24 THE VINE AND CIVILISATION. 
of art, and little by little they lowered themselves to the modest 
station of mere schoolmasters. They interpreted into the lan- 
guage of Cicero, and later into that of Danté, the poetry of 
Homer, the science of Aristotle, and the philosophy of Plato. 
Tn the fifteenth century, when Mahomet IT. came and hoisted 
the crescent on the cupola of St. Sophia, he found them occu- 
pied in that humble calling. History recounts that the carica- 
turists of the time represent them reading, writing, and per- 
orating, whilst the battering-rams of the Turks were breaking 
down the gates of Constantinople. 
‘*'The vine passed into Italy with the Greek colonists. Upon 
its volcanic soil it gained in strength what it lost in sweetness, 
in delicacy, in perfume. It impressed its austere and ener- 
getic qualities to the school of Pythagoras, to Etruscan civil- 
isation, and to that of primitive Rome. Up to the day when 
the seat of empire was transferred to Byzantium, the sovereign 
people retained in their pride and ambition of that communi- 
cated strength. The Roman citizen sincerely believed that the 
world he had conquered belonged to him, and that the rest of 
mankind had no other mission on earth than to fear and serve 
him. 
‘‘After the conquests of Seylla, and those of Cresar, which 
opened to Roman activity so many new countries, added to the 
increased commercial connection with Greece and the Isles of 
the Archipelago, the astringent wines of Latium were replaced 
on the tables of Roman knights and opulent citizens by the 
Falernian of the Campania, by the light Omphacite of Lesbos, 
by the Phanian of Chios, by the Saprean of Arvisia, of which 
the perfume, according to Pliny, embalmed the banqueting 
hall. Chios, Coreyrus, Candia, Rhodes, Icaros furnished the 
empire largely with the choicest wines. Under the influence of 
these agreeable wines, the grave and politic genius of the 
