and aptly illustrative of the two good things of those countries, Corn and Wine, which, with the Olive and Honey, made an earthly Paradise for the inhabitants thereof. It shows how much they appreciated Wine, when they deified it.

As to the Hebrews, they were well acquainted with. wine, and placed Noah's beginning to be a husband

man, and planting a vineyard, as the earliest thing he did after the subsidence of the flood. Throughout their sacred writings, Wine is frequently mentioned, and intoxication must have been very well known among them, judging by the number of passages making mention of it. A great variety of wines is not named-nay, there are only two specifically mentioned:

the Wine of Helbon, which, as we have seen, was an article of merchandise at Damascus, a fat, luscious wine, as its name signifies; and the wine of Lebanon, which was celebrated for its bouquet. "The scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon " (Hos. xiv. 7). It is possible that this bouquet was natural, or it might have been artificial, for it was the custom to mix perfumes, spices, and aromatic herbs so as to enhance the flavour of the wine, as we see in Canticles viii. 2:

"I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate;" by which illustration we also see that the Hebrews made wines other than those from grapes.

That it was commonly in use is proved, if it needed proof, by the miracle at the marriage at Cana, where the worldly-wise ruler of the feast says, "Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now." That they drank water mixed with wine may be inferred by the

two verses (Prov. ix. 2, 5): "She hath mingled her wine"; "Drink of the wine that I have mingled.' Their wine used to be trodden in the press, the wine being put into bottles or wine skins, specially mentioned in Joshua ix. 4, 13. In later days they had vessels of earthenware and glass, similar to those in the illustration, which were found whilst excavating in Jerusalem.

That the ancient Jews knew of other intoxicating liquors, such as Palm and Date wines, there can be very little doubt.

J. A.

Homer's Wine of the Coast of Thrace-Pramnian Wine-Psithian, Capnian, Saprian, and other Wines-The Mixing of WinesUse of Pitch and Rosin-Undiluted Wine-Wine MakingSpiced Wines-A Greek Symposium.

HE only wine upon which Homer dilates, in a

ΤΗ

tone of approval approaching to hyperbole, is that produced on the coast of Thrace, the scene of several of the most remarkable exploits of Bacchus. This wine the minister of Apollo, Maron, gave to Ulysses. It was red and honey sweet, so strong that it was mingled with twenty times its bulk of water, so fragrant that it filled even when diluted the house with perfume (Od. ix. 203). Homer's Pramnian wine is variously interpreted by various writers.

1 Information on this subject is given by Sir Edward Barry, Observations on the Wines of the Ancients; Henderson, History of Ancient and Modern Wines; and Becker's Charicles.

The most important wines of later times are those of the islands Chios, Thasos, Cos, and Lesbos, and a few places on the opposite coast of Asia. The Aminean wine, so called from the vine which produced it, was of great durability. The Psithian was particularly suitable for passum, and the Capnian, or smoke-wine, was so named from the colour of the grapes. The Saprian was a remarkably rich wine, 'toothless," says Athenæus, "and sere and wondrous old."

Wine was the ordinary Greek drink. Diodorus Siculus says Dionysus invented a drink from barley, a mead-like drink called ẞpúTos; but there is nothing to show that this was ever introduced into Greece. The Greek wine was conducive to inebriety, and Musæus and Eumolpus (Plato, Rep. ii.) made the fairest reward of the virtuous an everlasting booze-ynσáμevo κάλλιστον ἀρετῆς μισθὸν μέθην αἰώνιον. Different sorts of wine were sometimes mixed together; sea water was added to some wines. Plutarch (Quæst. Nat. 10) also relates that the casks were smeared with pitch, and that rosin was mixed with their wine by the Eubœans.

Wine was mingled with hot water as well as with cold before drinking. To drink wine undiluted was looked on as a barbarism. Straining, usual among the Romans, seems to have been the reverse among the Greeks. It is seldom mentioned. The Roman wine was most likely filtered through wool. The Spartans (Herodotus, vi. 84) fancied Cleomenes had gone mad by drinking neat wine, a habit he had