*

liquor principally used; he describes the clergy as feasting on the sacrifices and quaffing the sacred wine; and relates that in the time of Cambyses, 529 years before the Christian era, the Syrians were well skilled in the manufacture of palm wine; and that among the presents sent by that monarch to the Ethiopians was a vessel full of that liquor. The same writer informs us, that the Lotophagi, a people of Africa, who chiefly subsisted on the produce of the lotos plant, made a species of wine from its berries. According to Scylax, the geographer, who flourished before Christ 522 years, the lotos served these people both for meat and drink, and from that circumstance they derived their name. Strabo says, they were not sensible of the want of water in the burning and sandy region they inhabited, as the root, stalks, &c. of the lotos, supplied them with rich liquor, as well as delicious food. Ulysses and his companions are said to have been enchanted with it, as it made those who eat of it forget their country and relations.

——— we touched, by various errors toss'd,
The land of Lotos, and the flowery coast.
We climb'd the beach, and springs of water found,
Then spread our hasty banquet on the ground.
Three men were sent, deputed from the crew,
(An herald one) the dubious coast to view,
And learn what habitants possessed the place.
They went and found a hospitable race,
Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest,
They eat, they drink, and nature gives the feast;
The trees around them all their food produce,
Lotos the name, divine, nectareous juice!
(Thence called lotophagi) which whoso tastes
Insatiate riots in the sweet repasts,

Nor other home, nor other care intends,

But quits his house, his country and his friends.†

Of the lotos there are various species; that, referred to by Herodotus, is said to be the Egyptian lotos, a sort of lily, growing on the banks of the Nile. The inhabitants make bread of the seed, and eat the root, which has much the size and appearance of an apple or potato. Savary saw the people, who live on the borders of the Menzel lake, feed on it. Another description of the lotos is highly esteemed in China, where it is called Lien-hoa; it anciently formed a portion of the materials used in making the liquor of immortality, a drink mentioned in a subsequent part of this

* Herodotus, book ii. s. 77.

↑ Vide Odyssey, 1. ix. v. 95.

work. As it is uncertain from what species of the lotos, wine was made, it is probable that it was from the lotos or Nebek tree, mentioned by Burckhardt, which he found in great plenty in Arabia.* This fruit ripens in March, when it becomes a prime article of food, nutritive in the highest degree, and capable of being made into wine, or distilled into a strong liquor.

Xenophon relates, in his history of the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, after the battle of Cunaxa, that in that part of Armenia next to Curdistan, the inhabitants had a method of preparing a potent liquor from what appears to have been barley. "The soil," says he, "is good for arable and pasture, and the produce abundant; yet the people inhabit caves with their cattle, poultry, &c.-they fill open vessels with barley and water up to the brim." The time for the fermentation and other parts of the process is not told, but the liquor is described as very strong, if not mixed with water, and pleasant to those who are accustomed to it. Beside the vessels in which it was kept, lay hollow canes or reeds of various sizes, through which the people drank by suction; but, in token of hospitality, they allowed their Grecian guests to drink out of the vessels, "after the manner of oxen." Notwithstanding this drink made from grain, there was abundance of palm wine, as well as vinegar, found by the Greeks in the villages, during this memorable retreat; and so numerous were the palm trees, that they were cut down to construct bridges over the canals and ditches which they had to pass; probably the liquor made from barley was the same as that called zythem, made in some of the provinces of Asia Minor, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus upwards of 800 years afterwards. Dioscorides, as also Galen, describes the ale of their time as affecting the nervous system powerfully, and the head in particular, with very painful effect, so that it has been conjectured that the ale alluded to, was not only the produce of bad fermentation, but unpreserved by any antiseptic aroma like the hop.

The invention of these beverages is attributed to Isis, or to Osiris, who are said to have reigned jointly in Egypt, and are deified in ancient mythology. Some writers maintain that Osiris is the same as Misraim, the son of Cham, to whom the invention of ale is solely ascribable; but to whom these luxuries owe their origin, it would now be impossible to determine. The Egyptians and Hebrews, as we find from Moses, who was versed in all their learning,§ understood

Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 252.

† Xen. Anab. P.

332.

Ibid. b. II.

§ Acts vii. 22.

the art of dyeing, smelting, and working in metals, architecture, sculpture, and engraving on precious stones, besides the preservation of the dead by antiseptic substances. These, with many other inventions, were communicated to the Egyptians by the Hebrews long before they were known in Greece. Though the making of glass of various colours may be added, as a discovery known to the Egyptians, from a very remote antiquity, as well as the art of rendering gold potable, as appears from Exodus xxxii. 20; yet we no where read that they ever attained a higher knowledge in the secrets of chemistry.

In the practice of the medical art, the most ancient physicians appear ignorant of the mode of extracting any of the essential oils by steam or vapours. Hippocrates, justly called the father of physic, who flourished between the 80th and 88th Olympiad, or about 400 years before Christ, is the oldest author, whose writings, expressly on the medical art, are preserved; and in the whole of his works, there is not a single expression which could warrant the idea of a retort or alembic, having ever been used by him.

