“leptorragæ.”[1121] Some, again, will keep throughout the winter, if care is taken to hang them to the ceiling[1122] with a string; while others, again, will keep by virtue of their own natural freshness and vigour, if put into earthen jars, which are then enclosed in dolia,[1123] and covered up with the fermenting husks of grapes. Some grapes receive from the smoke of the blacksmith’s forge that remarkable flavour which it is also known to impart to wines: it was the high name of the Emperor Tiberius that brought into such great repute the grapes that had been smoked in the smithies of Africa. Before his time the highest rank at table was assigned to the grapes of Rhætia,[1124] and to those growing in the territory of Verona. Raisins of the sun have the name of “passi,” from having been submitted[1125] to the influence of the sun. It is not uncommon to preserve grapes in must, and so make them drunk with their own juices; while there are some that are all the sweeter for being placed in must after it has been boiled; others, again, are left to hang on the parent tree till a new crop has made its appearance, by which time they have become as clear and as transparent[1126] as glass. Astringent pitch, if poured upon the footstalk of the grape, will impart to it all that body and that firmness which, when placed in dolia or amphoræ, it gives to wine. More recently, too, there has been discovered a vine which produces a fruit that imparts to its wine a strong flavour of pitch: it is the famous grape that confers such celebrity on the territory of Vienne,[1127] and of which several varieties have recently enriched the territories of the Arverni, the Sequani, and the Helvii:[1128] it was unknown in the time of the poet Virgil, who has now been dead these ninety years.[1129] In addition to these particulars, need I make mention of the fact that the vine[1130] has been introduced into the camp and placed in the centurion’s hand for the preservation of the supreme authority and command? that this is the high reward which summons the lagging ranks to the eagles raised aloft,[1131] and that even in chastisement for faults it tends to reflect honour upon the punishment?[1132] It was the vineyard, too, that first afforded a notion,[1133] the practical utility of which has been experienced in many a siege. Among the medicinal preparations, too, the vine holds so high a place, that its very wines taken by themselves are efficacious as remedies for disease.[1134] CHAP. 4. (2.)—NINETY-ONE VARIETIES OF THE VINE.