56 THE VINE AND CIVILISATION. 
their wines, and sometimes used them perfumed, that an 
habitual drunkard was considered infamous, and that the 
names of some of their wines may be found in the works of 
some of the writers who have reached our time, is familiar to 
every scholar. 
‘*Since the time of the conquest of Constantinople by the 
Turks, it is not at all likely that in the Greek islands the mode 
of making wine should have much changed, however the quality 
may have become deteriorated. In Napoli de Malvasia, in the 
Morea, was made the celebrated Malmsey, which has been 
imitated in almost every wine country in the world. 
‘“The soil of the islands and mainland of Greece differs 
very much; hills of calcareous earth, with slopes of benign 
aspect; gravelly soils, and others of volcanic origin, offer 
situations for vineyards of rare occurrence. Candia, Rhodes 
and Cypress produce some excellent wine at this day. The 
country in Cypress, situated between Limassol and Paphos, 
contains a good many hamlets and villages, and was in the 
middle ages occupied by the Commandery of the Templars 
and the Knights of Malta. The wine made of the best grapes 
is still called the wine of the Commandery. 
‘* The quantity of the red wine of the Commandery produced 
is probably ten thousand jars (of five bottles each). Wines 
of an inferior quality are made in Cypress, and generally 
drank by the natives; they taste insupportably of pitch. 
About five thousand jars of very sweet Malmsey are made in 
Cypress. These wines, it is most probable, have undergone 
little or no change since the days of Strabo and Pliny, who 
reckoned them among the most valuable in the world. There 
is a custom in Cypress among families of burying a jar of wine 
at the birth of a child, to be dug up at its marriage, which wine 
is never sold whatever may be the fate of the child. 
