252 pliny's natural history. [Book XIV. 



repute having only been acquired since the six hundredth year 

 of the City. 



CHAP. 14. (12.) — THE INSPECTION OF WINE ORDERED BY KING 



ROMULUS. 



Romulus made libations, not with wine but with milk ; a 

 fact which is fully established by the religious rites which 

 owe their foundation to him, and are observed even to the 

 present day. The Posthumian Law, promulgated by King 

 Numa, has an injunction to the following effect: — " Sprinkle 

 not the funeral pyre with wine ;" a law to which he gave his 

 sanction, no doubt, in consequence of the remarkable scarcity 

 of that commodity in those days. By the same law, he also 

 pronounced it illegal to make a libation to the gods of wine that 

 was the produce of an unpruned vine, his object being to compel 

 the husbandmen to prune their vines ; a duty which they 

 showed themselves reluctant to perform, in consequence of the 

 danger which attended climbing the trees. 89 M. Varro in- 

 forms us, that Mezentius, the king of Etruria, succoured the 

 Rutuli against the Latini, upon condition that he should re- 

 ceive all the wine that was then in the territory of Latium. 



(13.) At Rome it was not lawful for women to drink wine. 

 Among the various anecdotes connected with this subject, we 

 find that the wife of Egnatius Mecenius 90 was slain by her hus- 

 band with a stick, because she had drunk some wine from the vat, 

 and that he was absolved from the murder by Eomulus. Fabius 

 Pictor, in his Book of Annals, has stated that a certain lady, 

 for having opened a purse in which the keys of the wine-cellar 

 were kept, was starved to death by her family : and Cato tells 

 us, that it was the usage for the male relatives to give the 

 females a kiss, in order to ascertain whether they smelt of 

 " temetum ;" for it was by that name that wine was then 

 known, whence our word " temulentia," signifying drunken- 

 ness. Cn. Domitius, the judge, once gave it as his opinion, 

 that a certain woman appeared to him to have drunk more 

 wine than was requisite for her health, and without the know- 

 ledge of her husband, for which reason he condemned her to 

 lose her dower. For a very long time there was the greatest 



89 " Circa pericula arbusti." This is probably the meaning of this very 

 elliptical passage. See p. 218. 



90 Called Metellus, by Valerius Maximus, B. yi. c. 3. 



