It is thought that a more effective way of doing this is by means of raw flower of resin, this giving briskness to the smooth quality of the wine, while on the other hand resin-juice is believed to mitigate the excessive harshness of a wine and to conquer its asperity, or in the case of a thin, smooth, flat wine to add a touch of asperity - this is especially done with the musts of Liguria and the localities on the border of the river Po. [125] The beneficial employment of resin-juice is adjusted in this way: a larger quantity of juice is put into strong, fiery wines, and it is used more sparingly with thin, flat ones. Some people advise using both resin-juice and pitch to season must; and in fact must has a certain pitchy quality and in some districts the fault of must is that it ferments a second time of its own accord, a disaster that destroys its flavour; this liquor is given the name of vappa, which is also applied as a term of opprobrium to human beings when their spirit has deteriorated. For the tartness of vinegar possesses a valuable quality useful for important purposes, and without which it is impossible to live in comparative comfort. [126] For the rest, so much attention is given to the treatment of wines that in some places ashes are employed, as is gypsum elsewhere, and the methods that we have specified, for the purpose of improving their condition; but preference is given to ashes obtained from vine-clippings or from oakwood. Also it is recommended that seawater should be used for this purpose that has been obtained a long way out at sea at the spring equinox and then kept in store, or at all events that it should be taken up during the night at the time of the solstice and when a north wind is blowing, or if it is obtained about vintage time it should be boiled before being used.
[127] The pitch most highly esteemed in Italy for vessels intended for storing wine is that which comes from Bruttium; it is made from the resin of the pitch-pine. But the pitch obtained from the wild pine in Spain is very little valued, as resin from that tree is bitter and dry and has a disagreeable smell. The varieties of pitch and the method of making it we shall set out in the next volume when we are dealing with forest trees. The defects in resin beside those already mentioned are acridity or else a smoky tang, while the fault of pitch is being over-burnt; but the test is if when it is broken up the pieces have a luminous appearance, and if they stick to the teeth with an agreeably tart taste. [128] In Asia pitch from Ida is most popular, and in Greece that of Pieria, but Virgil { Georg. 2.438 } gives the preference to the pitch of Narycus. The more careful makers mix with the wine black mastich, which is found in Pontus and which resembles bitumen, and also iris-root and oil. As for waxing the vessels it is found that this makes the wine turn sour; but it pays better to transfer the wine into vessels that have contained vinegar than into those which have contained sweet wine or mead. [129] Cato recommends that wine should be 'adjusted' - this is the word he uses - by adding lye-ashes boiled with boiled-down must in the proportion of a fortieth part to the wine skin, or else a pound and a half of salt, also occasionally some pounded marble; he also mentions sulphur, but he only puts resin near the end of the list. [130] When the wine is beginning to mature he advises adding on the top of all some of the must which he calls 'squeezings,' which we take to mean that which is the very last pressed out. Also we know that for the sake of colouring the wine colours are added as a sort of pigment and that this gives the wine more body. So many poisons are employed to force wine to suit our taste - and we are surprised that it is not wholesome!
It is a proof that wine is beginning to go bad if a sheet of lead when dipped in it turns a different colour.
{26.} L [131] It is a peculiarity of wine among liquids to go mouldy or else to turn into vinegar; and whole volumes of instructions how to remedy this have been published. Wine-lees when dried will catch fire, and go on burning of themselves without fuel being added; their ashes have the nature of nitre, and the same properties, with the addition that they are greasier to the touch.
