WINE. 7 
war, or about sixty-five years before Christ. Other wines of 
Italy, the names of which remain, are the Pucine, grown on 
the shores of the Adriatic, upon a stony hill-side. This wine 
is said to have prolonged the life of the Empress Julia Augusta 
to eighty-two years. 
Pliny states that the number of wines in esteem in his time 
was fifty-four Italian, and twenty-six foreign species. 
The age of the wine of the Sabine Farm is stated by Horace, 
and that it was used to cheer the ancients much in the same 
social domestic manner as the temperate among the moderns 
use it at present, when winter’s chill blasts prevail. 
“ Heap up the fire, drive off the cold, 
Bring Sabine wine of four years old, 
And leave the gods our cares.” {Hor. 
Some Roman wines are mentioned as twenty-four years old, 
and some as sixty-five. The vessels out of which they drank 
the wine were various, and some exceedingly rare, rich and 
costly, ornamented with amber, gold, and gems. Some were 
made in Egypt, some at Surrentum, and the flasks they used 
were made in Syria. Not only in libations to the gods, but on 
all oceasions they seem to have been careful to adopt for their 
wine-cups the most costly material. The Greeks mingled 
water with their wine at public entertainments, by a law of 
Amphytrion, revived by Solon, in order that people might re- 
turn home sober. The Jews were ordered to use pure, un- 
mixed wine in their sacrifices, and the same point was observed 
in the sacrifices of Numa at Rome. 
The poets supply many passages that point to the character- 
istics of the ancient wines, and make allusions to them in pas- 
sages of great beauty, and thus we learn that they perfumed 
them, and that their fragrance was the product of art, and not 
the natural bouquet of pure wine. 
