effect was produced by mixing up hard inodorous wine with one which was oily and fragrant.1 The wines of Cos, Myndos, and Halicarnassos, being thought to temper the crudity of rain and well-water, were, therefore, like all others containing a quantity of salt-water, in great request at Athens and Sicyon, where the springs were harsh. The Mareotic wine 2 was made from vineyards on the banks of the lake Mareotis, where the present Pasha has his gardens, in the vicinity of Marea, once a place of considerable importance, but now a small village. Attempts, however, have been made by M. Abro, an Armenian, once more to cover the ancient sites with vineyards, several acres of ground being planted with cuttings imported from the great nursery grounds at Chambéry, in Savoy. The town of Marea derived its name, according to tradition, from Maron,3 a person who accompanied Bacchos in his military expedition, and, in honour of its founder, surrounded itself with the fruit-tree most agreeable to that god. The grapes here produced were delicious, and the wine, slightly astringent and aromatic, had an exquisite flavour. The Mareotic was white, of delicate taste, light, sparkling, and by no means heady. The best sort was the Tæniotic, so called from the tænia, "sandy eminences," on which the vineyards were situated. This wine, in its pure state, had a greenish tinge, like the Johanisberg, and was rich and unctuous; but, mingled with water, it assumed the colour of Attic honey. By degrees the vine grew to be cultivated along the whole course of the Nile, but its produce differed greatly in different places, both in colour and quality. Among the best was that of Antylla, a city near Alexandria, 1 Athen. i. 56.- Cydonia, in Crete, is conjectured, by Mr. Pashley, to have produced a good wine.-Travels in Crete, i. 23, seq. 2 Athen. i. 59. 3 Idem, i. 60. Horat. Carm. i. 37. 14. 4 The cultivation of the vine appears to have flourished in Egypt down to the reign of the Caliph Beamrillah, who commanded all the vineyards both in the valley of the Nile and in Syria to be utterly destroyed. Maured Allatafet Jemaleddini, p. 7. the revenues arising from which the ancient kings of Egypt, and afterwards those of Persia, settled on their queens for their girdle. The wines of the Thebaid, particularly those made about Koptos, were so extremely light as to be given even in fevers, as, moreover, they passed quickly, and greatly promoted digestion.1 66 2 According to Nicander of Colophon, the word oivos, wine," was derived from the name of Oineus, who having squeezed out the juice of the grape into vases, called it, after his own name, wine. Diphilos, the comic poet, gives us, however, something better than etymologies in that burst of Bacchic enthusiasm in which, in verses fragrant as Burgundy, he celebrates the praises of the gift of Dionysos : "Oh! friend to the wise, to the children of song, Take me with thee, thou wisest and sweetest, along; Nectar, the poetical drink of the gods, was a sort of wine made near Olympos in Lydia, by mingling with the juice of the grape a little pure honey and flowers of delicate fragrance. Anaxandrides, indeed, regards the nectar as the food of the immortals, and ambrosia as their wine; in which opinion he is upheld by Aleman and Sappho. But Homer and Ibycos take an opposite view of the matter.3 Alexis speaks of those who are half-seas-over as much addicted to reasoning. Nicænetus* considers wine as the Pegasus of a poet, mounted on the wings of which like Trygæos on his beetle he soars "to the bright heaven of invention." At the 1 Athen. i. 60. 2 Idem, ii. 1, where are collected many other etymologies and curious fables. 3 Athen. ii. 8. 4 Or Nicarchos. Anthol. Græc. xiii. 29. Athen. ii. 9. port of Munychia, too, good wine was held in high estimation; indeed, the honest folks of this borough, with small respect for the water nymphs, paid particular honour to the hero Acratopotes, that is, in plain English, "one who drinks unmixed wine." Even among the Spartans,' in spite of their cothons, and black broth, certain culinary artistes set up in the Phydition, or common dining-hall, statues in honour of the heroes Matton and Keraon, that is, the genii of eating and drinking. In Achaia, too, much reverence was paid to Deipneus, or the god who presides over good suppers. As the Greeks had a marvellous respect for wine they, like the German paper enthusiast, almost appeared to imagine it could be made out of a stone. They had, accordingly, fig wine,3 root wine, palm wine, and so on; and their made or mixed wines were without number. There was scarcely an island or city in the Mediterranean that did not export its wines to Athens: they had the Lesbian, the Euboean, the Peparethian, the Chalybonian, the Thasian, the Pramnian, and the Port wine. We have already observed, that wine was drunk mixed with flour, and in the island of There it was thickened with the yolk of an egg. In the Megaris they prepared with raisins or dried grapes a wine called passon, in taste resembling the Egosthenic sweet wine, or the Cretan malmsey. But, however exquisite the wines themselves, it was not thought enough in the summer months unless they were brought to table cooled with ice or snow, which was accordingly the practice. 