Cliap. 3.] 
THE CtJLTIVATIOlS' OF THE VINE. 
219 
continually on the increase, and it is quite impossible to sepa- 
rate the two, or rather, I may say, to tear them asunder. 
Valerianus Cornelius has regarded it as one of the most re- 
markable facts that could be transmitted to posterity, that 
single vines have been known to surround villas and country- 
houses with their shoots and creeping tendrils ever on the 
stretch. At Eome, in the porticoes of Li via, a single vine, 
with its leaf-clad trellises, protects with its shade the walks 
in the open air; the fruit of it yields twelve amphoroe of 
must.^"* 
Everywhere we find the vine overtopping the elm even, 
and we read that Cineas,^^* the ambassador of King Pyrrhus, 
when admiring the great height of the vines at Aricia, 
wittily making allusion to the peculiar rough taste of wine, 
remarked that it was with very good reason that they had 
hung the parent of it on so lofty a gibbet. There is a tree 
in that part of Italy which lies beyond the Padus,^^ know^n 
as the '^rumpotinus,"^^* or sometimes by the name of *^opu- 
lus,'* the broad circular storeys of which are covered v^ith 
vines, whose branches wind upwards in a serpentine form to 
the part where the boughs finally divide,^"^ and then, throw- 
ing out their tendrils, disperse them in every direction among 
the straight and finger-like twigs which project from the 
branches. There are vines also, about as tall as a man of 
moderate height, which are supported by props, and, as they 
throw out their bristling tendrils, form whole vineyards : while 
others, again, in their inordinate love for climbing, combined 
with skill on the part of the proprietor, will cover even the 
very centre^^ of the court-yard with their shoots and foliage. 
Mustum.'' Pure, unfermented juice of the grape. 
See B. vii. c. 24. Italia Transpadana. 
See B. xxiv. c. 112. The Bauhins are of opinion that this is the 
Acer opulus of Willdenow, common in Italy, and very hranchy. 
16 " Tabulata in orbem patula." He probably alludes to the branchos 
extending horizontally from the trunk. 
1^ "In palmam ejus." 
IS There is no doubt that the whole of this passage is in a most cor- 
rupt state, and we can only guess at its meaning. Sillig suggests a new 
reading, which, unsupported as it is by any of the MSS., can only be 
regarded as fanciful, and perhaps as a very slight improvement on the 
attempts to obtain a solution of the difficulty. Pliny's main object seems 
to be to contrast the vines that entwine round poles and rise perpendicu- 
larly with those that creep horizontally. 
