236 pliny's natural histoky. [Book XIV. 



for those very vineyards, and that within ten years from the 

 time that he had taken them under his management. This 

 was an example of good husbandry worthy to be put in 

 practice upon the lands of Csecuba and of Setia ; for since then 

 these same lands have many a time produced as much as seven 

 culei to the jugerum, or in other words, one hundred and forty 

 amphorae of must. That no one, however, may entertain the 

 belief that ancient times were surpassed on this occasion, I 

 would remark that the same Cato has stated in his writings, that 

 the proper return was seven culei to the jugerum : all of them 

 so many instances only tending most convincingly to prove 

 that the sea, which in our rashness we trespass upon, does not 

 make a more bounteous return to the merchant, no, not even 

 the merchandize that we seek on the shores of the Red and 

 the Indian Seas, than does a well-tilled homestead to the 

 agriculturist. 



CHAP. 6. THE MOST ANCIENT WINES. 



The wine of Maronea, 35 on the coast of Thrace, appears to 

 have been the most celebrated in ancient times, as we learn 

 from the writings of Homer. I dismiss, however, all the fa- 

 bulous stories and various traditions which we find relative to 

 its origin, except, indeed, the one which states that Aristseus, 36 a 

 native of the same country, was the first person that mixed 

 honey 37 with wine, natural productions, both of them, of the 

 highest degree of excellence. Homer 38 has stated that the 

 Maronean wine was mixed with water in the proportion of 

 twenty measures of water to one of wine. The wine that is 

 still produced in the same district retains all its former 

 strength, and a degree of vigour that is quite insuperable. 39 

 Mucianus, who thrice held the consulship, and one of our 

 most recent authors, when in that part of the world was 

 witness himself to the fact, that with one sextarius of this 

 wine it was the custom to mix no less than eighty sextarii of 



35 Said to have been so called from Maron, a king of Thrace, who dwelt 

 in the vicinity of the Thracian Ismarus. See B. iv. c. 18. Homer men- 

 tions this wine in the Odyssey, B. ix. c. 197, et seq. It was red, honey- 

 sweet, fragrant. The place is still called Marogna, in Roumelia, a country 

 the wines of which are still much esteemed. 



36 See B. vii. c. 57. 37 Thus making "mulsuni." 

 3S B. ix. c. 208. 33 Indomitus. 