{27.} L [132] Even in regard to wine already vintaged there is a great difference in point of climate. In the neighbourhood of the Alps they put it in wooden casks and close these round with tiles and in a cold winter also light fires to protect it from the effect of the cold. It is seldom recorded, but it has been seen occasionally, that the vessels have burst in a frost, leaving the wine standing in frozen blocks - almost a miracle, since it is not the nature of wine to freeze: usually it is only numbed by cold. [133] Districts with a milder climate store their wine in jars and bury them in the ground entirely, or else up to a part of their position so protecting them against the atmosphere; but in other places people keep off the weather by building roofs over them. And they also give the following rules: one side of a wine-cellar or at least its windows ought to face north-east, or at all events east; dunghills and tree-roots must be a long way off, and all objects with a strong smell should be avoided, as it very easily passes into wine - particularly there must be no fig-trees or wild figs near; [134] also spaces must be left between the jars, to prevent taints passing from one to the other, as wine is always liable to very rapid infection. Moreover (these instructions proceed) the shape of the jars is important: pot-bellied and broad ones are not so good. Immediately after the rising of the Dog-star they should be coated with pitch, and afterwards washed with seawater or water with salt in it, and then sprinkled with ashes of brushwood or else with potter's earth, and then rubbed clean and fumigated with myrrh, as should frequently be done with the wine-cellars also. Weak vintages should be kept in jars sunk in the ground, but jars containing strong wines should be exposed to the air. [135] The jars must never be filled quite full, and the space above the surface of the wine must be smeared with raisin-wine or boiled-down must mixed with saffron or sword-lily pounded up with boiled must. The lids of the jars should be treated in the same way, with the addition of mastich or Bruttian pitch. It is laid down that jars must not be opened at mid-winter except on a fine day, and not when a south wind is blowing, or at a full moon.
[136] Flower of wine forming is thought to be a good sign if it is white, but a bad sign if it is red, unless it is a red wine; similarly it is a bad sign if the jars feel warm to the touch, or if the lids sweat. Wine that quickly begins to form a flower and to develop an odour is not going to keep. Also boiled-down must and must of new wine should be boiled when there is no moon, which means at the conjunction of that planet, and not on any other day; and moreover leaden and not copper jars should be used, and some walnuts should be thrown into the liquor, for those are said to absorb the smoke. The best way of treating the finest wines of Campania seems to be to set them out in casks in the open air, exposed to the sun, moon, rain and wind.
{28.} L [137] And if anybody cares to consider the matter more carefully, there is no department of man's life on which more labour is spent - as if nature had not given us the most healthy of beverages to drink, which all other animals make use of, whereas we compel even our beasts of burden to drink wine! and so much toil and labour and outlay is paid as the price of a thing that perverts men's minds and produces madness, having caused the commission of thousands of crimes, and being so attractive that a large part of mankind knows of nothing else worth living for! [138] Nay, what is more, to enable us to take more, we reduce its strength by means of a linen strainer, and other enticements are devised and even poisonous mixtures are invented to promote drinking, some men taking a dose of hemlock before they begin, in order that fear of death may compel them to drink, while others take powdered pumice and preparations which I am ashamed to teach the use of by describing them. [139] The most cautious of these topers we see getting themselves boiled in hot baths and being carried out of the bathroom unconscious, and others actually unable to wait to get to the dinner table, no, not even to put their clothes on, but straight away on the spot, while still naked and panting, they snatch up huge vessels as if to show off their strength, and pour down the whole of the contents, so as to bring them up again at once, and then drink another draught; and they do this a second and a third time, as if they were born for the purpose of wasting wine, and as if it were impossible for the liquor to be poured away unless by using the human body as a funnel. [140] This is the object of the exercises that have been introduced from foreign countries, and of rolling in the mud and throwing the neck back to show off the muscles of the chest. It is declared that the object of all these exercises is merely to raise a thirst! Then again, think of the drinking matches! think of the vessels engraved with scenes of adultery, as though tippling were not enough by itself to give lessons in licentiousness! Thus wine-bibbing is caused by licence, and actually a prize is offered to promote drunkenness - heaven help us, it is actually purchased. One man gets a prize for tipsiness on condition of his eating as much as he has drunk; another drinks as many cups as are demanded of him by a throw of the dice. [141] Then it is that greedy eyes bid a price for a