470 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXIII. 



Asclepiades has composed a whole treatise (which has 

 thence received its name 73 ) on the proper methods of adminis- 

 tering wine ; and the number of commentators who have since 

 written on this treatise, is almost innumerable. For my own 

 part, with all that gravity which becomes a Roman, and one 

 zealous for the furtherance of liberal pursuits, I shall enter into a 

 careful examination of this subject, not, indeed, in the cha- 

 racter of a physician, but as a careful investigator of the 

 effects which wine is likely to produce upon the health of man- 

 kind. To treat, however, of the medicinal properties of each 

 individual kind, would be a labour without end, and quite in- 

 exhaustible ; the more so, as the opinions of medical men are 

 so entirely at variance upon the subject. 



CHAP. 20. THE STJRRENTINE WINES I THREE REMEDIES. THE 



ALBAN WINES : TWO REMEDIES. THE PALERNIAN WINES : SIX 

 REMEDIES. 



Our ancestors set the highest value upon the wines of 

 Surrentum ; 74 but at a later period the preference was given 

 to the Alban, or the Falernian wines. More recently, again, 

 other varieties of wine have come into fashion, quite in accord- 

 ance with that most unreasonable mode of proceeding, ac- 

 cording to which, each person, as he finds a wine most to his 

 taste, extols it as superior to all others. Suppose, now, that all 

 persons were quite agreed as to the superiority of some par- 

 ticular kind of wine, how small a proportion of mankind 

 would be enabled to make use of it ! As it is, even the rich never 

 drink it in an unsophisticated state ; the morals of the age 

 being such, that it is the name only of a vintage that is sold, 

 the wines being adulterated the very moment they enter the 

 vat. Hence it is, by Hercules ! a thing truly astounding ^ 

 that, in reality, a wine is more innoxious in its effects, in pro- 

 portion as it enjoys a less extended renown. The three kinds, 

 however, of which we have made mention, appear to have 

 maintained, with the least diminution, their ancient repute. 



The Falernian wine, if a person should be desirous to know 

 the marked characteristics of wines according to age, is in- 

 jurious to the health, either too new or too old; at fifteen 



73 " Cognominatum" appears to be a better reading than u cognomi- 

 natus," which Sillig has adopted ; as it is much more probable that the 

 work received its name from the subject than that the writer did, 



74 All these wines are described in B. xiv. 



