The growths of Lebanon,[XXVIII-11] of Helbon,[XXVIII-12] and of Sorec,[XXVIII-13] enjoyed an extraordinary reputation, and the delicious wine they produced was capable of inspiring the lyric David with that celebrated praise[XXVIII-14] by which intemperance has often dared to authorize reprehensible excesses. However, the Hebrews, a sober people, like all eastern nations, rarely made use of pure wine; they generally mixed it with a quantity of water, and only drank a little at some ceremonial feasts, and at the end of their repasts.[XXVIII-15] They sometimes mixed with it perfumes and odoriferous drugs.[XXVIII-16] Some nations seem to have had a great horror of wine. The Persians drank nothing but water;[XXVIII-17] and the inhabitants of Pontus, the Scythians, and the Cappadocians, partook of this strange taste.[XXVIII-18] The Arcadians, who lived on chesnuts and acorns, were not worthy of the favours of Bacchus; neither were the troglodytes, the ichthyophagists, and other swarms of hydropotes who were as yet too little civilized to ask of drunkenness its illusions and its enchantments.[XXVIII-19] The Egyptians would have thought it a profanation of their temples to carry in a flagon of the rosy liquid; but Psammetichus came (670 B.C.), and that wise prince made them understand that a pot of beer is not worth a cup of good wine.[XXVIII-20] The Romans asserted that their old king, Janus, planted the first vine in Italy,[XXVIII-21] and that, later, Numa taught them how to trim it.[XXVIII-22] That noble people knew how to appreciate such blessings, and in order to demonstrate that wisdom is always to be found in wine, they never failed to place on their altars the statue of Minerva beside that of Bacchus.[XXVIII-23] The inflexible muse of history has preserved to us the name of the individual who doomed himself to a sorry sort of immortality by inventing the custom of mixing water with wine; it was Cranaüs, King of Athens, 1532 B.C.[XXVIII-24] The gods, doubtless to punish him, caused a great part of Greece to be inundated, and it was not long before he was dethroned.[XXVIII-25] Pliny accuses the obscure Staphil, sou of Sithen,[XXVIII-26] of this depravation of taste, which gained upon imitators to such an extent that, in the time of Diodorus of Sicily (45 B.C.), the guests still mixed water with their wine at the end of the repast.[XXVIII-27] It is true that they were then all intoxicated.