Even at that early period, therefore, we know that, however scarce intoxicating liquor may have been, it was already employed in a variety of ways. That it was used in religious ceremonies; as a medicine; as an article of diet, openly by men and secretly by women; and, if we were to follow closely the course of Roman history, we should find that for those purposes, and as a luxury, its consumption must have been always on the increase. Our space will not, however, allow us to do more than refer to a few illustrative cases, extracted from the pages of Pliny and other Roman writers, in order to show how drinking increased, and the extent to which it prevailed at a later period. We have seen that on one occasion a Roman general offered as a rare gift to the gods a small cup of wine. That was about the beginning of the fourth century B.C. (333-272). About a hundred years later, Cato, another Roman general, who did his utmost to discountenance the growing luxury of his time, whilst on an expedition to Spain from which he afterwards returned in triumph, would drink no other wine than such as was served out to his rowers, “very different indeed,” says the historian, “to the conduct of those who are in the habit of giving to their guests even inferior wine to that which they drink themselves, or else contrive to substitute inferior in the course of their repast.”[156] Still another century later, M. Varro, the historian (born 116 B.C.), makes the following statement concerning the wines which were held in high esteem in his day:—“L. Lucullus, when a boy, never saw an entertainment at his father’s house, however sumptuous it might be, at which Greek wine was handed round more than once during the repast, whereas he himself, when he returned from Asia, distributed as a largess among the people more than a hundred thousand congiaria[157] of the same wine. C. Sentius, the prætor, used to say that Chian wine never entered his house unless his physician prescribed it to him for the cardiac disease; but, on the other hand, Hortensius (50 B.C.) left 10,000 casks of it to his heir.” About the same period, Pliny tells us[158] that Cæsar at a banquet given during his third consulship (B.C. 46), gave Falernian, Chian, Lesbian, and Mamertine wines; “indeed, it is generally agreed that this was the first occasion on which four different kinds of wine were served at table. It was after this that all the other sorts came into such very high repute, somewhere about the year of the city 700.” And speaking of his own time (A.D. 23-79), he tells us that the luxurious ways of his countrymen were fully matured. “Wealth, and not merit, had become the passport to the highest offices, the motives and hopes of all, therefore, tending to the one great object, the acquisition of wealth.... We may therefore conclude, by Hercules, that pleasure has now begun to live, and that life, so called, has ceased to be.”[159] What would Pliny have said, had he lived in our time?