As to defrutum and sapa, it is recommended to commence boiling them when there is no moon to be seen, or, in other words, at the conjunction of that planet, and at no other time. Leaden[1544] vessels should be used for this purpose, and not copper[1545] ones, and walnuts are generally thrown into them, from a notion that they absorb[1546] the smoke. In Campania they expose the very finest wines in casks in the open air, it being the opinion that it tends to improve the wine if it is exposed to the action of the sun and moon, the rain and the winds. CHAP. 28. (22.)—DRUNKENNESS. If any one will take the trouble duly to consider the matter, he will find that upon no one subject is the industry of man kept more constantly on the alert than upon the making of wine; as if Nature had not given us water as a beverage, the one, in fact, of which all other animals make use. We, on the other hand, even go so far as to make our very beasts of burden drink[1547] wine: so vast are our efforts, so vast our labours, and so boundless the cost which we thus lavish upon a liquid which deprives man of his reason and drives him to frenzy and to the commission of a thousand crimes! So great, however, are its attractions, that a great part of mankind are of opinion that there is nothing else in life worth living for. Nay, what is even more than this, that we may be enabled to swallow all the more, we have adopted the plan of diminishing its strength by pressing it through[1548] filters of cloth, and have devised numerous inventions whereby to create an artificial thirst. To promote drinking, we find that even poisonous mixtures have been invented, and some men are known to take a dose of hemlock before they begin to drink, that they may have the fear of death before them to make them take their wine:[1549] others, again, take powdered pumice[1550] for the same purpose, and various other mixtures, which I should feel quite ashamed any further to enlarge upon.