Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| We have now dealt, more or less, with the foreign trees, which will not grow anywhere but where they began and do not migrate into other lands; and it is time to speak of the common ones, of all of which Italy may be regarded as the particular parent. Only let those who are learning about them remember that for the present we are describing their natures, not their cultivation, although the greatest share in cultivation too belongs to nature.
2| I cannot wonder enough that the memory of some of them has perished, and even the knowledge of the names that the authorities have handed down. For who would not suppose that, now that the world has been joined together by the majesty of the Roman empire, life has made progress through the exchange of goods and the fellowship of a festive peace, and that everything, even what was hidden before, has been brought into common use?
3| But, by Hercules, no one is to be found who knows much of what the ancients handed down. So much more fruitful was the diligence of the men of old, or more fortunate their industry, when thousands of years ago, at the beginnings of literature, Hesiod set out to lay down precepts for farmers, and not a few followed him in this pursuit. From this our own labour has grown, since we have to search out not only what was discovered later, but also what the ancients had discovered, because idleness has decreed the extermination of the memory of things.
4| What causes could anyone find for this vice other than the public causes of the world? Plainly other customs have come in, men's minds are held fast by other things, and only the arts of avarice are cultivated. Formerly, when the empires of nations were enclosed within themselves, and so too were their talents, a kind of barrenness of fortune made it necessary to exercise the goods of the mind; countless kings were revered for honouring the arts, and in their display they put these forward as their wealth, believing that through them immortality was extended to them; and so both the rewards and the works of life abounded. For later generations the broadening of the world and the great extent of things have been a loss.
5| Once the senator came to be chosen by his property rating, the judge to be appointed by property rating, and nothing to adorn the magistrate and the general more than property; once childlessness came to hold the highest authority and power, legacy-hunting to be the most profitable of trades, and the only joys to lie in possessing — then the true prizes of life went to ruin; all the arts called liberal from the greatest good fell into their opposite, and men began to advance by servility alone.
6| This servility men worship, one in one way and another in another, and in different things, yet the prayer of all tends to the same goal, the hope of having. Everywhere, indeed, even eminent men prefer to cultivate the vices of others rather than their own good qualities. And so, by Hercules, pleasure has begun to live, and life itself has ceased.
7| But we shall search out even what has been forgotten, and the lowliness of some subjects will not deter us, any more than it did with the animals — although we see that Virgil, the most excellent of poets, for that very reason shunned the merits of gardens, and in what he did relate plucked only the flowers of things: blessed and happy in his charm, he named only fifteen kinds of grapes in all, three of olive, as many of pear, and of the apple only the Assyrian, neglecting all the rest.
8| And where should we begin, if not with the vines? Their pre-eminence belongs so peculiarly to Italy that by this one good alone she may be thought to have surpassed all the goods of other nations, even those that are fragrant — although wherever vines are in bloom no scent is preferred to theirs for sweetness.
9| Among the ancients vines were rightly counted among the trees on account of their size as well. At Populonium, in the city, we see a figure of Jupiter made from one vine, uncorrupted through so many ages, and likewise a libation bowl at Massilia. At Metapontum the temple of Juno stood on columns of vine wood. Even now the Ephesian Diana's temple roof is climbed by stairs made of a single Cyprian vine, as they say, since vines there grow to an exceptional size. Nor has any wood a more enduring nature. But
10| I should think these were made from wild vines. Our vines are kept in check by yearly pruning, and all their strength is drawn out into the shoots or pressed down into the layers, and they are grown only for their juice, in many ways according to the habits of the climate and the character of the soil. In the Campanian countryside they are wedded to poplars, and, embracing their brides and climbing through their branches with wanton arms in a jointed course, they match their tops, rising so high that the vintager
11| when he is hired stipulates for a pyre and a tomb; there is no limit to their growth. I have seen porticoes, villas and houses wrapped round by the shoots and trailing strands of single vines. And something that Cornelius Valerianus too thought worthy of record among the foremost things: a single vine at Rome, in the Porticoes of Livia, shades the open-air walks with its shady arbours, and the same vine yields twelve amphorae of must.
12| They overtop the elms everywhere, indeed; and they say that Cineas, the envoy of King Pyrrhus, marvelling at their height at Aricia, made a witty jest about the rather harsh taste of the wine, that its mother deserved to hang on so tall a cross. In Italy beyond the Po there is a tree called rumpotinus, and by another name opulus, whose storeys, spreading in a ring, the vines fill; carried up on a bare stem, the dragon, to the tree's palm, they then spread their lashes out beneath the upright fingers of the branches.
13| Again, the same vines are propped up to the height of a man of middling stature and bristle with stakes; others make a vineyard by their unruly creeping and the running of their leafy shoots through every empty space, filling the middle of courtyards. So many differences does Italy alone admit. In some provinces the vine stands by itself without any prop, drawing its arches in upon itself and feeding its thickness with its shortness.
14| Elsewhere the winds forbid this, as in Africa and in parts of the province of Narbonensis, where the vines, prevented from growing beyond their own thumbs and always looking like freshly set cuttings, wander like grasses over the fields and everywhere drink the juice of the earth into their grapes, which for this reason, in the interior of Africa, exceed the size of infant children. Nowhere are the wines harsher, but nowhere is the grape more pleasing for the firmness of its flesh, from which the name durus acinus, 'hard berry', may have arisen.
15| For the kinds of grape, in size, color and flavor, are still innumerable, and are multiplied by wine. Here they shine with a purple color, there they glow rose-red and gleam green; the whitish and the black are the common ones. The bumasti swell like breasts, and date grapes stretch out in very long berries. There is also that wantonness of nature, that small companions cling to very large ones, rivaling them in sweetness; these they call leptorrhages.
16| Others last through the winters, vaulted over on a hanging knot. Others are preserved only in their own breath, shut in earthenware pots and, above that, jars, packed tight in the pressed skins sweating round them. For others smoke, which does so for wines too, brings favor, and the authority of Tiberius Caesar made the smith's furnaces of Africa the chief glory in this; before him the first place at table went to the Raetic grapes from the territory of Verona. Indeed it is their endurance that gives the name to the dried berries.
17| Grapes are also stored away in must and themselves are made drunk with their own wine. Others grow sweet in boiled-down must, while others, translucent, await a new offspring on the mother itself, in glass; and the harshness of pitch poured over the stalk gives the berries the same strengthening firmness that is found in jars or amphorae.
18| Now there has been found a vine that of itself tastes of pitch in its wine, ennobling the territory of Vienne with the kinds Taburnus and Sotanus and Helvicus, only lately made famous and unknown in the age of the poet Virgil, from whose death ninety years go by.
19| What of the fact that the vine, set among camps, holds the sum of affairs and the command in the hand of the centurions, and with a rich reward leads the slow ranks to the sluggish eagles, and even in offenses honors the punishment itself? Nor have vineyards failed to give the method of assaults. For in medicines they hold so great a place that wine itself is by itself a remedy.
