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DRINKS.
it
has
endeared
to
some
of
our
own
caviare
and
putrescent
game.
«
To
drink
wine
unmixed
was,
it
has
been
said
before,
held
by
the
Greeks
to
be
disreputable.
Those
who
did
so
were
said
to
be
like
Scythians.
The
Maronean
wine
of
Homer
was
mixed
with
twenty
measures
of
water.
The common
proportion
in
the
more
polished
days
of
Greece
was
three
or
four
parts
of
water
to
one
of
wine.
But
probably
Greece,
like
Rome,
had
many
a
Menenius
who
loved
a
cup
of
hot
wine
with
not
a
drop
of
allaying
Tiber
in
it.
If
the condition
of
Alcibiades
in
the
Platonic
symposium
was
the
result
of
wine
so
diluted,
the
wine
must
have
been
strong
indeed.
The
Grecian
and
Roman
banquet
began
with
the
mulsum,
of
mingled
wine
and
honey.
The
dessert
wines
among
the
Greeks were
the
Thasian
and
Lesbian
;
among
the
Romans
the
Alban,
Csecuban,
and
Falernian,
and
afterwards
the
Chian
and
Lesbian.
In
the
triumphal
supper
of
Caesar
in
his
dictatorship
Pliny
says
Falernian
flowed
in
hogsheads
and
Chian
in
gallons.
At
the
well-known
Horatlan
supper
of
Nasidienus
the
Caecuban
and
indifferent
Chian
were
handed
round
before
the
host
advised
Maecenas
that
Alban
and
Falernian
were
procurable
if
he
preferred
them.
Juvenal
and
Martial
tell
us
of
the
complaint
of
clients,
that
while
the
master
and
his
friends
drank
the
best
wine
out
of
costly
cups,
they
themselves
had
to
put
up
with
ropy
liquors
in
coarse,
half-broken
vessels.
Human
nature
has
changed
little
in this
respect
since
those
satirists
wTOte.