15. Did the Ancients Use and Call Them Wine?
Did the Ancients Use and Call Them Wine? In all the extracts we have made in the preceding pages, the writers call the grape-juice wine, whether boiled or filtered, or subsided or fumigated. It may be well again to refer to a few cases.
Pliny says the “Roman wines were as thick as honey,” also that the “Albanian wine was very sweet or luscious, and that it took the third rank among all the wines.” He also tells of a Spanish wine in his day, called “inerticulum”—that is, would not intoxicate—from “iners,” inert, without force or spirit, more properly termed “justicus sobriani,” sober wine, which would not inebriate—Anti-Bacchus, p. 221.
According to Plautus, b.c. 200, even mustum signified both wine and sweet wine—Nott, London Ed. p. 78.
Nicander says: “And Aeneus, having squeezed the juice into hollow cups, called it wine (oinon)”—Nott, p. 78. “The Greeks as well as the Hebrews called the fresh juice wine”—Nott, London Ed. p. 78.
Columella says the Greeks called this unintoxicating wine “Amethyston,” from Alpha, negative, and methusis, intoxicate—that is, a wine which would not intoxicate. He adds that it was a good wine, harmless, and called “iners,” because it would not affect the nerves, but at the same time it was not deficient in flavor—Anti-Bacchus, p. 221.
Aristotle says of sweet wine, glukus, that it would not intoxicate. And that the wine of Arcadia was so thick that it was necessary to scrape it from the skin bottles in which it was contained, and dissolve the scrapings in water—Nott, London Ed. p. 80.
Homer (Odyssey, book ix.) tells us that Ulysses took in his boat “a goat-skin of sweet black wine, a divine drink, which Marion, the priest of Apollo, had given him—it was sweet as honey—it was imperishable, or would keep for ever; that when it was drunk, it was diluted with twenty parts water, and that from it a sweet and divine odor exhaled”—Nott, London Ed. p. 55.
Horace, liber i. ode xviii. line 21, thus wrote:
“Hic innocentis pocula Lesbii
Duces sub umbra.”
Professor Christopher Smart, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, England, more than a hundred years since, when there was no controversy about fermented or unfermented wines, thus translated this passage: “Here shall you quaff, under a shade, cups of unintoxicating wine.”
Again, we read in Horace, liber iii. ode viii. line 9:
“Hic dies, anno redeunte, festus,
Corticem adstrictum pice divomebit
Amphorae fumum bibere institutae
Consule Tullo.
“Sume, Maecenas, cyathos amici
Sospitis centum; et vigiles lucernas
Perfor in lucem: procul omnis esto
Clamor et ira.”
I take again the translation of Professor Smart: “This day, sacred in the revolving year, shall remove the cork fastened with pitch from that jar which was set to fumigate in the consulship of Tullus. Take, my Maecenas, an hundred glasses, on account of the safety of your friend, and continue the wakeful lamps even to daylight: all clamor and passion be far away.” This Horace calls wine—it was fumigated—the amphora was corked and fastened with pitch, and that an hundred glasses might be drunk without clamor or passion. The Delphin Notes to Horace state, “The ancients filtered their wines repeatedly, before they could have fermented.”
Athenaeus says: “The sweet wine (glukus), which among the Sicilians is called Pollian, may be the same as the Biblinos oinos.” “Sweet kinds of wines (oinos) do not make the head heavy,” as Hippocrates says. His words are, “Glukus is less calculated than other wine (oinodeos) to make the head heavy, and it takes less hold of the mind.” He speaks of the mild Chian and the sweet Bibline, and Plautus of the toothless Thanium and Coan, all of which are comprehended under oinos, wine—Nott, London Ed. p. 80.
Professor M. Stuart, on pages 44 and 45 of his Letter toDr. Nott, published 1848, mentions that some forty years ago Judge Swift told him that, when the Hon. O. Elsworth, the first Chief-Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was on his way to France as ambassador, accompanied by Judge Swift, of Connecticut, as secretary, they were shipwrecked and cast upon the coast of Spain. On their way to Paris, among the mountains of Spain, a wine was strongly urged upon them which would not intoxicate. Judge Swift first made the experiment on himself. He found that it did not produce any tendency of the kind. The Chief-Justice and himself used to drink a bottle each with their dinner, and a small bottle at night. It was found to be a precious balm to the ambassador, who had become fearfully exhausted by continued sea-sickness.
Judge Swift, continues the Professor, assured me that “he never, before or since, tasted of anything that would bear comparison with the delicacy and exquisite flavor and refreshing effect of this wine, when taken with due preparation of cooling and mixing with water. He expressed his confident belief that a gallon of it drunk at a time, if a man could swallow down so much, would not affect his head in the least degree.”
Polybius states that “among the Romans the women were allowed to drink a wine which is called passum, made from raisins, which drink very much resembled Aegosthenian and Cretangleukos (sweet wine), and which men use for the purpose of allaying excessive thirst”—Nott, London Ed. p. 80.
Henderson, in his History of Wines, p. 44, commenting on the boiled wine of the Roman women referred to by Virgil (Georg. i. 293), truly says, “The use of this inspissated juice became general.” Rev. W.H. Rule, in his Brief Enquiry, confesses that it was the protropos or prodromos oinos of the Greeks”—Nott, London Ed., Lees’ Appendix, p. 221.
