Chaps. 26-29.

Chap. 26.—Vinegar—Lees of Wine.

It is a peculiarity of wine, among the liquids, to become mouldy, or else to turn to vinegar. There are whole volumes which treat of the various methods of preventing this.

The lees of wine when dried will take fire and burn without the addition of fuel: the ashes so produced have very much the nature of nitre, [They are tartrates, and have no affinity at all with nitre.] and similar virtues; the more so, indeed, the more unctuous they are to the touch.

Chap. 27. (21.)—Wine-Vessels—Wine-Cellars.

The various methods of keeping and storing wines in the cellar are very different. In the vicinity of the Alps, they put their wines in wooden vessels hooped around; [Casks, in fact, similar to those used in France at the present day. In Spain they use earthen jars and the skins of animals.] during their cold winters, they even keep lighted fires, to protect the wines from the effects of the cold. It is a singular thing to mention, but still it has been occasionally seen, that these vessels have burst asunder, and there has stood the wine in frozen masses; a miracle almost, as it is not ordinarily the nature of wine to freeze, cold having only the effect of benumbing it. In more temperate climates, they place their wines in dolia, [Oblong earthen vessels, used as vats.] which they bury in the earth, either covering them entirely or in part, according to the temperature. Sometimes, again, they expose their wines in the open air, while at others they are placed beneath sheds for protection from the atmosphere.

The following are among the rules given for the proper management of wines:—One side of the wine-cellar, or, at all events, the windows, ought to face the north-east, or at least due east. All dunghills and roots of trees, and everything of a repulsive smell, ought to be kept at as great a distance as possible, wine being very apt to contract an odour. Fig-trees too, either wild or cultivated, ought not to be planted in the vicinity. Intervals should also be left between the vessels, in order to prevent infection, in case of any of them turning bad, wine being remarkably apt to become tainted. The shape, too, of the vessels is of considerable importance: those that are broad and bellying [“Ventruosa.” He means “round.”] are not so good. [As oblong ones, probably.] We find it recommended too, to pitch them immediately after the rising of the Dog-star, and then to wash them either with sea or salt water, after which they should be sprinkled with the ashes of tree-shoots or else with potters’ earth; they ought then to be cleaned out, and perfumed with myrrh, a thing which ought to be frequently done to the wine-cellars as well. Weak, thin wines should be kept [While fermenting, and before racking off.] in dolia sunk in the ground, while those in which the stronger ones are kept should be more exposed to the air. The vessels ought on no account to be entirely filled, room being left for seasoning, by mixing either raisin wine or else defrutum flavoured with saffron; old pitch and sapa are sometimes used for the same purpose. The lids, too, of the dolia ought to be seasoned in a similar manner, with the addition of mastich and Bruttian pitch.

It is strongly recommended never to open the vessels, except in fine weather; nor yet while a south wind is blowing, or at a full moon.

The flower [Flos vini, the Mycoderma vini of Desmazieres, a mould or pellicule which forms on the surface, and afterwards falls and is held in suspension.] of wine when white is looked upon as a good sign; but when it is red, it is bad, unless that should happen to be the colour of the wine. The vessels, too, should not be hot to the touch, nor should the covers throw out a sort of sweat. When wine very soon flowers on the surface and emits an odour, it is a sign that it will not keep.

As to defrutum and sapa, it is recommended to commence boiling them when there is no moon to be seen, or, in other words, at the conjunction of that planet, and at no other time. Leaden [Vessels of lead are never used for this purpose at the present day; as that metal would oxidize too rapidly, and liquids would have great difficulty in coming to a boil. A slow fire must have been used by the ancients.] vessels should be used for this purpose, and not copper [They were thought to give a bad flavour to the sapa or defrutum.] ones, and walnuts are generally thrown into them, from a notion that they absorb [A mere puerility, as Fée remarks.] the smoke. In Campania they expose the very finest wines in casks in the open air, it being the opinion that it tends to improve the wine if it is exposed to the action of the sun and moon, the rain and the winds.

Chap. 28. (22.)—Drunkenness.