20| Democritus alone thought that the kinds of vines could be comprised in number, claiming that all in Greece were known to him; the rest have reported them innumerable and infinite, which will appear more truly from wine. Nor will all be told, but chiefly the notable, for they are almost as many as fields, and so it will be enough to have shown the most celebrated of the vines, or those in which there is some marvel through a peculiarity.
21| First place is given to the Aminnean, for their firmness and for the life of their wine, which at least improves with age. Of them there are five kinds. Of these the true kind with the smaller berry sheds its blossom better, and bears rains and storms, not so the larger, but on a tree it is less exposed than on a trellis.
22| Of the twin kind, to which the grapes, always in pairs, gave this name, the flavor is very harsh, but its strength outstanding. Of these the smaller is harmed by the south wind and fed by the other winds, as on Mount Vesuvius and the hills of Surrentum; in the remaining parts of Italy it is suited only to a tree. The fifth kind is the woolly. So thickly does down clothe it that we need not marvel at the Seres or the Indians. It is the first of the Aminneans to ripen, and rots most quickly.
23| Next in rank are the Nomentan, with reddish wood, for which reason some have called them the reddish vines. These are less fertile, excessive in pressed skins and lees, strongest against frosts, harassed more by dryness than rain, by heat than cold. For which reason in cold and damp places they take first place. The more fertile is the one smaller in berry and less cut in leaf.
24| The Apian vines were given their name by bees, which are especially greedy for them. Of these two kinds themselves grow downy. They differ in that one ripens sooner, though the other too hastens. Cold sites are not refused by them, and yet none rots sooner with rain. The wines are sweet at first and take on harshness over the years. Etruria delights in no vine more.
25| And thus far the foremost renown is given to the peculiar and native vines of Italy; the others are immigrants. From Chios and Thasos the Graecula is not inferior to the Aminneans in goodness, very tender in berry and with a grape so small that it does not pay to cultivate it except in the richest soil. The hills of Tauromenium sent out the eugenia, with the surname of noble birth, only to the Alban territory, since once transplanted it is at once changed. For there is some such love of places that they leave all their glory in them and nowhere pass over entire.
26| This happens also with the Raetic and the Allobrogic, which we called pitch-flavored above, noble at home and not to be recognized elsewhere. Being fertile, however, they make up in quantity for what they lack in quality: the eugenia in hot places, the Raetic in temperate, the Allobrogic in cold, ripening in the frost and black in color.
27| Of those we have mentioned so far, even the black ones, the wines turn with age to a white color. The rest are ignoble, yet sometimes by the work of climate or soil they do not belie age, as the Faecenia, and with it the Biturigiaca flowering, sparser in berry, never at risk at flowering, since they come early and resist winds and rains, though better in chilly places than warm, in damp than in thirsty.
28| The visulla is of a large rather than dense bearing of grapes, impatient of changing weather, but constant against one steady course of cold or heat. The smaller of that kind is the better. In choosing soil it is fussy: in rich it rots, in thin it does not come up at all; it delicately seeks a middle temperature, and for this reason is familiar on the Sabine hills. Its grape is unlovely to look at, pleasant in flavor. Unless it is picked at once when ripe, it falls even without rotting. Against hail the breadth and toughness of its leaves protect it.
29| Now notable in color, between the purple and the black, are the helvolae, which often vary and for that reason are called variana by some. The blacker is preferred among them; each is fertile in alternate years, but better for wine when it bears more sparingly. The praeciae, too, are two kinds, distinguished by the size of the berry, with abundant wood and a grape most useful for pots; the leaf is like parsley. The Dyrrachians celebrate the balisca; in Spain they call it coccolobis. The cluster is rather loose; it bears heat and southern winds, it is hostile to the head, and bountiful in supply.
30| Spain makes two kinds of it, one with an oblong berry, the other with a round one; they gather them last. The sweeter the coccolobis, the better. But even the harsh one turns with age into sweet, and the one that was sweet into harshness; then they rival Alban wine. They report that a drink from them is most useful for diseases of the bladder. The albuelis is more fertile on the tops of trees, the visulla at the bottom;
31| for which reason, planted around the same trees, they enrich by the difference of their nature. Among the black grapes, they named one inerticula, though they would more justly have called it sobria, recommended especially in aged wine, but harmless in strength, since it alone does not cause drunkenness.
32| Fertility recommends the others, and the foremost helvennaca. Of it there are two kinds: the larger, which some call the long, the smaller the marc, not so fruitful, but more pleasing to drink. It is distinguished by a rounded leaf, though each is slender. It is necessary to put forked props under them: otherwise they do not bear their own abundance.
33| They delight in the sea breeze, and hate dew-wet places. No vine loves Italy less; it is rare, small, rotting there, and in the wine it begot not surpassing summer; nor is another more at home in lean soil. Graecinus, who otherwise copied out Cornelius Celsus, thinks it is not its nature that is at odds with Italy, but the cultivation of those who greedily draw out the shoots. On that account it is exhausted by its own fertility, unless the richness of a very fat soil supports it as it flags. It is said not to suffer from carbuncle, a great endowment, if it is true that over any vine the weather has no power.
34| The spionia bears heat, which some call spinea, and it grows fat in the autumn rains; indeed it is fed by mists as well, and for that reason belongs especially to the Ravenna district. The vennuncula, among those that shed their blossom best, most suitable for pots, the Campanians prefer to call surcula, others scapula, Tarracina Numisiana, having no strength of its own, but wholly as strong as the soil, yet most effective at Surrentum, witness as far as Vesuvius.
35| For there the Murgentina from Sicily is most powerful, which some call Pompeiana, fruitful only in rich ground, as the horconia is only in Campania. On the other hand the arceraca, called argitis by Virgil, of itself makes the soil richer, being itself strongest against rain and old age, its wine indeed scarcely keeps a year and is as cheap as common rations, but of outstanding abundance. The mettica also endures years, strongest against every star, with a black berry, its wines turning ruddy with age.
36| And thus far the kinds are common; the rest belong to regions and places or are mixed from these grafted together: since the Tudernis is peculiar to the Etruscans, and at Florentia they even have one named sopina; at Arretium the talpona and etesiaca and conseminia. The black talpona makes a white must. The etesiaca is deceptive: the more it has borne, the more praiseworthy the yield, and, a wonder, it falls short at once in fertility and in quality. The conseminia is black, its wine lasting least, its grape most; it is harvested 15 days later than any other, fertile, but for the table.
37| The leaves of this, like those of the wild vine, change to a blood-red color before they fall. This happens in certain others also, as a proof of the worst kind. The itriola is peculiar to Umbria, to Mevania and the Picene territory; the pumula to Amiternum. In the same places the bananica is deceptive, yet they love it.
38| They call one of their own by the name of the municipality, Pompeii, though it is more abundant among the Clusini; the people of Tibur also called it municipal, although they lately found the oleaginea from its likeness to the olive. This is the newest of grapes discovered up to this time. The vinaciola is known only to the Sabines, the calventina to the Gaurani. I know that those transplanted from the Falernian territory are called Falernian, and degenerate very quickly everywhere. Some too have made a Surrentine kind with a very sweet grape.
39| The capnios and the buconiates and the tharrupia on the hills of Thurii are not harvested before frost has come. Pisa delights in the Parian, Mutina in the Perusinia, with a black berry, whose wine turns white within four years. It is a wonder that there a grape turns around with the sun, and for that reason is called streptis, and that in Italy the Gallic pleases, but across the Alps the Picene. Virgil mentioned the Thasian and Mareotic and Lagean and several foreign ones that are not found in Italy.
40| But there are still some notable for their grape, not for their wine: the ambrosia of the duracina, which can be kept on the vine without any vessels—so great is its firmness against cold, heat and storms, nor does [orthampelos] need a tree or stakes, holding itself up, as does not the dactylis with its finger-like slenderness—the columbina from the racemose, and more purple, with the surname bimammia, because they bear not clusters,
41| but other grapes, likewise the tripedanea, whose name is from its measure, likewise the scripula with a dried berry and the Raetica called in the Maritime Alps, unlike that praised one. For this is short, with berries crowded, degenerate in wine, but with the thinnest skin of all, with a single, very small stone (which they call chium), having one very large berry or another. There is also the black Aminnea, to which they give the name Syriaca, and the Spanish, the most approved of the ignoble.
42| On arbors, however, are planted the table grapes, called escariae, from the duracinae, white, black, and the bumasti in as many colors, and those not yet mentioned, the Aegia and the Rhodia and the unciale, so called as if from the weight of the berry, likewise the picina, the blackest of all, and the stephanitis, by a sport of nature for garlands, with leaves running between the berries, and those called forenses, quick in yield, saleable in look, easy to carry. On the other hand the cinerea and the rabuscula and the asinusca are condemned even for their look, though less so the alopecis, which imitates foxes' tails.
43| The vine called Alexandrina around Phalacra is short, with branches a cubit long, a black berry of the size of a bean, a soft and very small stone, oblique clusters of great sweetness, a small, round leaf without divisions. In these last seven years there has been found in Alba Helvia in the province of Narbonensis a vine that sheds its blossom in a single day, and for that reason is the safest; they call it carbunica, and the whole province now plants it.
44| The first of the Catos, that great man, distinguished beyond the rest by triumph and censorship, yet still more by the fame of his writings and the precepts given to the Roman race on all things worth seeking, and among the first on cultivating the land, the best farmer by the confession of his age and without a rival, touched on few kinds of vines, some of which have already lost even their names.
45| His opinion must be set out separately in a whole discussion, so that in every kind we may know what were most celebrated in the year 600 of the City, about the capture of Carthage and Corinth, when he died, and how much life has advanced since in 230 years.
46| So, concerning vines and grapes, he thus reported: A place that will be called best for wine and exposed to the sun, plant with the smaller Aminnean and the twin eugenia, the smaller helvia. A place that is richer or foggier, sow the larger Aminnean or the Murgentine, the Apician, the Lucanian. The other mixed vines suit any field at all. In a pot the smaller and larger Aminnean and the Apician are stored in pressed skins; the same are rightly stored in boiled-down must and in must, and in the lora. Those you hang up, the duracinae, the larger Aminneans, these are rightly kept as raisins, or at the blacksmith's forge.
47| Nor are there older precepts in the Latin language on that subject. So near are we to the origin of things. The Aminnean mentioned just now, Varro calls Scantiana. In our own age there have been few examples of this art brought to completion, but the less to be omitted for that reason, that the rewards also be known, which are most looked to in every matter.
48| The highest glory, then, was gained by Acilius Sthenelus, of freedman stock, with not more than 60 iugera of cultivated vines in the Nomentan territory, sold for 400,000 sesterces.
49| Great fame, too, attached to Vetulenus Aegialus, likewise a freedman, in the Campanian country estate at Liternum, and the greater for the favor of men, because he cultivated the very place of Africanus's exile; but the greatest, the work of the same Sthenelus, went to Remmius Palaemon, otherwise celebrated for the art of grammar, who in these last twenty years bought a country estate for 600,000 sesterces in the same Nomentan territory, at a byway of the tenth milestone from the city.
50| The cheapness of the commodity is known everywhere through all the suburbs, but there most of all, since he had acquired estates neglected through lack of care and not even of the more elegant soil among the worst. Undertaking to improve these not by virtue of mind but at first by vanity, which was wonderfully marked in him, after the vines had been dug over afresh under the care of Sthenelus, while he imitated the farmer, he brought them to an almost incredible marvel, within the eighth year selling them, with the vintage still hanging, to a buyer for 400,000 sesterces.
51| And more than one person ran to see the heaps of grapes in those vineyards, while the sluggish neighbors excused themselves by pointing to his superior learning; last of all Annaeus Seneca, then the leading man of the learned and in power, which in the end, grown excessive, came crashing down on him, and in no way an admirer of empty things, was captivated by such love of this property that he was not ashamed to hand over that palm to a man otherwise disliked and about to make a show of it, having bought those vineyards at fourfold within almost the tenth year of the care.
52| Work worthy to succeed in the Caecuban and Setine territories, since afterwards too they have often given seven culei, that is 140 amphorae, of must to each iugerum! And lest anyone suppose antiquity beaten in this, the same Cato wrote that ten culei came back from iugera, effective examples that seas more often braved bring the merchant no more, nor wares sought on the Red Sea shore or the Indian, than the diligent household god of the countryside.
53| Wine has its oldest fame in the Maronean, born in the maritime part of Thrace, as Homer is our authority. For we do not pursue the fabulous or the various reports of its origin, except that Aristaeus first of all in the same nation mixed honey with wine, the sweetness of both natures arising of themselves being outstanding. Homer reported that Maronean was to be mixed with twenty times as much water added.
54| Even now the force remains in that same land to this kind, and an untamed strength, since Mucianus, thrice consul, among those who have most recently reported, learned, being present in that region, that single sextarii are mixed with eight of water, and that it is black in color, fragrant, and grows rich with age. And to the Pramnian, which the same Homer celebrated, honor still lasts to this day. It grows in the region of Smyrna beside the sanctuary of the gods' Mother.
55| In the rest, no kind had distinction: there was one year of outstanding goodness in all kinds, in the consulship of Lucius Opimius, when Gaius Gracchus, the tribune, was killed while stirring up the plebs with sedition. Such was the temperate sky that shone (they call it coctura, 'the cooking') by the work of the sun, in the year of the City 633, and those wines still last, after almost two hundred years, now reduced to the likeness of harsh honey—for this is the nature of wines in old age—and cannot be drunk by themselves or overcome with water, their decay untamed to the point of bitterness; but in commending other wines they are medicines in a very slight mixture.
56| Suppose that, by the valuation of that time, a hundred sesterces were set for single amphorae; the interest on this alone, multiplied at half-percents, which is civil and moderate, in the principate of Gaius Caesar, son of Germanicus, in the 160th year made single ounces of wine stand at that cost, as we showed by a famous instance when relating the career of Pomponius Secundus, the poet, together with the dinner he gave that emperor. So much money do the storehouses hold back!
57| Nor does any other thing feel a greater increase up to the twentieth year, or a greater loss after it, with the price not advancing; for rarely so far, and only in extravagance, have thousands of sesterces been paid for single jars. The people of Vienne alone are believed to exchange their pitch-flavored wines, whose kinds we have described, at a higher price, but only among themselves, from love of their country; and that wine is reckoned colder than the rest in a cold drink.
58| Wine has the nature, when drunk, of kindling a heat inside the vitals, and of cooling when poured on outside. Nor will it be out of place to recall in this place what Androcydes, famous for wisdom, wrote to Alexander the Great, restraining his intemperance: Whenever you are going to drink wine, O king, remember that what you drink is the earth's blood. Hemlock is a poison to man, but wine is a poison to hemlock. If he had obeyed these precepts, he would surely not have killed his friends in drunkenness, so that it may rightly be said that nothing is more useful to the strength of the body, nor more ruinous to pleasures, if measure is lacking.
59| Who could doubt that certain kinds of wine are pleasanter to some people than to others, or that, from the same vat, one is more outstanding than another, and that kinship is surpassed, whether by the jar or by chance? For this reason each will set himself up as judge of the first place.
60| Julia Augusta credited 86 years of her life to Pucine wine, using no other. It is produced in the gulf of the Adriatic Sea not far from the spring Timavus, on a rocky hill, where the sea breeze ripens few amphorae; nor is any other indicated as better suited to medicines. I would believe this to be what the Greeks, celebrating it with wonderful praises,
61| called Praetetian, from the Adriatic gulf. The deified Augustus preferred Setine to all, and the emperors for the most part followed, confirmed by experience, since that liquor seldom causes harmful indigestion. It grows above Forum Appi. Before this, the Caecuban had the most celebrated nobility, in the marshy poplar groves in the gulf of Amyclae, which has now vanished through the carelessness of the farmer and the narrowness of the place, still more ruined by the canal of Nero, which he had begun, navigable from the Baian lake to Ostia.
62| Second in renown was the Falernian territory, and from it chiefly the Faustinian; care and cultivation had gathered this. This too is fading away, as growers study abundance rather than quality. The Falernian territory begins at the Campanian bridge, on the left for those making for the colony Urbana of Sulla, lately attached to Capua; the Faustinian about 4 miles from the village of Caedicius, which village is distant from Sinuessa 6 miles. Now to no wine is there greater authority. It is the only wine that is set alight by flame.
63| Of it there are three kinds: harsh, sweet, light. Some distinguish thus: that Caucine is grown on the highest hills, Faustinian on the middle, Falernian on the lowest. It must not be omitted, however, that in none of those which are celebrated is the taste of the grape pleasant.
64| But the third palm has been variously contested: the Alban, near the city, very sweet and rare in the harsh, likewise the Surrentine, which grows only in vineyards, most approved for convalescents because of its thinness and wholesomeness. Tiberius Caesar used to say that the physicians had agreed to give nobility to the Surrentine; otherwise it was generous vinegar; Gaius Caesar, who succeeded him, called it noble flat wine. The Massic contends, and that from Mount Gaurus, looking out toward Puteoli and Baiae.
65| For the Statanian, bordering on the Falernian, came to the first place beyond doubt and made it plain that every land has its own times, its own risings and settings of things. Joined to these, the Calenian used to be put first, and the Fundan which grows in vines and orchards, and others from the neighborhood of the city, Velitern and Privernate. For that which grows at Signia, because of excessive harshness, useful for restraining the bowels, is counted among medicines.
66| The fourth course at public banquets was obtained, from the deified Julius—for he first gave them authority, as appears from his letters—by the Mamertine, produced around Messana in Sicily; among these the Potulan, called by that surname after its originator, are chiefly praised as nearest to Italy. In the same Sicily there is also the honor of the people of Tauromenium, their flasks usually substituted for Mamertine.
67| Of the rest, however, from the upper sea: the Praetutian and those growing at Ancona, and those called Palmensian from one palm by chance sprung up; in the interior, the Caesenatian and Maecenatian; in the Veronese likewise the Raetic, ranked after the Falernian only by Virgil; then from the innermost gulf of the sea the Hadrian; and from the lower the Latiniensian, Graviscan, Statonian.
68| In Etruria, Luna takes the palm; in Liguria, Genua; between the Pyrenees and the Alps, Massilia, with a double flavor, since it also produces a richer wine for seasoning others, which it calls the juicy. The authority of Baeterrae stands within the Gauls. Of the rest produced in Narbonensis it is not possible to give assurance, since they have made a factory of the business, coloring the wine with smoke, and would that it were not with herbs and harmful drugs as well! For the dealer adulterates even the flavor and color with aloe.
69| But the remoter parts of Italy, along the Ausonian sea, are not without glory either: the Tarentine and Servitian, and those produced at Consentia and Tempsa, in Calabria and Lucania, with the Thurian ahead. Of all these, the Lagarine, growing not far from Grumentum, was made most famous by the recovery of Messala Potitus. Campania has recently roused authority with new names, whether by care or by chance: at the fourth milestone from Naples the Trebellican, near Capua the Caulinian, and in its own territory the Trebulan, though otherwise it had always boasted even of the Trifoline among the common wines.
70| For the Pompeian, the greatest improvement is of ten years, old age contributing nothing. They are even found harmful, with headaches, until the sixth hour of the following day. By these examples, unless I am mistaken, it is plain that the homeland and the soil determine the result, not the grape, and that the pursuit of kinds by number is superfluous, since the same vine thrives in one way in some places, another in others.
71| Of the Spains, the Laeetan are ennobled by abundance, while the Tarraconensian and Lauronensian are of real elegance, and the Balearic from the islands are compared to the first of Italy. Nor am I unaware that most will think many things omitted, since each man likes his own and, wherever one goes, the same tale is found,
72| that a freedman of the deified Augustus, most skilled in his judgments and palate, who made the censorship of wine for his banquets, said to a host about the local wine that it was indeed a new taste to him and not one of the noble ones, but that Caesar would drink no other; nor would I deny that others also are worthy of fame, but those on which the agreement of the age has judged are these.
73| Now in the same way we shall speak of the overseas wines. In the highest glory after those Homeric ones, which we mentioned above, were the Thasian and Chian, and from Chios the one they call Ariusian. To these the authority of Erasistratus, the greatest of physicians, added the Lesbian, in about the 450th year of the City of Rome. Now the favor is before all for the Clazomenian, since they season more sparingly with sea water.
74| The Lesbian tastes of the sea by the spontaneous nature of its own. Nor has Tmolite its favor as a wine by itself, but because, with its sweetness mixed in, the harshness of the rest takes on sweetness and age together, since they seem at once older. After these, regard is for the Sicyonian, Cyprian, Telmessic, Tripolitic, Berytian, Tyrian, Sebennytic.