1 Athen. ii. 9. 2 Athen. ii. 9. Cf. x. 9. 3 Damm.2224. ẞpúrov. Athen. x. 67. Plato de Rep. t. vi. p. 144. Xenoph. Anab. p. 54. 138. Cyrop. p. 522. Plin. Hist. Nat. xiii. 4. Diod. Sic. ii. 136. On the οἶνος συκίτης vid. Foés. (Εcon. Hip. in v. Dioscorid. v. 5 40. Lotus wine. Theoph. Hist, Plant. iv. 3. 1. Herod. iv. 177. Athen. vii. 9—13. 4 Plato de Repub. t. vi. p. 144. Bekk. Athen. viii. 1. On the Pramnian cf. Athen. 1, 17. 5 Athen. x. 41. 6 Athen. x. 56. 170 CHAPTER V. ENTERTAINMENTS. HAVING now gone rapidly through the materials of which Grecian repasts consisted, it will next be necessary to describe the manner in which all these good things were disposed of, first to maintain the energy of the frame, and secondly, for mere pleasure and pastime. Locke, with many other modern philosophers, erroneously supposes the Greeks of remote antiquity to have been so abstemious as to content themselves with one meal per diem. But experience appears to have led all mankind on this point to much the same conclusion; viz., that health and comfort require men to eat at least thrice in the day,' which accordingly was the practice of the ancient Greeks, though Philemon and others enumerate four repasts. Our own ancestors, before the introduction of tea and coffee, appear to have been very well content with beer or ale for their morning's meal, so that we could not pity the Greeks even though it should be found that they had nothing better than hot rolls, muffins, or crumpets, with strawberries, grapes, pears, and a flask of Chian or Falernian. But they soon found the necessity of some warm beverage; and though it does not appear how it was prepared, they had a substitute for tea, in use at Athens, in Eu 3 1 Eschyl. Palamed. fr. 168. Klausen. Comm. in Agamemnon. p. 136. 2 In modern times a breakfast in the Troad often consists of grapes, figs, white honey in 2 the comb, and coffee.-Chandler, i. p. 37. 3 Athen. xi. 26, 50. Pollux. ix. 67, sqq. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 643. Cf. Bockh. Pub. boa, in Crete, and, no doubt, in all other parts of Greece. This meal, of whatever it consisted, was called acratisma, or ariston, and eaten at break of day.' Homer's heroes, whose business was fighting, just snatched a hasty meal, and hurried to the field; but at Athens, where people had other employments, they breakfasted early, to allow themselves ample time for despatching their affairs in the city, if they had any, and afterwards at their neighbouring farms or villas. The second repast, deipnon, or dinner, seems to have been eaten about eleven or twelve o'clock: the hesperisma,3 equivalent to our tea, late in the afternoon, and the dorpon, or supper, the last thing in the evening. But of these meals two only were serious affairs, and the hesperisma was often dispensed with altogether. In fact, Athenæus, a great authority on this subject, considers it perfectly absurd to suppose, that the frugal ancients could have thought of eating so often as three times in one day.* As the greater includes the less, instead of confining ourselves to the ordinary daily dinner of a Greek, we shall in preference describe their grand entertainments, introducing remarks on the former by the way. These repasts were divided into three classes, the public dinner, the pic-nic, and the mar 1 Which we may infer from a passage of Aristotle, Hist. Anim. vi. 8. where describing the habits of birds, he says, τῶν δὲ φατῶν ἡ μὲν θήλεια ἀπὸ δείλης αρξαμένη τήν τε νύχθ ̓ ὅλην ἐπῳάζει καὶ ἕως ἀκρατίσματος ὥρας, 8 8 ἄῤῥην τὸ λοιπὸν τοῦ χρόνου.— One of the Homeric scholiasts is more explicit :καὶ τὴν μὲν πρώτην ἐκάλουν ἄριστον, ἣν ἐλάμβανον πρωΐας σχεδὸν ἔτι σκοτίας ovone. In Iliad 6. 381. Cf. Athen. i. 19. 2 Xenoph. Econ. xi. 14. 3 Philemon, ap. Athen. i. 19. Suid. v. dεinvov t. i. p. 671. a. b. 4 Deipnosoph v. 20.—7ρioì dè οὐδέποτε οὔτε μνηστῆρες οὔτε μὴν κύκλωψ ἐχρῶντο τροφαῖς. Schol. II. B. 381. Yet Athenæus i. 19. speaks in one place of a fourth repast in Homeric times.-rc de τετάρτης τροφῆς οὕτως Όμηρος μέμνηται σὺ δ ̓ ἔρχεσ δειλιήσας.” ὃ καλοῦσί τινες δειλινὸν, ὁ ἐστι μεταξὺ τοῦ ὑφ ̓ ἡμῶν λεγομένου αρίστου καὶ δείπνου. |