If any one will take the trouble duly to consider the matter, he will find that upon no one subject is the industry of man kept more constantly on the alert than upon the making of wine; as if Nature had not given us water as a beverage, the one, in fact, of which all other animals make use. We, on the other hand, even go so far as to make our very beasts of burden drink [He does not state the reason, nor does it appear to be known. At the present day warmed wine is sometimes given to a jaded horse, to put him on his legs again.] wine: so vast are our efforts, so vast our labours, and so boundless the cost which we thus lavish upon a liquid which deprives man of his reason and drives him to frenzy and to the commission of a thousand crimes! So great, however, are its attractions, that a great part of mankind are of opinion that there is nothing else in life worth living for. Nay, what is even more than this, that we may be enabled to swallow all the more, we have adopted the plan of diminishing its strength by pressing it through [Though practised by those who wished to drink largely, this was considered to diminish the flavour of delicate wines.] filters of cloth, and have devised numerous inventions whereby to create an artificial thirst. To promote drinking, we find that even poisonous mixtures have been invented, and some men are known to take a dose of hemlock before they begin to drink, that they may have the fear of death before them to make them take their wine: [See B. xxii. c. 23, and B. xxv. c. 95; also c. of the present Book. Wine is no longer considered an antidote to cicuta or hemlock.] others, again, take powdered pumice [See B. xxxvi. c. 42.] for the same purpose, and various other mixtures, which I should feel quite ashamed any further to enlarge upon.

We see the more prudent among those who are given to this habit have themselves parboiled in hot-baths, from whence they are carried away half dead. Others there are, again, who cannot wait till they have got to the banqueting couch, [This seems to be the meaning of “lectum;” but the passage is obscure.] no, not so much as till they have got their shirt on, [Tunicam.] but all naked and panting as they are, the instant they leave the bath they seize hold of large vessels filled with wine, to show off, as it were, their mighty powers, and so gulp down the whole of the contents only to vomit them up again the very next moment. This they will repeat, too, a second and even a third time, just as though they had only been begotten for the purpose of wasting wine, and as if that liquor could not be thrown away without having first passed through the human body. It is to encourage habits such as these that we have introduced the athletic exercises [He satirizes, probably, some kind of gymnastic exercises that had been introduced to promote the speedy passage of the wine through the body.] of other countries, such as rolling in the mud, for instance, and throwing the arms back to show off a brawny neck and chest. Of all these exercises, thirst, it is said, is the chief and primary object.

And then, too, what vessels are employed for holding wine! carved all over with the representations of adulterous intrigues, as if, in fact, drunkenness itself was not sufficiently capable of teaching us lessons of lustfulness. Thus we see wines quaffed out of impurities, and inebriety invited even by the hope of a reward,—invited, did I say?—may the gods forgive me for saying so, purchased outright. We find one person induced to drink upon the condition that he shall have as much to eat as he has previously drunk, while another has to quaff as many cups as he has thrown points on the dice. Then it is that the roving, insatiate eyes are setting a price upon the matron’s chastity; and yet, heavy as they are with wine, they do not fail to betray their designs to her husband. Then it is that all the secrets of the mind are revealed; one man is heard to disclose the provisions of his will, another lets fall some expression of fatal import, and so fails to keep to himself words which will be sure to come home to him with a cut throat. And how many a man has met his death in this fashion! Indeed, it has become quite a common proverb, that “in wine [“In vino veritas.”] there is truth.”

Should he, however, fortunately escape all these dangers, the drunkard never beholds the rising sun, by which his life of drinking is made all the shorter. From wine, too, comes that pallid hue, [Fée remarks that this is one proof that the wine of the ancients was essentially different in its nature from ours. In our day wine gives anything but a “pallid” hue.] those drooping eyelids, those sore eyes, those tremulous hands, unable to hold with steadiness the overflowing vessel, condign punishment in the shape of sleep agitated by Furies during the restless night, and, the supreme reward of inebriety, those dreams of monstrous lustfulness and of forbidden delights. Then on the next day there is the breath reeking of the wine-cask, and a nearly total obliviousness of everything, from the annihilation of the powers of the memory. And this, too, is what they call “seizing the moments of life!” [“Rapere vitam.”] whereas, in reality, while other men lose the day that has gone before, the drinker has already lost the one that is to come.

They first began, in the reign of Tiberius Claudius, some forty years ago, to drink fasting, and to take whets of wine before meals; an outlandish [See B. xxiii. c. 23.] fashion, however, and only patronized by physicians who wished to recommend themselves by the introduction of some novelty or other.