75| In Egypt this is grown from three kinds of grape, the most noble there: the Thasian, the aethalus, the peuce. After these authority belongs to the Hippodamantian, the Mystic, the cantharites, the Cnidian protropum, the Catacecaumenites, the Petrites, the Myconian. For the Mesogites has been found to cause headaches, and the Ephesian is not wholesome, since it is seasoned with sea water and boiled-down must. The Apamenian is said to be particularly suited to mead, as is the Praetutian in Italy. For this too is a peculiarity of kinds; sweet ones, at any rate, do not agree among themselves.
76| The protagion also has gone out of fashion, which the schools of Asclepiades had made nearest to the Italian. The physician Apollodorus, in the volume in which he advised King Ptolemy what wines he should drink, with the Italian still unknown, praised in Pontus the Nasperconites, then the Oretic, Oeneates, Leucadian, Ambraciotes, and, what he preferred to all, the Peparethian, but said it was of less fame, since it did not please before six years.
77| So far, the goodness of wine is owed to nations. Among the Greeks the most famous name was given to a product of care, which they called bion, devised for very many uses in illnesses, as we shall show in the part on medicine. It is made in this way: grapes picked a little before ripeness are dried in a sharp sun, turned three times a day for three days, pressed on the fourth, then aged in casks in the sun.
78| The people of Cos mix in a rather large measure of sea water, an origin arising from a slave's theft, who in this way filled up the measure; this was transferred to white must and is called leucocoum. In other nations, however, what is made in a similar way they call tethalassomenon, and thalassites when jars of must are sunk in the sea, a kind by which old age is made precocious.
79| Nor have we failed to have among us a method of making Coan wine from Italian, which Cato showed, prescribing, above all else, that it be matured in the sun for four years. The Rhodian is like the Coan, the Phorinean saltier than the Coan. All overseas wines are thought to reach middle age in seven years.
80| All sweet wine is less fragrant; the thinner it is, the more fragrant. There are four colors of wine: white, tawny, blood-red, black. Psithium and melampsithium are kinds of raisin wine with a flavor of their own, not wine; but Scybelites is of mead, grown in Galatia, and the Haluntium in Sicily. For siraeum, which others call hepsema and our people sapa, is the work of ingenuity, not nature, must boiled down to a third of the measure. When it has been reduced to half, it is called defrutum. All were devised to adulterate honey, but the former consist of grape and earth. After the Cretan raisin wine, the Cilician and the African are approved.
81| It is certain that it is also made in Italy and the neighboring provinces from the grape which the Greeks call psithia and we apiana, likewise the scripula, the grapes being scorched longer in the sun on the vine or in boiling oil. Some make it from any sweet grape, provided it is white and precooked, drying them in the sun until a little more than half the weight remains, and gently pressing them after they have been pounded.
82| Then they add well water, as much as they have pressed out, to the pressed skins, so as to make also a second raisin wine. The more careful, with the grapes dried in the same way, take out the berries and, without the stalks, soak them in excellent wine until they swell, and press them—and this kind they praise above the rest—and in a similar way, with water added, make a second wine.
83| Midway between sweet wines and wine is what the Greeks call aigleucos, that is, always must. This comes about by care, since it is prevented from fermenting—so they call the passing of must into wine; so they sink the jars in water straight from the vat, until winter has passed and the habit of cooling is established. There is still another kind by itself, which the province of Narbonensis calls sweet, and in it chiefly the Vocontii. For its sake the grape is kept longer on the vine with the stalk twisted.
84| By some the shoot itself is cut to the pith, by others the grape is roasted on tiles, all from the helvennaca vine. To these some add what they call diachyton, with grapes dried in the sun in a closed place for seven days on racks as many feet high from the ground, protected at night from damp, and trodden on the eighth day: it is said that in this way the best smell and flavor are produced.
85| Of the sweet kind is also melitites; it differs from mead in that it is made from must, five congii of harsh must being warmed with a congius of honey and a cyathus of salt. Harsh, but one that ought to be placed among these kinds, is protropum; that is what some call must flowing of itself before the grapes are trodden. This, poured off at once into its flasks and allowed to ferment, is afterwards roasted in the sun for 40 days, just at the rising of the Dog Star itself in the following summer.
86| Those which the Greeks call deuteria, and Cato and we lora, made from pressed skins soaked in water, cannot rightly be called wines, but are still counted among laborers' wines. Of them there are three kinds: with a tenth part of water added to the amount of must pressed out, and so the skins soaked a night and a day and again put under the press; the second, in the way the Greeks have made it, with a third part of what was pressed out added of water and the boiled-down juice reduced to thirds; the third is pressed from the lees of wine, which Cato calls faecatum. None of these is for use beyond a year.
87| But among these a thought comes to mind: that while the noble kinds which can properly be understood as wine are about 80 in the whole world, two thirds of this number belong to Italy, and in addition by far beyond all lands. And from this care creeps higher still: that this favor did not exist from the beginning, and that authority began after the year 600 of the City.
88| That Romulus made libations with milk, not wine, is shown by the rites he established, which keep that custom today. There is a Postumian law of King Numa: Do not sprinkle the funeral pyre with wine. That he enacted this because of the scarcity of the thing no one would doubt. By the same law he established that it is a sin to pour wine to the gods from an unpruned vine, a plan devised so that plowmen, otherwise lazy and afraid of the dangers of the orchard, should be forced to prune. Marcus Varro is our authority that Mezentius, king of Etruria, brought aid to the Rutuli against the Latins at the price of the wine that was then in the Latin territory.
89| It was not lawful for women at Rome to drink it. We find among the examples the wife of Egnatius Maetennus, who, because she had drunk wine from the cask, was killed with a cudgel by her husband, and he was acquitted of the killing by Romulus. Fabius Pictor wrote in his annals that a matron, because she had unsealed the little boxes in which were the keys of the wine cellar,
90| was forced by her family to die of starvation; Cato says that relatives give women a kiss so that they may know whether they smell of temetum. That was then the name for wine, whence drunkenness (temulentia) is also named. Gnaeus Domitius, as judge, pronounced that a woman seemed to have drunk more wine than for the sake of her health, without her husband's knowledge, and fined her her dowry. And for a long time there was great thrift in that matter.
91| Lucius Papirius, the commander, about to fight against the Samnites, made a vow, if he won, of a little cup of wine to Jupiter. Lastly, among gifts we find sextarii of milk given, nowhere of wine. The same Cato, when he had sailed to Spain, from which he returned with a triumph: I drank, he says, no other wine than the rowers, so unlike those who serve even their dinner guests differently from themselves, or substitute other wine as the dinner goes on.
92| The most splendid wines among the ancients were those seasoned with the scent of myrrh, as appears in the plays of Plautus, although in the one entitled Persa he orders that calamus too be added. Therefore some believe that they were chiefly delighted with spiced wine. But Fabius Dossennus decides it by these verses: I was sending fine wine, myrrh-wine, and in Acharistio: Bread and barley meal, myrrh-wine.
93| I see that Scaevola also, and Lucius Aelius and Ateius Capito, held the same opinion, because it is in the Pseudolus: But if there is need that he bring out something sweet from the same place, does he have anything?—You ask? Myrrh-wine, raisin wine, boiled-down must, honey; from which it appears that myrrh-wine is named not only among wines but also among sweet things.
94| That there were storehouses and that wines were accustomed to be racked off in the year 633 of the City is evident from the undoubted proof of the Opimian wine. Italy was by then understanding its own good; yet those kinds were not yet in fame; and so all those then produced have one name, the consul's.
95| So, too, afterwards the overseas wines stayed long in authority, even to our grandfathers, indeed after the Falernian had already been found, as appears from that comic verse: I will bring out five of Thasian wine, two of Falernian. The censors Publius Licinius Crassus and Lucius Julius Caesar, in the year 665 from the founding of the City, issued an edict that no one should sell Greek wine, or Aminnean, at eight asses per quadrantal each. For these are the words. So great, however, was the favor for Greek wine that single drinks were given at a banquet.
96| Marcus Varro reports in these words what authority wines had in his youth: Lucius Lucullus as a boy never saw at his father's a splendid banquet at which Greek wine was given more than once; on his own return from Asia he distributed more than a hundred thousand jars as a congiary. Gaius Sentius, whom we saw as praetor, used to say that Chian wine was first brought into his house when the physician had given it to him for a stomach complaint. Hortensius left his heir more than
97| 10,000 jars. So far Varro. What of this? Did not Caesar the dictator, at the banquet of his triumph, distribute amphorae of Falernian wine and jars of Chian at the feasts? The same, at his Spanish triumph, gave Chian and Falernian, and at the banquet in his third consulship Falernian, Chian, Lesbian, Mamertine, at which time it is agreed that four kinds of wine were first set out. Afterwards, then, all the rest came into repute, and about the year 700 of the City.
98| And so I do not wonder at the almost innumerable kinds of artificial wine found many ages ago, which we shall now describe, all pertaining to medical use. How omphacium is made we have told for the sake of unguents in the previous book. Made from the labrusca, that is, the wild vine, is what is called oenanthinum, two pounds of its flower being steeped in a jar of must. After 30 days they use it. Besides this, the root of the labrusca and the skins of the berry finish hides.
99| These, a little after they have shed their flower, have a singular remedy for cooling the burning heat of the body in diseases, being of the coldest nature, as they report. Part of them dies in the heat before the rest, which are called the solstitial. They never ripen entire, and if, before the whole grape has dried up, it is given half-cooked as food to the chicken kind, it breeds a distaste for seeking grapes.
100| Of the artificial wines the first is made from wine itself (what they call adynamon) in this way: 20 sextarii of white must and half as much water are boiled until the measure of the water is boiled away. Others take 10 sextarii of sea water and as much rain water and roast them in the sun for 40 days. They give it to the sick for whom they fear the harm of wine.
101| The next is made from the seed of ripe millet with its stalk, a pound and a quarter to two congii of must, steeped and drawn off after the seventh month. Of the lotus tree, shrub and herb, we have said where each were made.
102| They are made also from fruits, which we shall describe, adding interpretations only where necessary; and first from palms, which the Parthians, the Indians and the whole east use, from the milder kinds they call chydaeae, a modius being steeped in three congii of water and pressed out. Thus sycites is made from the fig, which some call pharnuprium, others trochis, or, if one does not wish it sweet, the same amount of pressed skins is added instead of water. From the Cyprian fig a vinegar is also made, excelling and better even than the Alexandrian.
103| Wine is also made from the Syrian pod and from pears and all kinds of apples—but that from the Punic they call rhoites—and from cornels, medlars, service-berries, dried mulberries, pine kernels. These, steeped in must, are pressed; the ones named before are mild by themselves.
104| How Cato taught that myrtites is made we shall indicate a little later; the Greeks also in another way: tender branches with their own leaves are boiled in salted must and pounded, and a pound is brought to boil in three congii of must until two remain. What is made in this way from the berries of the wild myrtle is called myrtidanum. This stains the hands.
105| From the things that grow in gardens, wine is made from the root of asparagus, cunila, origanum, parsley seed, habrotonum, mentastrum, rue, nepeta, serpyllum, marruvium. They put two handfuls in a jar of must, with a sextarius of sapa and a hemina of sea water.
106| From turnips it is made, with two denarii in weight added to two sextarii of must, likewise from the root of squill; among flowers, from rose petals pounded in a little linen cloth put into the must with a small weight, that it may sink, 50 denarii in weight to twenty sextarii of must—they forbid the vessel to be opened before three months—likewise from Gallic nard and another from the wild.
107| I find aromatites also made, almost with the composition of unguents: at first from myrrh, as we said, then from Celtic nard, calamus, bitumen, cakes being thrown into must or sweet wine; elsewhere with calamus, rush, costus, nard of Syria, amomum, cassia, cinnamon, saffron, palm, asarum, similarly in a cake.
108| Among others, half-pounds of nard and malobathrum too are added to two congii of must, such as are now also made with pepper and honey added, which some call condita, others piperata. There is found also nectarites, from the herb which some call Helenion, others Medica, others symphyton, others Idaea, others Orestion, others nectaria, with a root of 50 denarii in weight added to six sextarii of must, similarly in a cloth.
109| Among the other herbs, absinthites is made in 40 sextarii of must by boiling down a pound of Pontic wormwood to a third part, or by putting sprigs of wormwood into the wine. In the same way hyssopites is made from Cilician hyssop, three ounces thrown into two congii of must, or crushed and put into wine. Both are also made in another way, by planting the herb around the roots of the vines.
110| Cato teaches that helleborites too is made in this way, from black hellebore. So is scammonites made, owing to the marvellous nature of the vine in drawing an alien flavor into itself; this is why the vintages of the Patavini in their marshy ground smell of willow. In the same way hellebore is planted in Thasos, or wild cucumber, or scammony, and the wine is called phthorium, because it causes abortion.
111| Wine is also made from herbs, whose natures will be told in their own place: from stoechas, the root of Gentiana, tragoriganum, dittany, asarum, daucus, elelisphacus, panax, acorus, thyme, mandrake, and rush. They have also named scyzinum, itaeomelis and lectisphagites, the method of which is by now forgotten.
112| From the class of shrubs, the berries or fresh wood of both kinds of cedar, of cypress, laurel, juniper, terebinth, reed and lentisk are boiled in must; likewise the wood of chamelaea, chamaepitys and chamaedrys. In the same way it is done from the flower, ten denarii in weight being added to a congius of must.
113| Wine is also made from water and honey alone. For this they direct that rainwater be kept for five years. Others, more prudent, boil it down at once to a third part and add a third part of old honey, then keep it for 40 days in the sun at the rising of the Dog Star. Others pour it into jars and stop them up on the tenth day. This is called hydromeli, and with age it comes to the flavor of wine; nowhere is it more praised than in Phrygia.
