But along with the inevitable bread goes the inevitable _olive oil_. No latter-day article will exactly correspond to it. First of all it takes the place of butter as the proper condiment to prevent the bread from being tasteless.[*] It enters into every dish. The most versatile cook will be lost without it. Again, at the gymnasium we have seen its great importance to the athletes and bathers. It is therefore the Hellenic substitute for soap. Lastly, it fills the lamps which swing over every dining board. It takes the place of electricity, gas, or petroleum. No wonder Athens is proud of her olive trees. If she has to import her grain, she has a surplus for export of one of the three great essentials of Grecian life. [*] There was extremely little cow’s butter in Greece. Herodotus (iv. 2) found it necessary to explain the process of “cow-cheese-making” among the Scythians. The third inevitable article of diet is _wine_. No one has dreamed of questioning its vast desirability under almost all circumstances. Even drunkenness is not always improper. It may be highly fitting, as putting one in a “divine frenzy,” partaking of the nature of the gods. Musæus the semi-mythical poet is made out to teach that the reward of virtue will be something like perpetual intoxication in the next world. Æschines the orator will, ere long, taunt his opponent Demosthenes in public with being a “water drinker”; and Socrates on many occasions has given proof that he possessed a very hard head. Yet naturally the Athenian has too acute a sense of things fit and dignified, too noble a perception of the natural harmony, to commend drunkenness on any but rare occasions. Wine is rather valued as imparting a happy moderate glow, making the thoughts come faster, and the tongue more witty. Wine raises the spirits of youth, and makes old age forget its gray hairs. It chases away thoughts of the dread hereafter, when one will lose consciousness of the beautiful sun, and perhaps wander a “strengthless shade” through the dreary underworld. There is a song attributed to Anacreon, and nearly everybody in Athens approves the sentiment:— Thirsty earth drinks up the rain, Trees from earth drink that again; Ocean drinks the air, the sun Drinks the sea, and him, the moon. Any reason, canst thou think, I should thirst, while all these drink?[*] [*] Translation from Von Falke’s _Greece and Rome_.