It is in the exercise of their drinking powers that the Parthians look for their share of fame, and it was in this that Alcibiades among the Greeks earned his great repute. Among ourselves, too, Novellius Torquatus of Mediolanum, a man who held all the honours of the state from the prefecture to the pro-consulate, could drink off three congii [Three gallons and three pints!! There must have been some jugglery in this performance.] at a single draught, a feat from which he obtained the surname of “Tricongius:” this he did before the eyes of the Emperor Tiberius, and to his extreme surprise and astonishment, a man who in his old age was very morose, [Probably towards those guilty of excesses in wine.] and indeed very cruel in general; though in his younger days he himself had been too much addicted to wine. Indeed it was owing to that recommendation that it was generally thought that L. Piso was selected by him to have the charge and custody [As Præfectus Urbis.] of the City of Rome; he having kept up a drinking-bout at the residence of Tiberius, just after he had become emperor, two days and two nights without intermission. In no point, too, was it generally said that Drusus Cæsar took after his father Tiberius more than this. [Love of drinking.] Torquatus had the rather uncommon glory—for this science, too, is regulated by peculiar laws of its own—of never being known to stammer in his speech, or to relieve the stomach by vomiting or urine, while engaged in drinking. He was always on duty at the morning guard, was able to empty the largest vessel at a single draught, and yet to take more ordinary cups in addition than any one else; he was always to be implicitly depended upon, too, for being able to drink without taking breath and without ever spitting, or so much as leaving enough at the bottom of the cup to make a plash upon the pavement; [The mode of testing whether any “heeltaps” were left or not. It was this custom, probably, that gave rise to the favourite game of the cottabus.] thus showing himself an exact observer of the regulations which have been made to prevent all shirking on the part of drinkers.

Tergilla reproaches Cicero, the son of Marcus Cicero, with being in the habit of taking off a couple of congii at a single draught, and with having thrown a cup, when in a state of drunkenness, at M. Agrippa; [Dr. Middleton, in his Life of Cicero, in his unlimited partiality for the family, quotes this as an instance of courage and high spirit.] such, in fact, being the ordinary results of intoxication. But it is not to be wondered at that Cicero was desirous in this respect to eclipse the fame of M. Antonius, the murderer of his father; a man who had, before the time of the younger Cicero, shown himself so extremely anxious to maintain the superiority in this kind of qualification, that he had even gone so far as to publish a book upon the subject of his own drunkenness. [According to Paterculus, he was fond of driving about in a chariot, crowned with ivy, a golden goblet in his hand, and dressed like Bacchus, by which title he ordered himself to be addressed.] Daring in this work to speak in his own defence, he has proved very satisfactorily, to my thinking, how many were the evils he had inflicted upon the world through this same vice of drunkenness. It was but a short time before the battle of Actium that he vomited forth this book of his, from which we have no great difficulty in coming to the conclusion, that drunk as he already was with the blood of his fellow-citizens, the only result was that he thirsted for it all the more. For, in fact, such is the infallible characteristic of drunkenness, the more a person is in the habit of drinking, the more eager he is for drink; and the remark of the Scythian ambassador is as true as it is well known—the more the Parthians drank, the thirstier they were for it.

Chap. 29.—Liquors with the Strength of Wine Made from Water and Corn.

The people of the Western world have also their intoxicating drinks, made from corn steeped in water. [He alludes to beer, or rather sweet wort, for hops were not used till the latter part, probably, of the middle ages. Lupines were sometimes used for flavouring beer.] These beverages are prepared in different ways throughout Gaul and the provinces of Spain; under different names, too, though in their results they are the same. The Spanish provinces have even taught us the fact that these liquors are capable of being kept till they have attained a considerable age. Egypt, [Diodorus Siculus says that the Egyptian beer was nearly equal to wine in strength and flavour.] too, has invented for its use a very similar beverage made from corn; indeed, in no part of the world is drunkenness ever at a loss. And then, besides, they take these drinks unmixed, and do not dilute them with water, the way that wine is modified; and yet, by Hercules! one really might have supposed that there the earth produced nothing but corn for the people’s use. Alas! what wondrous skill, and yet how misplaced! means have absolutely been discovered for getting drunk upon water even.

There are two liquids that are peculiarly grateful to the human body, wine within and oil without; both of them the produce of trees, and most excellent in their respective kinds. Oil, indeed, we may pronounce an absolute necessary, nor has mankind been slow to employ all the arts of invention in the manufacture of it. How much more ingenious, however, man has shown himself in devising various kinds of drink will be evident from the fact, that there are no less than one hundred and ninety-five different kinds of it; indeed, if all the varieties are reckoned, they will amount to nearly double that number. The various kinds of oil are much less numerous—we shall proceed to give an account of them in the following Book.

Summary. —Remarkable facts, narratives, and observations, five hundred and ten.

