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DISTILLED AND FERMENTED LIQUORS.
Ancient'Wines.
Tradition places the origin of the art of manufac
turing wine at so remote a period that it is utterly
impossible for inquisitive moderns to establish the
credit among the ancients with any definite degree of
certainty.
The wise men and oral teachers,the priests, and
later the classical writers of antiquity,looking back
ward, even in their early time, down through the long
vista of years, attributed the introduction of this fasci
nating beverage to the gods,Osiris in Egypt,*Dionysu8
in Greece, and in Hebrew-speaking countries,to Noah.
But modern writers who have investigated the subject,
endeavoring to eliminate the fabulous from the real, or
at least the vague from the obvious,seem to unite on
»Here we do not refer to any of the real personages surnamed
Dionysius, but to Dionysus, the god of the vine, who went on expedi
tions to remote places, teaching the cultivation of the vine. There
were,it is claimed, five distinct gods "Dionysus," each having different
parentage. The worship of Dionysus spread so in Southern Italy, or
Magna Grmcia, whither it was transplanted by Greek colonists, that
Sophocles spoke of him as the god who ruled Italy.