cellars of wine! Indeed, there is no one thing, the value of which more sensibly increases up to the twentieth year, or which decreases with greater rapidity after that period, supposing that the value of it is not by that time greatly enhanced.[1244] Very rarely, indeed, up to the present day, has it been known for a single[1245] piece of wine to cost a thousand sesterces, except, indeed, when such a sum may have been paid in a fit of extravagance and debauchery. The people of Vienne, it is said, are the only ones who have set a higher price than this upon their “picata,” wines, the various kinds of which we have already mentioned;[1246] and this, it is thought, they only do, vying with each other, and influenced by a sort of national self-esteem. This wine, drunk in a cool state, is generally thought to be of a colder[1247] temperature than any other. CHAP. 7. (5.)—THE NATURE OF WINES. It is the property of wine, when drunk, to cause a feeling of warmth in the interior of the viscera, and, when poured upon the exterior of the body, to be cool and refreshing. It will not be foreign to my purpose on the present occasion to state the advice which Androcydes, a man famous for his wisdom, wrote to Alexander the Great, with the view of putting a check on his intemperance: “When you are about to drink wine, O king!” said he, “remember that you are about to drink the blood of the earth: hemlock is a poison to man, wine a poison[1248] to hemlock.” And if Alexander had only followed this advice, he certainly would not have had to answer for slaying his friends[1249] in his drunken fits. In fact, we may feel ourselves quite justified in saying that there is nothing more useful than wine for strengthening the body, while, at the same time, there is nothing more pernicious as a luxury, if we are not on our guard against excess. CHAP. 8. (6.)—FIFTY KINDS OF GENEROUS WINES. Who can entertain a doubt that some kinds of wine are more agreeable to the palate than others, or that even out of the very same vat[1250] there are occasionally produced wines that are by no means of equal goodness, the one being much superior to the other, whether it is that it is owing to the cask,[1251] or to some other fortuitous circumstance? Let each person, therefore, constitute himself his own judge as to which kind it is that occupies the pre-eminence. Livia[1252] Augusta, who lived to her eighty-second year,[1253] attributed her longevity to the wine of Pucinum,[1254] as she never drank any other. This wine is grown near a bay of the Adriatic, not far from Mount Timavus, upon a piece of elevated rocky ground, where the sea-breeze ripens a few grapes, the produce of which supplies a few amphoræ: there is not a wine that is deemed superior to this for medicinal purposes. I am strongly of opinion that this is the same wine, the produce of the Adriatic Gulf, upon which the Greeks have bestowed such wonderful encomiums, under the name of Prætetianum.