Footnote 1577: Geop. ii. 14. Footnote 1578: Theoph. De Lapid. § 49. Schneid. Cf. Sir John Hill, notes, p. 200. It was likewise obtained from Seleucia Pieria in Syria. Strab. vii. 5. t. ii. p. 106. Footnote 1579: Geop. iv. 10. ----- While the grapes were growing, the ancients, following in the track of nature, supposed them to need shade, since the leaves at that time put forth most abundantly, to screen the young fruit from the scorching sun; but when they began to don their gold or purple hues, observing the foliage shrivel and shrink from about them, in order to admit the warm rays to penetrate and pervade the fruit they then stripped the branches and hastened the vintage,[1580] plucking moreover the clusters as they ripened, lest they should drop off and be lost. But this partial gathering of the grapes could only take place in their gardens, or where the vine was trained about the house; for in the regular vineyards the season of the vintage was regulated by law,[1581] as in Burgundy and the south of France, in order to protect the public against the pernicious frauds which would otherwise be practised. This, in Attica, usually coincided with the heliacal rising of the constellation Arcturus.[1582] ----- Footnote 1580: Xenoph. Œcon. xix. 9. Footnote 1581: Plat. De Legg. t. viii. 106. Geop. v. 45. Footnote 1582: Cf. Geop. i. 9. 9. ----- When the magistrate had declared that the season of the vintage[1583] was come, the servants of Bacchos hurried forth to the vine-clad hills, converting their labours into a pretext for superabundant mirth and revelry. The troops of vintagers, composed of youths and maidens, with crowns of ivy on their heads, and accompanied by rural performers on the flute or phorminx, moved forward with shout, and dance, and song, to the sacred enclosures of Dionysos, surrounded with plaited hedgerows, and blue streamlets.[1584] Here, where “——the showering grapes In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth Purple and gushing,” they at once commenced their joyous task. With sharp pruning-hooks[1585] they separated the luxuriant clusters, gold or purple, from the vine, and piling them in plaited baskets of osier or reed, bore them on their shoulders to the wine-press. In this operation, as I have said, both men and women joined; but the press was trodden by men only,[1586] who, half intoxicated by pleasure,[1587] and the fumes of the young wine, chanted loudly their ancient national lays in praise of Bacchos. ----- Footnote 1583: Cf. Plut. Thes. § 22. Footnote 1584: Il. σ. 561, sqq. Footnote 1585: Scut. Heracl. 291, seq. On the modern modes of gathering the grapes, see Redding Hist. of Modern Wines, chap. ii. 26, et seq. Footnote 1586: