270 
PLIIS^X'S KATFEAL HISTOUT. 
[Booli XIV. 
words, at the conjunction of that planet, and at no other time. 
Leaden vessels should he used for this purpose, and not copper'^ 
ones, and walnuts are generally thrown into them, from a 
notion that they absorb the smoke. In Campania they ex- 
pose the very finest wines in casks in the open air, it being the 
opinion that it tends to improve the wine if it is exposed to the 
action of the sun and moon, the rain and the winds. 
CHAP. 28. (22.) DEraKENN"ESS. 
If any one will take the trouble duly to consider the matter, 
he will find that upon no one sabject is the industry of man 
kept more constantly on the alert than upon the making of wine ; 
as if Nature had not given us water as a beverage, the one, in 
fact, of which all other animals make use. We, on the other 
hand, even go so far as to make our very beasts of burden 
drink wine : so vast are our efibrts, so vast our labours, and 
so boundless the cost which we thus lavish upon a liquid 
which deprives man of his reason and drives him to frenzy 
and to the commission of a thousand crimes ! So great, how- • 
ever, are its attractions, that a great part of mankind are of 
opinion that there is nothing else in life worth living for. 
]^ay, what is even more than this, that we may be enabled to 
swallow all the more, we have adopted the plan of diminishing 
its strength by pressing it through filters of cloth, and have 
devised numerous inventions whereby to create an artificial 
thirst. To promote drinking, we find that even poisonous 
mixtures have been invented, and some men are known to 
take a dose of hemlock before they begin to drink, that they 
may have the fear of death before them to make them take 
their wine others, again, take powdered pumice for the 
Vessels of lead are never used for this purpose at the present day ; as 
that metal would oxidize too rapidly, and hquids would have great diffi- 
culty in coming to a boil. A slow fire must have been used by the ancients. 
^6 They were thought to give a bad flavour to the sapa or defrutum, 
^'^ A mere puerility, as Fee remarks. 
He does not state the reason, nor does it appear to be known. At 
the pres'ent day warmed wine is sometimes given to a jaded horse, to put 
him on his legs again. 
5^ Though practised by those who wished to drink largely, this was con- 
sidered to diminish the flavour of delicate wines. 
60 See B. xxii. c. 23, and B. xxv. c. 95 ; also c. 7 of the present Book. 
Wine is no longer considered an antidote to- cicuta or hemlock. 
61 See B. xxxvi. c. 42. 
