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 βρύτος; 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—ἡγησάμενοι 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 resin 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 learned from the Scythians. The proportions of the mixture varied, but there was always more water, and half and half ἴσον ἴσῳ was repudiated as disgraceful. [Illustration] The process of wine-making was essentially the same among the Greeks and the Romans. The grapes were gathered, trodden, and submitted to the press. The juice which flowed from the grapes before any force was applied was known as πρόχυμα, and was reserved for the manufacture of a particular species of rich wine described by Pliny (_H. N._ xiv. II), to which the inhabitants of Mitylene gave the name of πρόδρομος. The Greeks recognised three colours in wines—black or red, white or straw-colour, and tawny brown (κιῤῥός, _fulvus_). When wine was carried, ἀσκοί, or bags of goat-skin, were used, pitched over to make them seam-tight. The cut above, from a bronze found at Herculaneum (_Mus. Borbon._ iii. 28) exhibits a Silenus astride one of them. The mode of drinking from the ἀμφορεύς, bottle or amphora, and from a wine skin, is taken from a painting on an Etruscan vase. [Illustration]