The earliest mention made anywhere of wine in Italy is probably that found in the writings of Varro, the historian, who says that Mezentius, king of Etruria (contemporary with Æneas of Troy), succoured the Rutuli against the Latini on condition that he should receive as compensation all the wine that was in Latium. But although many other writers have left us information on the subject, it is to Pliny the Elder that we owe most of the interesting particulars concerning drink and drinking customs in Rome.[153] From his pages we learn that wine was well known to the people of that city from its very foundation[154] (about 650 B.C.); for an anecdote is related that the wife of Egnatius Mecenius was slain by her husband with a stick because she had drunk wine from a vat (women being at that time forbidden to drink wine in Rome), and that he was absolved from the murder by Romulus. The interdiction of wine to women was in force at a much later period; for Fabius Pictor,[155] in his book of “Annals,” states that a certain lady, for having opened a purse in which the keys of the wine-cellar were kept, was starved to death by her family; and Cato tells us that it was the usage of the men to give their female relatives a kiss in order to ascertain whether they smelt of _temetum_, for it was by that name that wine was known; “whence,” says Pliny, “our word _temulentia_, signifying drunkenness.” Another case is quoted, which shows that wine was subsequently allowed to women as a medicine or a tonic. Cn. Domitius, a judge, gave it as his opinion that a certain woman appeared to him to have drunk more wine than was requisite for her health, and without her husband’s knowledge, for which reason he condemned her to lose her dowry. Later on, however, men and women caroused together freely. But we must return to the earliest period of Roman history. Wine appears then to have been very scarce, for King Numa promulgated a decree known as the Posthumian law, which contained the injunction, “Sprinkle not the funeral pyre with wine;” and the same edict forbade the employment of wine as a libation to the gods which was the product of an unpruned vine. For it appears that the vines were attached to high trees, which the husbandman was obliged to climb in order to prune them, and as many accidents, sometimes fatal ones, resulted from this custom, vines were neglected, and their produce diminished in consequence. But there are many other proofs of the scarcity of wine in the earlier days of Rome. Thus L. Papirius, a general, who on one occasion commanded against the Samnites, when about to engage, vowed an offering to Jupiter of a small cup of wine if he should gain the victory; and for a considerable time milk is often mentioned amongst offerings to the gods, but never wine.