Chap. 3.] THE CULTIVATION OE THE TINE. 221 
while others, again, will keep by virtue of their own natural 
freshness and vigour, if put into earthen jars, which are then 
enclosed in dolia,"® and covered up with tifie fermenting husks 
of grapes. Some grapes receive from the smoke of the black- 
smith's forge that remarkable flavour which it is also known 
to impart to wines : it was the high name of the Emperor 
Tiberius that brought into such great repute the grapes that 
had been smoked in the smithies of Africa. Before his time 
the highest rank at table was assigned to the grapes of Ehse- 
tia,^' and to those growing in the territory of Verona. 
Eaisins of the sun have the name of *'passi," from having 
been submitted to the influence of the sun. It is not un - 
common to preserve grapes in must, and so make them drunk 
with their own juices; while there are some that are all the 
sweeter for being placed in must after it has been boiled; 
others, again, are left to hang on the parent tree till a new 
crop has made its appearance, by which time they have be- 
come as clear and as transparent^^ as glass. Astringent 
pitch, if poured upon the footstalk of the grape, will impart 
to it all that body and that firmness which, when placed in 
dolia or amphorae, it gives to wine. More recently, too, there 
has been discovered a vine which produces a fruit that imparts 
to its wine a strong flavour of pitch : it is the famous grape 
that confers such celebrity on the territory of Yienne,^^ and of 
which several varieties have recently enriched the territories 
of the Arverni, the Sequani, and the Helvii : it was un- 
known in the time of the poet Virgil, who has now been dead 
these ninety years.^^ 
In addition to these particulars, need I make mention of the 
fact that the vine^^ has been introduced into the camp and 
2s We have no corresponding word for the Latin dolium." It was 
an oblong earthen vessel, used for much the same purpose as our vats ; 
the dolia were made of wood. 
2"'' Hardouin speaks of these grapes as still growing in his time in the 
Yaltelline, and remarkable for their excellence. 
'■^ " A patientia." Because they have suffered from the action of the 
29 From the thinness of the skin. 
^0 See c. 24, also B. xxiii. c. 24. - gge B. iii. c. 5, and B. xxxiii. o. 24. 
^2 He died in the year b.c. 19. 
23 A vine sapling was the chief mark of the centurion's authority. 
In times later than that of Pliny 
heat. 
