silver, or bronze. A beautiful example of a bronze cup was found in Wiltshire, having the names of five Roman towns as an inscription, and richly decorated with scenes of the chase, from which it has been imagined that it belonged to a club or society of persons, probably hunters, and may have been one of their prizes: they also used cups made from the horns of animals. The wines were commonly drunk out of small glasses called "cyaths," which held just the twelfth of a pint. The chief beverage among the Greeks and Romans was the fermented juice of the grape; but the particular form of it is a matter of some uncertainty. The "vinum Albanum" was probably a kind of Frontignac, and of all wines was most esteemed by the Romans,--though Horace speaks in such glowing terms of Falernian, which was a strong and rough wine, and was not fit for drinking till it had been kept ten years; and even then it was customary to mix honey with it to soften it. Homer speaks of a famous wine of Maronea in Thrace, which would bear mixing with twenty times the quantity of water, although it was a common practice among the natives to drink it in its pure state. Salt water was commonly used by the Romans to dilute their wine, which they considered improved its flavour, having previously boiled it. This custom is said to have originated in the efforts of a slave to prevent detection, who, having robbed his master's wine-cask, filled it up with salt water. The Romans also mixed with their wine assafoetida, tar, myrrh, aloes, pepper, spikenard, poppies, worm-wood, cassia, milk, chalk, bitter almonds, and cypress; and they also exposed their wines to the action of smoke in a sort of kiln, which thickened and matured it. These mixed wines were taken in a peculiar kind of vessel called a "murrhine cup," which was said to impart a peculiar flavour to them; and though the substance of which these cups were made is not known, it is fair to surmise they were made of some aromatic wood similar to the "bitter cup" of the present day, which is made from the wood of quassia tree. The customary dilution among the Greeks appears to have consisted of one part of wine to three parts of water,--the word "nympha" being used in many classical passages for water, as for example in a Greek epigram the literal translation of which is, "He delights in mingling with three Nymphs, making himself the fourth;" this alludes to the custom of mixing three parts of water with one of wine. In Greece, the wines of Cyprus, Lesbos, and Chio were much esteemed; those of Lesbos are especially mentioned by Horace as being wholesome and agreeable, as in Ode 17, Book I.:-- "Hîc innocentis pocula Lesbii Duces sub umbra." "Beneath the shade you here may dine, And quaff the harmless Lesbian wine."