Juvenal and Martial tell us of the complaint of clients, that while the master and his friends drank the best wine out of costly cups, they themselves had to put up with ropy liquors in coarse, half-broken vessels. Human nature has changed little in this respect since those satirists wrote. The old fashion of dedicating cups to divinities led perhaps to our modern system of drinking healths. Sometimes as many cups were drunk to a person as there were letters in the name of the person so honoured. It was better then for the bibulous to toast the ancient Sempronia or Messalina than the modern Meg or Kate. _Hydromeli_, made of honey and five-year-old rain-water; _oxymeli_, made of honey, sea-salt, and vinegar; _hydromelon_, made of honey and quinces; _hydrorosatum_, a similar compound with the addition of roses; _apomeli_, water in which honeycomb had been boiled; _omphacomeli_, a mixture of honey and verjuice; _myrtites_, a compound of honey and myrtle seed; _rhoites_, a drink in which the pomegranate took the place of the myrtle; _œnanthinum_, made from the fruit of the wild vine; _silatum_, taken, according to Festus, in the forenoon, and made of _Saxifragia major_ (Forcellini) or _Tordylium officinale_ (Liddell and Scott); _sycites_, wine of figs; _phœnicites_, wine of palms; _abrotonites_, wine of wormwood; and _adynamon_, a weak wine for the sick—are most of them mentioned as drinks in Pliny.[7] This author also mentions drinks made of sorbs, medlars, mulberries, and other fruits, of asparagus, origanum, thyme, and other herbs. Hippocrates praises wine as a medical agent. In his third book the father of medicine gives a description of the general qualities and virtues of wines, and shows for what diseases they are in his opinion advantageous. For more information on wines the reader may consult Sir Edward Barry, Dr. Alexander Henderson, and Cyrus Redding. Henderson, who was, like Barry, a physician, did not always agree with him. Barry’s observations, according to Henderson, are chiefly borrowed from Bacci. Those not so borrowed are for the most part “flimsy and tedious.” The vessels and other drinking cups were commonly ranged on an abacus of marble, something like our sideboard. It was large, if Philo Judeus is to be believed. Pliny, speaking of Pompey’s spoils in the matter of the pirates, says the number of jewel-adorned drinking cups was enough to furnish nine _abaci_. Cicero charges Verres with having plundered the _abaci_. When Rome was in the height of her luxury, murrhine cups were introduced from the East. What this substance was, the ruins of Pompeii have never revealed; some maintain it was porcelain, others think it was a species of spar.