114| Indeed vinegar too was blended with honey; so little has been left untried in life. They called this oxymeli: ten pounds of honey, five heminae of aged vinegar, one pound of sea salt, with five sextarii of rainwater, brought to the boil ten times, then strained and so left to age. All of these were condemned by Themison, a very high authority.
115| And, by Hercules, their use may well seem forced, unless someone believes that aromatites, and wines compounded from unguents, are a work of nature, or that shrubs have produced them so that they might be drunk. These things are pleasant to know, on behalf of human ingenuity, which searches out everything. There will be no doubt that none of them lasts a year, except those which we have said are made by age itself, and that most do not last even thirty days.
116| There are also marvels in wine. It is said that in Arcadia a wine is made that brings fertility to women and madness to men, but in Achaia, especially around Ceryneia, wine drives off the unborn child, and even if pregnant women eat the grape, though there is no difference in taste.
117| Those who drink Troezenian wine are said not to beget. It is reported that the Thasians make two different kinds of wine, one by which sleep is induced, the other by which it is driven away. Among the same people there is a vine called theriaca, whose wine and grape are a remedy against the strikes of serpents; and a vine called libanodes, with the smell of frankincense, from which they pour libations to the gods. On the other hand the aspendios is condemned for the altars; they say that no bird touches it. Egypt calls a very sweet grape in its country the Thasian, which loosens the bowels; on the other hand there is the Lycian, which checks a loose bowel. Egypt also has the ecbolas, which causes abortion.
118| Some wines in the storehouses change when the Dog Star rises, and afterward return to themselves. So too with wine carried by sea, whose tossing is perceived to add to those that survive it as much age as they already had.
119| And since life rests on religious scruple, it is held unlawful to pour libations to the gods with wines — besides those of an unpruned vine — from a vine struck by lightning, or beside which a man has hung dead by a noose, or that has been trodden by wounded feet, and what has flowed from cut grape skins, or has been polluted by something unclean falling from above, and likewise Greek wines, because they contain water. The vine itself is also eaten, the topmost shoots being boiled, and these are also preserved in vinegar and brine.
120| But it is also fitting to speak of the dressing of wine, since the Greeks have set down their precepts on it privately and made an art of it, such as Euphronius and Aristomachus and Commiades and Hicesius. Africa softens harshness with gypsum, and with lime in some parts of it. Greece brings out smoothness with clay, or marble, or salt, or sea water; some part of Italy uses crapulana pitch, and to season musts with resin is the common practice there and in the neighboring provinces. In some places they season with the lees of earlier wine or with vinegar. Medicines are also made from the must itself.
121| It is boiled down so as to become sweet at the cost of part of its strength, and such wine is reported not to last beyond the space of a year. In some places they boil musts down to sapa and, by pouring it in, break the wildness of the wine. And yet in this kind and in every other the jars themselves are furnished with seasonings of pitch, the method of making which will be told in the next volume.
122| Of the trees that flow with sap, some that grow in the east, others in Europe, yield pitch and resin. Asia, which lies between, has some of both. In the east the terebinth yields the best and finest, then the lentisk, which they also call mastiche, afterward the cypress, the sharpest in flavor; all of these yield only liquid resin, but the cedar yields a thicker kind, suited to making pitch. Arabian resin is white, with a sharp smell, hard for the boiler; the Judaean is firmer and more fragrant even than the terebinthine; the Syrian has the likeness of Attic honey.
123| The Cyprian surpasses all, being likewise honey-colored and fleshy. The Colophonian is tawny beyond the rest, but if rubbed it turns white, and has a heavier smell; for that reason the perfumers do not use it. In Asia the kind made from the spruce, quite white, is called psagdas. All resin is dissolved by oil; some think that potters' clay also does this; and it is shameful to confess that its greatest esteem now lies in plucking the hairs from men's bodies.
124| The method of seasoning musts is, in the first fermentation, which at most lasts nine days, by a sprinkling of pitch, so that the wine takes on its smell and certain sharp points of flavor. They think this is done more strongly with the raw flower of the resin, and that smoothness is stirred up by it; on the other hand that crapula checks excessive wildness and breaks the rankness, or that where a sluggish smoothness lies torpid, rankness is added, especially in the musts of Liguria and those about the Po.
125| The use is distinguished in this way: more crapula is put into quarrelsome musts, less into mild ones. There are those who wish to season with both. There is also a pitchy nature in must, and in some places it is the fault of must to ferment a second time of its own accord, a calamity by which its flavor perishes; it takes the name vappa, which is a term of reproach even for men, when the spirit has degenerated. For in the worthlessness of vinegar there is a virtue for great uses, and without it life could not be passed more gently.
126| For the rest, such is the care for the medicating of wines that among some they are restored with ash, as with gypsum elsewhere and the means we have mentioned; but they prefer ash from vine cuttings or from oak. They even direct that sea water for this purpose be fetched from the deep and kept from the spring equinox, or at any rate drawn on the night of the solstice when the north wind is blowing, or, if it is drawn about the vintage, boiled down.
127| For pitch for sealing vessels of wine, in Italy the Bruttian is most approved. It is made from the resin of the spruce; in Spain, however, from wild pines, and is least praised. For their resin is bitter and dry and heavy in smell. We shall show the difference and the method of making in the next volume, among the wild trees. The faults, besides those mentioned above, are sourness or a smoky rankness, and burning of the pitch; the test is whether the fragments are translucent and grow tough under the tooth with a pleasant sharpness.
128| Asia most approves Idaean pitch, Greece the Pierian, Virgil the Narycian. The more careful mix in black mastiche, which grows in Pontus like bitumen, and the root of iris and oil. For it has been found that wines turn sour in vessels that take wax. But it is more useful to transfer wine into vessels in which there has been vinegar than into those in which there has been sweet wine or mead.
129| Cato directs that wines be blended, for that is the word he uses, with a fortieth part of lye ash boiled with defrutum to the culleus, or a pound and a half of salt, and sometimes with crushed marble. He also mentions sulphur, and resin only among the last.
130| Above all he directs that, when the wine is already ripening, must be added, which he calls tortivum, and which we understand to mean what was pressed out last. And we know that colors are added for dyeing, as a kind of pigment for the wine, and that so it is made richer. By so many poisons is it forced to please, and we wonder that it is harmful! A test of wine tending to spoil is the change of color in it on a plate of lead.
131| It is peculiar to wine among liquids to grow moldy or to turn into vinegar, and volumes of remedies for this exist. The dried lees of wine take fire and burn of themselves without fuel. Its ash has the nature of nitre and the same powers, with this addition, that it is felt to be richer.
132| There is also a great difference in climate once the wine is gathered. Around the Alps they store it in wooden vessels and surround them with roofs, and even in freezing winter keep off the stiffness with fires. It is rare to tell, but it has sometimes been seen: when the vessels were burst, masses of ice stood there, like a portent, since the nature of wine does not freeze; at other times it merely goes numb with cold.
