The choicest of the Italian wines was _Caecuban_, from the poplar-trained vines grown amongst the swamps of Amyclae in Campania. It was a heady, generous wine, and required long keeping; so we find Horace speaking of it as ranged in the farthest cellar end, or "stored still in our grandsire's binns"(III, xxviii, 2, 3; I, xxxvii, 6); it was reserved for great banquets, kept carefully under lock and key: "your heir shall drain the Caecuban you hoarded under a hundred padlocks" (II, xiv, 25). It was beyond Horace's means, and only rich men could afford to drink it; we hear of it at Maecenas' table and on board his galley (I, xx, 9); and it appeared at the costly banquet of Nasidienus (page 27). With the Caecuban he couples the _Formian_ (I, xx, 11), and _Falernian_ (I, xx, 10), grown on the southern slopes of the hills dividing Campania from Latium. "In grassy nook your spirit cheer with old Falernian vintage," he says to his friend Dellius (II, iii, 6). He calls it fierce, rough, fiery; recommends mixing it with Chian wine, or with wine from Surrentum (Sat. II, iv, 55), or sweetening and diluting it with honey from Mount Hymettus (Sat. II, ii, 15). From the same district came the _Massic_ wine, also strong and fiery. "It breeds forgetfulness" (II, vii, 21), he says; advises that it should be softened by exposure to the open sky (Sat. II, iv, 51). He had a small supply of it, which he kept for a "happy day" (III, xxi, 6). The _Calenian_ wine, from Cales near Falernum, was of similar character. He classes it with Caecuban as being too costly for a poor man's purse (I, xx, 10): writing late in life to a friend, promises to find him some, but says that his visitor must bring in exchange an alabaster box of precious spikenard (IV, xii, 17). Next after these Campanian vintages came the _Alban_. He tells Phyllis that he will broach for her a cask of it nine years old (IV, xi, 1). It was offered, too, at Nasidienus' dinner as an alternative to Caecuban; and Horace praises the raisins made from its berries (Sat. II, iv, 72). Of the _Sabine_, poorest of Italian wines, we have spoken (page 23). The finest Greek wine was _Chian_, thick and luscious; he couples it in the Epode to Maecenas (IX, 34) with _Lesbian_ which he elsewhere (I, xvii, 21) calls "innocent" or mild. _Coan_ wine he mentions twice, commending its medicinal value (Sat. II, iv, 29; II, viii, 9). In justice to Horace and his friends, it is right to observe that connoisseurship in wine must not be confounded with inebriety. They drank to exhilarate, not to stupefy themselves, to make them what Mr. Bradwardine called _ebrioli_ not _ebrii_; and he repeatedly warns against excess. The vine was to him "a sacred tree," its god, Bacchus, a gentle, gracious deity (I, xviii, 1): 'Tis thine the drooping heart to heal, Thy strength uplifts the poor man's horn; Inspired by thee, the soldier's steel, The monarch's crown, he laughs to scorn. III, xxi, 17.