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PLINY ON ROMAN DRINKING CUSTOMS.

83

remains, has left a few lines on the subject of drunkenness which supplement the above account of its ill effects, and which, alas! apply to the nineteenth century of our Christian era equally with the period at which Epicharmus flourished, namely, about 540 B.C.:

"Then the drinking riot breeds ;
Then on riot and confusion
Follow law and prosecution;

Law brings sentence, sentence chains;

Chains bring wounds and ulcerous pains."

"1

But it is unnecessary that we should follow the history of the drinking habits of Greece any further, for we find the same excesses to have prevailed there as we meet with in the relations on the same subject in Rome, and to that empire, therefore, we must now direct our attention.

The earliest mention made anywhere of wine in Italy is probably that found in the writings of Varro, the historian, who says that Mezentius, king of Etruria (contemporary with Eneas of Troy), succoured the Rutuli against the Latini on condition that he should receive as compensation all the wine that was in Latium. But although many other writers have left us information on the subject, it is to Pliny the Elder that we owe most of the interesting particulars concerning drink and drinking customs in Rome.2 From

1 Athenæus, vol. i. p. 59.

2 Pliny was born in the north of Italy, A. D. 23. He served as a soldier in Germany, and practised as a special pleader in Rome. He was killed at the age of fifty-six whilst observing an eruption of Vesuvius, for he was an ardent lover of nature. Our extracts and references are found in his "Natural History." Bohn.

his pages we learn that wine was well known to the people of that city from its very foundation1 (about 650 B.C.); for an anecdote is related that the wife of Egnatius Mecenius was slain by her husband with a stick because she had drunk wine from a vat (women being at that time forbidden to drink wine in Rome), and that he was absolved from the murder by Romulus. The interdiction of wine to women was in force at a much later period; for Fabius Pictor,2 in his book of "Annals," states that a certain lady, for having opened a purse in which the keys of the wine-cellar were kept, was starved to death by her family; and Cato tells us that it was the usage of the men to give their female relatives a kiss in order to ascertain whether they smelt of temetum, for it was by that name that wine was known; "whence," says Pliny, "our word temulentia, signifying drunkenness." Another case is quoted, which shows that wine was subsequently allowed to women as a medicine or a tonic. Cn. Domitius, a judge, gave it as his opinion that a certain woman appeared to him to have drunk more wine than was requisite for her health, and without her husband's knowledge, for which reason he condemned her to lose her dowry. Later on, however, men and women. caroused together freely.

But we must return to the earliest period of Roman history. Wine appears then to have been very scarce, for King Numa promulgated a decree known as the Posthumian law, which contained the injunction, "Sprinkle not the funeral pyre with wine;" and the same edict forbade the employment of wine as a libation to the gods which

1 Natural History, vol. iii. pp. 252, 253, et seq.

2 About 220 B.C.

SCARCITY OF WINE IN EARLY ROME.

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was the product of an unpruned vine. For it appears that the vines were attached to high trees, which the husbandman was obliged to climb in order to prune them, and as many accidents, sometimes fatal ones, resulted from this custom, vines were neglected, and their produce diminished in consequence. But there are many other proofs of the scarcity of wine in the earlier days of Rome. Thus L. Papirius, a general, who on one occasion commanded against the Samnites, when about to engage, vowed an offering to Jupiter of a small cup of wine if he should gain the victory; and for a considerable time milk is often mentioned amongst offerings to the gods, but never wine.

Even at that early period, therefore, we know that, however scarce intoxicating liquor may have been, it was already employed in a variety of ways. That it was used in religious ceremonies; as a medicine; as an article of diet, openly by men and secretly by women; and, if we were to follow closely the course of Roman history, we should find that for those purposes, and as a luxury, its consumption must have been always on the increase. Our space will not, however, allow us to do more than refer to a few illustrative cases, extracted from the pages of Pliny and other Roman writers, in order to show how drinking increased, and the extent to which it prevailed at a later period. We have seen that on one occasion a Roman general offered as a rare gift to the gods a small cup of wine. That was about the beginning of the fourth century B.C. (333-272). About a hundred years later, Cato, another Roman general, who did his utmost to discountenance the growing luxury of his time, whilst on an expedition to Spain from which he afterwards returned in triumph, would drink no other

wine than such as was served out to his rowers, "very different indeed," says the historian, "to the conduct of those who are in the habit of giving to their guests even inferior wine to that which they drink themselves, or else contrive to substitute inferior in the course of their repast." 1 "1 Still another century later, M. Varro, the historian (born 116 B.C.), makes the following statement concerning the wines which were held in high esteem in his day :-" L. Lucullus, when a boy, never saw an entertainment at his father's house, however sumptuous it might be, at which Greek wine was handed round more than once during the repast, whereas he himself, when he returned from Asia, distributed as a largess among the people more than a hundred thousand congiaria 2 of the same wine. C. Sentius, the prætor, used to say that Chian wine never entered his house unless his physician prescribed it to him for the cardiac disease; but, on the other hand, Hortensius (50 B.C.) left 10,000 casks of it to his heir." About the same period, Pliny tells us that Cæsar at a banquet given during his third consulship (B.C. 46), gave Falernian, Chian, Lesbian, and Mamertine wines; "indeed, it is generally agreed that this was the first occasion on which four different kinds of wine were served at table. It was after this that all the other sorts came into such very high repute, somewhere about the year of the city 700." And speaking of his own time (A.D. 23-79), he tells us that the luxurious ways of his countrymen were fully matured. "Wealth, and not merit, had become the passport to the highest offices, the motives and hopes of all, therefore,

1 Pliny, p. 252. ii. 10.

See also the account of the miracle of Cana, John

? A measure of about six pints.

Pliny, p. 255.

WINE-MANUFACTURE IN ANCIENT ROME. 87

tending to the one great object, the acquisition of wealth. . . . . We may therefore conclude, by Hercules, that pleasure has now begun to live, and that life, so called, has ceased to be." What would Pliny have said, had he lived in our time?

To the state of Roman society in Pliny's day we shall return presently, but although this is not a technical treatise on intoxicating liquors, it is probable that some of our readers might desire to know something of the character of the wines to which reference has been made in the preceding observations, and we will therefore describe as concisely as circumstances admit the method of their manufacture, and will add one or two matters of interest bearing upon their use.

The manufacture of wine in Italy and Greece had been brought to great perfection about the commenceof the Christian era, and from that time to the fall of the Roman Empire its quality and varieties occupied the attention of some of the most learned critics and historians. Three distinct descriptions or qualities of wine were usually pressed from the same grapes. The first may be compared to "virgin honey," for it was merely the juice or "must" which flowed from the fruit through the simple pressure of the mass of grapes when they were put into the wine-press. It was called protrupum, and was reserved for the manufacture of a peculiarly fine description of wine. The second quality, mustum lixivium, was the product of the first pressure; and after the grapes had been completely pressed, the solid mass was taken out and once more submitted to

1 Pliny, p. 215.

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