Chap. 8.] • FIFTY KINDS OP WINES. 
239 
for slaying his friends^^ in his drunken fits. In fact, we may 
feel ourselves quite justified in saying that there is nothing 
more useful than wine for strengthening the body, while, at 
the same time, there is nothing more pernicious as a luxury, 
if we are not on our guard against excess. 
CHAP, 8. (6.) FIFTY KINDS OF GENEROUS WINES. 
Who can entertain a doubt that some kinds of wine are 
more agreeable to the palate than others, or that even out 
of the very same vat^* there are occasionally produced wines 
that are by no means of equal goodness, the one being much 
superior to the other, whether it is that it is owing to the 
cask,-^^ or to some other fortuitous circumstance ? Let each 
person, therefore, constitute himself his own judge as to which 
kind it is that occupies the pre-eminence. Livia^^ Augusta, 
who lived to her eighty- second year,^^ attributed her longevity 
to the wine of Pucinum,^^ as she never drank any other. This 
wine is grown near a bay of the Adriatic, not far from Mount 
Timavus, upon a piece of elevated rocky ground, where the 
sea-breeze ripens a few grapes, the produce of which supplies 
a few amphorae : there is not a wine that is deemed superior 
to this for medicinal purposes. I am strongly of opinion that 
this is the same wine, the produce of the Adriatic Gulf, upon 
which the Greeks have bestowed such wonderful encomiums, 
under the name of Praetetianum. 
The late Emperor Augustus preferred the Setinum to all 
others, and nearly all the emperors that have succeeded him 
have followed his example, having learnt from actual expe- 
rience that there is no danger of indigestion and flatulence 
resulting from the use of this liquor ; this wine is grown in 
the country^^ that lies just above Forum Appii.^*^ In former 
times the Csecubum enjoyed the reputation of being the most 
CHtus and Callisthenes. Lacus. 
^5 The testa or amphora, made of earth. 
As the wife of Augustus is meant, this reading appears preferable to 
" Julia." 
^" Dion Cassius says " eighty-sixth.'* 
See B. iii. c. 22, and B. xvii. c. 3. Pucinum was in Istria, and the 
district is said still to produce good wine ; according to Dalechamps, the 
place is called Pizzino d' Istria. 
^9 The hills of Setia, looking down on the Pomptine Marshes : now 
Sezza, the wine of which is of no repute. 
See B. iii. c. 9. 
