When a libation to the gods you make, Let your wine worthy be, and ripe and old; Whose hoary locks droop o'er his purple lake, Such as in Lesbos' sea-girt isle is sold. Phœnicia doth a generous liquor bear, But still the Lesbian I would rather quaff; For though through age the former rich appear, You'll find its fragrance will with use go off. But Lesbian is the true ambrosial juice, And so the gods, whose home's Olympus, think it; And if some rather the Phœnician choose, Let them, as long as they don't make you drink it. The Thasian isle, too, noble wine doth grow, When passing years have made its flavour mellow, And other places too; still all I know Is that the Lesbian liquor has no fellow. I need not stop to tell you all the names Of towns which in the generous contest vie, Each for itself the vict'ry hotly claims; But still the Lesbian wine beats all, say I. 53. Ephippus, too, mentions the Phœnician wine, saying, "Nuts, pomegranates, dates, and other sweetmeats, and small casks of Phœnician wine." And again,-- A cask of good Phœnician wine was tapp'd. Xenophon, too, mentions it in his Anabasis. The Mendæan wine is mentioned by Cratinus:-- When a man tastes Mendæan wine, How rich, says he, how sweet, how fine! I wonder where it can be bought, or What's the right quantity of water. And Hermippus somewhere introduces Bacchus as mentioning several different kinds of wine:-- Mendæan wine such as the gods distil, And sweet Magnesian, cures for every ill, And Thasian, redolent of mild perfume; But of them all the most inviting bloom Mantles above old Homer's Chian glass; That wine doth all its rivals far surpass. There is a wine, which Saprian they call, Soon as the seals from whose rich hogshead fall, Violets and roses mix their lovely scent, And hyacinths, in one rich fragrance blent; You might believe Jove's nectar sparkled there, With such ambrosial odour reeks the air. This is the wine I'll to my friends disclose; The Peparethian trash may suit my foes. And Phanias the Eresian poet says that the Mendæans are in the habit of syringing the grapes with opening medicine, even while still on the vine; and that this makes the wine soft.