236 
PLINY'S IfATUEAL HISTORY. 
[Book Xiy. 
for those very vineyards, and that within ten years from the 
time that he had taken them under his management. This 
was an example of good husbandry worthy to be put in 
practice upon the lands of C^cuba and of Setia ; for since then 
these same lands have many a time produced as much as seven 
culei to the jugerum, or in other words, one hundred and forty 
amphorae of must. That no one, however, may entertain the 
belief that ancient times were surpassed on this occasion, I 
would remark that the same Cato has stated in his writings, that 
the proper return was seven culei to the jugerum : all of them 
so many instances only tending most convincingly to prove 
that the sea, which in our rashness we trespass upon, does not 
make a more bounteous return to the merchant, no, not even 
the merchandize that we seek on the shores of the Eed and 
the Indian Seas, than does a well-tilled homestead to the 
agriculturist. 
CHAP. 6. THE MOST AISTCIENT WINES. 
The wine of Maronea,^^ on the coast of Thrace, appears to 
have been the most celebrated in ancient times, as we learn 
from the writings of Homer. I dismiss, however, all the fa- 
bulous stories and various traditions which we find relative to 
its origin, except, indeed, the one which states that Aristseus,^^ a 
native of the same country, was the first person that mixed 
honey with wine, natural productions, both of them, of the 
highest degree of excellence. Homer^^ has stated that the 
Maronean wine was mixed with water in the proportion of 
twenty measures of water to one of wine. The wine that is 
still produced in the same district retains all its former 
strength, and a degree of vigour that is quite insuperable.^^ 
Mucianus, who thrice held the consulship, and one of our 
most recent authors, when in that part of the world was 
witness himself to the fact, that with one sextarius of this 
wine it was the custom to mix no less than eighty sextarii of 
35 Said to have been so called from Maron, a king of Thrace, who dwelt 
in the vicinity of the Thracian Ismarus. See B. iv. c. 18. Homer men- 
tions this wine in the Odyssey, B. ix. c. 197, et seq. It was red, honey- 
sweet, fragrant. The place is still called Marogna, in Eoumelia, a country 
the wines of which are stiU much esteemed. 
36 See B. vii. c. 57. ^7 Thus making "mulsum." 
3^ B. ix. c. 208, 39 Indomitus, 