Roman authors quoted. —Cornelius Valerianus, [See end of B. iii.] Virgil, [See end of B. vii.] Celsus, [See end of B. vii.] Cato the Censor, [See end of B. iii.] Saserna, [See end of B. x.] father and son, Scrofa, [See end of B..] M. Varro, [See end of B. ii.] D. Silanus, [Decimus Junius Silanus. He was commissioned by the senate, about B.C. 146, to translate into Latin the twenty-eight books of Mago, the Carthaginian, on Agriculture. See B. xviii. c..] Fabius Pictor, [See end of B. x.] Trogus, [See end of B. vii.] Hyginus, [See end of B. iii.] Flaccus Verrius, [See end of B. iii.] Græcinus, [Julius Græcinus. He was one of the most distinguished orators of his time. Having refused to accuse M. Julius Silanus, he was put to death A.D. 39. He wrote a work, in two books, on the culture of the vine.] Julius Atticus, [He was a contemporary of Celsus and Columella, the latter of whom states that he wrote a work on a peculiar method of cultivating the vine. See also B. xvii. c..] Columella, [See end of B. viii.] Massurius Sabinus, [See end of B. vii.] Fenestella, [See end of B. viii.] Tergilla, [Nothing is known of him. He may possibly have written on Husbandry, and seems to have spoken in dispraise of the son of Cicero. See c. of the present Book.] Maccius Plautus, [The famous Roman Comic poet, born B.C. 184. Twenty of his comedies are still in existence.] Flavius, [For Alfius Flavius, see end of B. ix.; for Cneius Flavius, see end of B..] Dossennus, [Or Dorsenus Fabius, an ancient Comic dramatist, censured by Horace for the buffoonery of his characters, and the carelessness of his productions. In the 15th Chapter of this Book, Pliny quotes a line from his Acharistio.] Scævola, [Q. Mutius Scævola, consul B.C. 95, and assassinated by C. Flavius Fimbria, having been proscribed by the Marian faction. He wrote several works on the Roman law, and Cicero was in the number of his disciples.] Ælius, [Sextus Ælius Pætus Catus, a celebrated jurisconsult, and consul B.C. 198. He wrote a work on the Twelve Tables.] Ateius Capito, [See end of B. iii.] Cotta Messalinus, [Son of Corvinus Messala. He appears to have been a man of bad repute: of his writings nothing seems to be known.] L. Piso, [See end of B. ii.] Pompeius Lenæus, [A freedman of Pompey, by whose command he translated into Latin the work of Mithridates on Poisons. After Pompey’s death, he maintained himself by keeping a school at Rome.] Fabianus, [For Fabianus Papirius, see end of B. ii. Fabianus Sabinus is supposed to have been the same person.] Sextius Niger, [See end of B..] Vibius Rufus. [He is mentioned by the elder Seneca, but nothing whatever is known of him.]

Foreign authors quoted. —Hesiod, [See end of B. vii.] Theophrastus, [See end of B. iii.] Aristotle, [See end of B. ii.] Democritus, [See end of B. ii.] King Hiero, [See end of B. viii.] King Attalus Philometor, [See end of B. viii.] Archytas, [See end of B. viii.] Xenophon, [See end of B. iv.] Amphilochus [See end of B. viii.] of Athens, Anaxipolis [See end of B. viii.] of Thasos, Apollodorus [See end of B. viii.] of Lemnos, Aristophanes [See end of B. viii.] of Miletus, Antigonus [See end of B. viii.] of Cymæ, Agathocles [See end of B. viii.] of Chios, Apollonius [See end of B. viii.] of Pergamus, Aristander [See end of B. viii.] of Athens, Botrys [See end of B..] of Athens, Bacchius [See end of B. viii.] of Miletus, Bion [See end of B. vi.] of Soli, Chærea [See end of B. viii.] of Athens, Chæristus [Supposed to have been a writer on Agriculture, but nothing further is known of him.] of Athens, Diodorus [See end of B. viii.] of Priene, Dion [See end of B. viii.] of Colophon, Epigenes [See end of B. ii.] of Rhodes, Euagon [See end of B. x.] of Thasos, Euphronius [See end of B. viii.] of Athens, Androtion [See end of B. viii.] who wrote on agriculture, Æschrion [See end of B. viii.] who wrote on agriculture, Lysimachus [See end of B. viii.] who wrote on agriculture, Dionysius [See end of B..] who translated Mago, Diophanes [See end of B. viii.] who made an Epitome of the work of Dionysius, Asclepiades [See end of B vii.] the Physician, Onesicritus, [See end of B. ii.] King Juba. [See end of B. v.]