THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 241 



the famous Italian vintages, the strong, fiery Falernian, the rich. 

 Massic, the sweet Alban, the Csecuban, Setine, Pucine, and others, 

 sung by Horace and Virgil and Lucretius, held the palm over 

 all their rivals, and in many respects must have compared favor- 

 ably with those of the present day. 



But most of them would have been spoiled for our tastes by 

 the curious substances which were added to them, for flavoring or 

 as preservatives. For instance, both in Greece and Rome it was 

 a quite common practice to mix honey, and also various spices, 

 myrrh and aloes and cloves. A more surprising admixture was 

 that of salt water, which, in small quantities, one to fifty or so, 

 was believed to greatly improve the flavor of fine wines. Indeed, 

 most careful directions are given by the old writers about the 

 quality of this salt water. It must be drawn from the ocean, 

 some three miles from shore, on a calm day, when the sea was at 

 rest. Another, and to us barbarous, habit was that of adding 

 resin or pitch or turpentine, either directly to the wine, or by 

 smearing the wine vessels before filling them. This is done in 

 Greece up to the present day, and the modern traveler is asked in 

 the taverns whether he wishes " foreign wine " or " resined wine " 



otvos eoViKOS or oti/os pecrivT/rrys. 



In one respect they were fully our equals. They appreciated 

 the value of age. We still, some of us, have our wine cellars, 

 and " lay down " our wines for aging. We smack our lips over 

 a glass of Chateau La Rose of '70, and think it old ; while " Stuy- 

 vesant" or "Monticello" Madeira, from the beginning of the 

 century, is doled out, on rare festal occasions, a few drops at a 

 time, like a precious elixir. 



But in Caesar's day we hear of Hortensius, a well-known 

 orator, leaving his heir ten thousand casks of good Greek wine in 

 the cellar of his country house. Plump little Horace, always re- 

 ferring to his poverty, can still write to a friend and ask him to 

 visit him at his humble cottage, and take a glass of Falernian 

 laid down " Consule Planco," some thirty years ago. His patron 

 Maecenas used to give him wine Mar si memorem duelli that 

 remembered the Marsian war, seventy or eighty years before. 

 And we learn from Pliny that, in his day, there was still in ex- 

 istence some of a famous " cru " of wine, made in the consulship 

 of Opimius, some two hundred years before. This wine, we read, 

 was only used for flavoring other varieties. It was thick, so that 

 it had to be dug out with a spoon, and dissolved in water, and 

 strained before using it, and when the cover was taken off the 

 jar it emitted a delightful, powerful fragrance which filled the 

 whole room. 



From the fall of the republic on, intemperance and licentious- 

 ness increased in Rome with rapid strides. Nothing more was 



VOL. LI. 19 



