The word _liqueur_ has been traced by Eichhoff to a Sanskrit root, viz., _laks_ or _lauc_, to see, appear. It is now commonly understood of a drink obtained by distillation, a beverage of which alcohol is the base. To the ancients liqueurs appear to have been unknown. The art of distillation on which they depend was not apparently discovered till the middle ages. Fermented wines, of which some description will be found in another part of this book, occupied their place at dinner and dessert. Old Falernian when mixed with honey probably bore some near resemblance to what is now understood by liqueur. But this drink was found to have such disastrous effects by way of intoxication that it was forbidden to women to drink of it. Our ancestors, perhaps in imitation of the ancients, composed a sort of liqueur with the must of wine, in which they had infused berries of the _lentiscus_, or a portion of its tender wood. The artificial wines made either with this _lentiscus_, or with other aromatic herbs, called by Gregory of Tours _vina odoramentis immixta_, were the only approaches to the modern liqueurs, even some time after the discovery of the process of distillation. Among these liqueur wines must be mentioned that species of cooked wine which was the result of a portion of must reduced to half or a third of its original bulk by boiling. The capitularies of Charlemagne speak of this drink as _vinum coctum_, and the southern provinces called it _Sabe_, from the Latin _sapa_, which with the Romans had the same signification. Both Galen and Hippocrates refer to a Greek composition called _Siræum_ or _Hepsema_, which, says Pliny, we call _sapa_. The fashion in which this wine was cooked is shown in the _Pitture antiche d’Ercolano_, t. I., tab. 35. Those artificial wines which consisted solely of infusions of aromatic or medicinal plants, such as absinthe, aloes, anise, rosemary, hyssop, and so on, were called _herb wines_, and were frequently employed as remedies and preventives. With a herb wine, the wine of a honied absinthe, it was that Fredegonda poisoned him who reproached her with the murder of the Pretextate. The most famous of these wines were those into which entered, besides honey, the spices and aromatic confections of Asia, to which were given the name of pigments. The highly spiced and “most odoriferous” wine sweetened with honey is one of those drinks which Cedric bids Oswald, in _Ivanhoe_,[69] to place upon the board for the refreshment of the Knight Templar. It is mentioned in company with the oldest wine, the best mead, the mightiest ale, the richest _morat_,[70] and the most sparkling cider.