133| The milder regions store it in jars and bury them in the ground, wholly or in proportion to the site. So they keep out the weather; elsewhere they ward it off by setting roofs above, and they pass on these precepts as well: that the side of the wine cellar, or at least its windows, ought to face north, or in any case the equinoctial sunrise; that dung heaps and the roots of trees should be far away, and everything with an odor to be avoided, since it passes into wines most easily, fig trees above all and wild fig trees;
134| that spaces be left between the jars, lest faults creep among them by contagion, wine's always swiftest; moreover that their shapes matter, bellied and wide ones being less serviceable. That they ought to be pitched at once from the rising of the Dog Star, afterward washed over with sea water or salt water, then sprinkled with ash from vine cuttings or with clay, and, once wiped clean, fumigated with myrrh, as should the cellars themselves, and often. Weak wines should be kept in jars sunk in the earth,
135| strong ones in jars set above ground. They should never be filled to the top, and what remains should be smeared over with passum or defrutum mixed with saffron, or with pounded iris in sapa. So the lids of the jars are to be treated, with mastiche added or Bruttian pitch. They forbid opening them except on a clear day, and forbid it when the south wind is blowing or the moon is full.
136| The flower of wine is approved when white; a reddish one is said to be a sad sign, unless that is the color of the wine; likewise jars growing hot or lids sweating. A wine that quickly begins to flower and to draw an odor will not be lasting. Defrutum and sapa themselves they direct to be boiled when the sky is without a moon, that is, at the conjunction of that star, and not on any other day, moreover in lead vessels, not bronze, and with walnuts added, for they say these take up the smoke. For the most famous wines of Campania it seems most suitable to set them out in the open air in casks, to be beaten by sun, moon, rain and winds.
137| And if one reckons it up more carefully, there is no area in which human life takes more pains, as though nature had not provided us with water, the most wholesome of liquids, for drinking, the drink that all other living creatures use. Yet we force even our beasts of burden to drink wine. And with all this work, all this toil and expense, we procure something that alters the human mind and breeds madness, something for whose sake thousands of crimes have been committed, and yet so delightful that a great part of mankind recognizes no other reward in life.
138| Indeed, so that we can take in more, we break its strength by straining it through a bag; and other stimulants are devised, and even poisons are swallowed for the sake of drinking. Some take hemlock beforehand, so that death may force them to drink; others take powdered pumice, and things that I am ashamed to describe.
139| We see the most cautious of them stewing themselves in the baths and being carried out unconscious; and others, again, who cannot wait for their dining couch, no, not even for their tunic, but there and then, naked and panting, seize huge vessels as if to show off their strength, and pour them down full, only to vomit them up at once and drain them again, and do it a second and a third time, as though they had been born to waste wine, and as though it could not be poured away except through a human body!
140| To this belong the exercises imported from abroad, the rolling in mud, and the display of a broad chest with the neck thrown back. Through all of this, they announce, a thirst is being sought. And then the drinking contests! And the cups engraved with scenes of adultery, as though drunkenness did not teach lust well enough on its own! So wine is drained to stir up lust, and drunkenness is even invited with a prize and, heaven help us, bought. One man takes as the fee for his drinking, by agreement, as much to eat as he has drunk; another drinks as much as he has won at dice.
141| Then greedy eyes put a price on a married woman, and heavy eyes betray the husband; then the secrets of the heart are brought out. Some declare their wills aloud; others utter deadly words and cannot hold back speech that will return upon their own throats. How many have been killed in this way! And it is now commonly said that truth belongs to wine. Meanwhile, even when things turn out at their best, they never see the sun rise, and they live shorter lives. From this come pallor and drooping cheeks,
142| sores in the eyes, trembling hands that spill full cups (this would be the punishment that comes at once), sleep haunted by furies and restlessness by night, and, the highest reward of drunkenness, monstrous lust and pleasure in wickedness. The next day the breath smells of the wine jar, and there is forgetfulness of everything, the death of memory. Yet this, they say, is how they seize life, when every day they lose the day before, and they lose the coming day as well.
143| In the reign of the emperor Tiberius Claudius, 40 years ago, it became the fashion to drink on an empty stomach and to have wine before food. This too came from foreign practices and from the doctrines of physicians, who are always recommending themselves by some novelty.
144| It is by this prowess that the Parthians seek glory; among the Greeks Alcibiades earned fame by it; and among us Novellius Torquatus of Mediolanum even won a surname. He held the honours of a praetorship and rose as far as a proconsulship, and he drained three congii (which is where his surname came from) at a single draught, while the emperor Tiberius looked on to see the marvel, a man already stern in his old age and in other matters even cruel.
145| Tiberius himself had been rather given to neat wine in his youth, and it was believed that Lucius Piso was chosen by him to take charge of the city on that recommendation: he had kept up a drinking bout at Tiberius' house, when Tiberius was already emperor, for two days and two nights. And in nothing else, it was said, did Drusus Caesar more closely reproduce his father Tiberius.
146| Torquatus' glory was rare, since this art too has its own laws. He did not falter in his speech; he did not relieve himself by vomiting or by any other part of the body while drinking; he went through the morning watches without harm; he drank the largest quantity at a single draught, and in addition he added the largest quantity in other, smaller draughts; in perfect good faith he did not take breath while drinking or spit, and he left no wine behind to make a splash on the floor, in careful observance of the rules against cheating at drinking.
147| Tergilla reproaches Cicero, the son of Marcus, with having been in the habit of draining two congii at a time, and with having thrown a cup at Marcus Agrippa while drunk. These, after all, are the works of drunkenness. But no doubt Cicero wanted to take this glory away from Mark Antony, the murderer of his father.
148| For Antony had seized this prize most greedily before him, and had even published a book about his own drunkenness. By daring to defend himself in it he clearly proved, in my judgement at least, how many evils he had brought upon the world through his drinking. He spewed out that book shortly before the battle of Actium, so that one may easily understand that he was already drunk with the blood of his fellow citizens and thirsting for it all the more. For this inevitable consequence also goes with the vice: the habit of drinking increases the craving. And the saying of the Scythian envoy is well known, that the more the Parthians drink, the thirstier they become.
149| The peoples of the West too have their own intoxicant, made from soaked grain, in several ways throughout the Gauls and the Spains, under other names but on the same principle. The Spains have even shown by now that these kinds will stand keeping. Egypt too has devised similar drinks for itself from grain, and nowhere in the world does drunkenness rest; for they drink such juices neat and do not soften them by diluting them as they do wine. And yet, by Hercules, the earth there was thought to bear grain. Alas, the marvellous ingenuity of our vices! A way has been found to make even water intoxicating.
150| Two liquids are most pleasing to human bodies, wine within and oil without. Both are the foremost products of the tree kind, but oil is the necessary one, and life has not been idle in working at it. Yet how much more inventive it has been in the matter of drink will be clear from this: one hundred and eighty-five kinds of drink have been devised, or nearly twice that number if the varieties are counted, and so many fewer kinds of oil, of which we shall speak in the following book.
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