married woman, and their heavy glances betray it to her husband; then it is that the secrets of the heart are published abroad: some men specify the provisions of their wills, others let out facts of fatal import, and do not keep to themselves words that will come back to them through a slit in their throat - how many men having lost their lives in that way! and truth has come to be proverbially credited to wine. [142] Meantime, even should all turn out for the best, drunkards never see the rising sun, and so shorten their lives. Tippling brings a pale face and hanging cheeks, sore eyes, shaky hands that spill the contents of vessels when they are full, and the condign punishment of haunted sleep and restless nights, and the crowning reward of drunkenness, monstrous licentiousness and delight in iniquity. Next day the breath reeks of the wine-cask, and everything is forgotten - the memory is dead. This is what they call 'snatching life as it comes!' when, whereas other men daily lose their yesterdays, these people lose tomorrow also. [143] Forty years ago, during the rule of the Emperor Tiberius, the fashion set in of drinking on an empty stomach and preceding meals with a draught of wine - yet another result of foreign methods and of the doctors' policy of perpetually advertising themselves by some novelty. [144] This is the kind of prowess by which the Parthians seek fame and Alcibiades won his reputation in Greece, and to which among ourselves Novellius Torquatus of Mediolanum even owed his surname { Tricongius } - a man who held the offices of state from praetor right up to deputy consul - by tossing off 3 congii { 9¾ L } at one draught, which was actually the origin of his surname; this was shown off as a sort of mystery before the Emperor Tiberius in his old age, when he had become very strict and indeed cruel, though for the matter of that his own earlier years had been somewhat inclined to strong drink, [145] and it was believed that what recommended Lucius Piso to Tiberius for selection as custodian of the city was that he had kept on carousing for two days and two nights without a break, at Tiberius's own house after he had become Emperor. And it was said that Drusus Caesar took after his father Tiberius in nothing more than in this. [146] Torquatus had the unusual distinction - as even this science has its own code of rules - of never having stammered in his speech or relieved himself by vomiting or otherwise while he was drinking, but of having always turned up for duty with the morning guard without anything going wrong, and of having drunk the largest quantity on record at one draught and also added to the record by some more smaller draughts, of not having taken breath or spat while drinking (this on the best evidence), and of not having left any residue to make a splash in the paved floor - under the elaborate code of rules to prevent cheating in drinking. [147] Tergilla brings it up against Marcus Cicero that his son Cicero was in the habit of tossing off 2 congii { 6½ L } at one draught, and that when tipsy he threw a goblet at Marcus Agrippa: these in fact are the usual results of intoxication. But no doubt young Cicero wanted to deprive his father's murderer, Mark Antony, of his fame in this department; [148] for Antony had strained every effort to win the championship in this field before him, by actually publishing a book on the subject of his own drunken habits; and by venturing to champion his claims in this volume, to my mind he clearly proves the magnitude of the evils that he had inflicted on the world through his tippling. It was shortly before the battle of Actium that he vomited up this volume, so proving clearly that he was already drunk with the blood of his compatriots, and that that made him only the more thirsty for it. For in fact the inevitable result of this vice is that the habit of drinking increases the appetite for it, and it was a shrewd observation of the Scythian ambassador that the more the Parthians drank the thirstier they became.
{29.} L [149] The nations of the west also have their own intoxicant, made from grain soaked in water; there are a number of ways of making it in the various provinces of Gaul and Spain and under different names, although the principle is the same. The Spanish provinces have by this time even taught us that these liquors will bear being kept a long time. Egypt also has devised for itself similar drinks made from grain, and in no part of the world is drunkenness ever out of action, in fact they actually quaff liquors of this kind neat and do not temper their strength by diluting them, as is done with wine; yet, by Hercules, it used to be thought that the product of the earth in that country was corn. Alas, what wonderful ingenuity vice possesses! a method has actually been discovered for making even water intoxicated!
[150] There are two liquids that are specially agreeable to the human body, wine inside and oil outside, both of them the most excellent of all the products of the tree class, but oil an absolute necessity, nor has man's life been slothful in expending labour upon it. How much more ingenious, however, man has been in respect of drink will be made clear by the fact that he has devised 185 kinds of beverages (or if varieties be reckoned, almost double that number), and so much less numerous kinds of oil - about which we shall speak in the following volume.
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