Smith’s Greek and Roman Antiquities says: “That which flowed from the clusters, in consequence of their pressure upon each other, to which the inhabitants of Mytelene gave the name of protropos.” The prohibition of intoxicating wines to women was enforced by the severest penalties. “Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and others have noticed the hereditary transmission of intemperate propensities, and the legislation that imposed abstinence upon women had unquestionably in view the greater vigor of the offspring—the ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ (healthy minds in a healthy body)”—Bible Commentary, p. 72.
“Modern medical enquiries have made clear the fact, surmised by some ancient philosophers, of the powerful influence of maternal regimen on the uterine condition and future health of children.” “That indulgence in the use of strong drink by expectant mothers would be injurious to their offspring was known to the learned and wise among the ancients”—Bible Commentary, p. 72.
Matthew Henry, in the case of Samson, remarks, “Women with child ought conscientiously to avoid whatever they have reason to think will be in any way prejudicial to the health or good condition of the fruit of their body. And perhaps Samson’s mother was to refrain from wine and strong drink, not only because he was designed for a Nazarite, but because he was designed for a man of strength, which his mother’s temperance would contribute to.” That old Roman prohibitory law, which forbade intoxicating wine while it allowed the pure juice, was founded in common sense and benevolence. It is to be regretted that they were not as wise and merciful towards themselves as they were towards their wives and the health and strength of their offspring.
Dr. Laurie, who holds that “it is the nature of wine to be fermented,” and “that fermentation is essential to its becoming wine,” still admits that there are “traces of unfermented wine in classical authors,” and that it “is known in history;” which he thus strangely qualifies—known in history “only as one of the unnatural and rare luxuries of the most corrupt period of the Roman Empire.” Queer logic this, that unintoxicating wine should indicate the most corrupt period of the Roman Empire! Human nature must have greatly changed, for now the course of history is rum, rags, ruin. And experience teaches that the use of intoxicating drinks is associated with desecrated Sabbaths, loose views of morality and religion, and the increase of pauperism, crime, and taxation. The Rev. W.H. Rule, already named, says: “This very grape-juice, notwithstanding its purity, was chiefly known in antiquity as the casual drink of the peasantry, or, when carefully preserved, as the choice beverage of epicures. It was sweet to the taste, and had not acquired the asperity consequent on the abstraction (conversion) of saccharine matter by fermentation”—Nott, London Ed., Appendix C, p. 222.
Smith, in his Greek and Roman Antiquities, says: “The sweet, unfermented juice of the grape was termed gleukos by the Greeks and mustum by the Romans—the latter word being properly an adjective signifying new or fresh.” “A portion of the must was used at once, being drunk fresh.” “When it was desired to preserve a quantity in the sweet state, an amphora was taken and coated with pitch within and without, it was filled with mustum lixivium, and corked so as to be perfectly air-tight. It was then immersed in a tank of cold fresh water, or buried in wet sand, and allowed to remain for six weeks or two months. The contents, after this process, was found to remain unchanged for a year, and hence the name, aeigleukos—that is, ‘semper mustum,’ always sweet.”
Chas. Anthon, LL.D., in his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, gives the same recipe and definitions, and fully sustains the position that these preparations of the unfermented grape-juice were by the ancients known as wine.
We have a great variety of ancient recipes for making different kinds of wine. Some of them, as we have seen, were not fermented, and therefore not intoxicating. Others were intoxicating. The recipes mentioned the different articles out of which wines were made, such as millet, dates, lotus-tree, figs, beans, pears, pomegranates, myrtle, hellebore, etc. Foreign ingredients were formerly added to wines to make them intoxicating. These wines were not approved, and towards these not temperance but total abstinence was enjoined. Various drugs are specified by which the juice was made more potent, as wormwood, hellebore. We learn from Homer that Helen prepared for Telemachus a cup in which a powerful drug was infused. Also, that Circe made use of “direful drugs.” Such preparations were common in the East. The Orientals of the present day have a knowledge of drugs which they combine with beverages for profligate purposes. We read in Isaiah 5:22 of “men of strength to mingle strong drink.” The juice of the grape was “mixed with pungent and heady drugs in order to gratify a base and insatiable appetite.” Particularly, in Lamentations 3:15 of Jeremiah we read, “He hath made me drunk with wormwood.” J.G. Koht, in his Travels in Austria, mentions a wine of wormwood. To make it, the juice is boiled with certain herbs. This wine decoction is as renowned in Hungary as the Tokay Essence—Bible Commentary, p. 203. The divine anger is symbolized by the cup which is “full of mixture;” Psalms 75:8; “cup of his fury,” Isaiah 51:17; “wine-cup of his fury,” Jeremiah 25:15.
We cannot imagine that Pliny, Columella, Varro, Cato, and others were either cooks or writers of cook-books, but were intelligent gentlemen moving in the best circles of society. So when they, with minute care, give the recipes for making sweet wine, which will remain so during the year, and the processes were such as to prevent fermentation, we are persuaded that these were esteemed in their day. That they were so natural and so simple as to like these sweet, harmless beverages is rather in their favor, and not to be set down against them. That there were men in their day, as there are many in ours, who loved and used intoxicating drinks, is a fact which marked their degradation.