Some have maintained, from a passage in the Gospel of St. Matthew vi. 30, that the use of the still was partially known in our Lord's time, as they intimate that he alluded to the distillation of herbs for medicinal purposes, when he used the word nλßavov, (klibanon) where he said, speaking of the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, "eis ton klibanon," "into the oven"-" into the still," according to others. But, as there does not appear a vestige of evidence in any ancient author, or writer on the Scriptures, that the art of distillation was then known, such a translation may be said to have more of fancy than learning in it. Pliny the elder, who was nearly contemporary with our Saviour, and who, in his natural history, has shewn himself so curious and so judicious a master in the compilation of facts and observations, appears to be altogether ignorant of any stronger liquor, than that produced by fermentation. He noticed the various drinks of the Egyptians, in use in his day, which were manufactured from grain steeped in water; and assures us, that they were very strong, and drunk without any mixture whatever. These beverages were distinguished by various names, such as zythum, cœlia, ceria, Ceris vinum, or wine of Ceres, curmi, cervisia, &c. each literally meaning ale, or beer. The making of them, he says, was known to the several nations, who inhabited the west of Europe. The mode of manufacture, however, was somewhat different in different countries; but the nature and properties of the liquor were everywhere the same. The people of Spain, in particular, he informs us,

had arrived to such perfection in the art, that the drink made by them could be kept to a very great age.* Some think that Pliny meant distillation, when, after the enumeration of those beverages, he tells us, "that water was made to intoxicate," and because he alludes to it as an extraordinary invention. This intoxicating water would certainly appear to be very different from that obtained by the ordinary mode of fermentation, if the passage be read as unconnected with the preceding observations; but as this cannot be done with propriety, it means nothing more than the intoxicating power or strength acquired by the water in the fermenting process of the grain. "Heu mira vitiorum solertia! inventum est quemadmodum aqua quoque inebriaret."" Oh, wondrous craft of the vices! by some mode or other, it was discovered that water also might be made to inebriate." This passage led Mr. Murphy, in a note in his translation of Tacitus, to make Pliny speak as if the Egyptians had their intoxicating liquors distilled from grain; an error into which he, in common with many other respectable writers, has fallen. In the 33d book, chap. 8, he describes the mode of obtaining an artificial quicksilver by distillation. The apparatus employed was two earthen pots and an iron pan; but he does not, in any other part of his work, describe the application of a like apparatus to the extracting of the juices of vegetable matter, if we except his account of the manner in which oil was obtained from pitch, in book xv, chap. 7, where he says, "the vapour arising from. the boiling pitch was 'collected on fleeces of wool spread over the pots, and afterwards extracted from them by expression." This was evidently distillation in its infancy, clearly proving that it was not known in his time, in a more improved state.

Pliny, in treating of the wine of his own country, details, with wonderful minuteness, the progress of its manufacture, and the perfection to which it had then arrived. It was not, however, until about 600 years after the foundation of the Roman empire, that vines were cultivated, and that wine came into general use. Before that period wines were so scarce, that, in the sacrifices, the libations to the gods were ordered to be made only with milk.‡ Numa, the successor of Romulus, who enacted this observance, directed, from the great scarcity of wine that prevailed, that no man should besprinkle the funeral pile with it, and when the sacrifices to the gods were permitted in wine, it was decreed, with a view to encourage the plantation of vineyards, that all wine so offered should be the produce of such vine plants as had been cut and pruned.

* Pliny, book xiv. chap. 22.

† De Morib. German. vol. iv. p. 268. Pliny, b. xiv. chap. 12.

It was in these times of simplicity that women were forbidden to drink wine; and for that reason their near relations were permitted to salute them when they came to their houses, in order to smell whether they had tasted any Temetum, for so they termed wine, which if discovered, gave their husbands a right to punish them. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romulus was the author of the law which permitted a husband to kill his wife for drinking wine, as well as for the crime of adultery. It is related that Ignatius Mecennius, having killed his wife with a cudgel, because he found her drinking wine out of a cask, was acquitted of the murder by Romulus.* Fabius Pictor, in his annals, says that a Roman lady was starved to death by her own relations for having picked the lock of a chest in which were the keys of the wine cellar.† We are assured by Pliny, that Cneius Domitius, a judge in Rome, in the like case pronounced sentence judicially against a woman who was defendant, in this form, "that it seemed she had drunk more wine without her husband's knowledge than was needful for the preservation of her health, and therefore that she should lose the benefit of her dowry.

We read that Lucius Papyrius, general of the Roman armies, when at the point of engaging the Samnites, made no other vow than that he would offer to Jupiter a little cup or goblet of wine, in case he gained the victory. Men in those days were also forbidden to drink it, till the age of thirty.

Towards the decline of the Roman commonwealth, and under the first emperors, the women were not only accustomed to drink wine, but carried the excess of it as far as the men, which, if we credit Pliny, exceeded any thing of the kind in modern times. To prevent females from committing excessive crimes, the lawgivers in ancient times prohibited the free use of wine. Seneca complains bitterly that, in his day, the custom of prohibition was almost universally violated. The weak and delicate complexion of the women, says he, is not changed, but their manners are changed and no longer the same. They value themselves upon carrying excess of wine to as great a height as the most robust men; like them they pass whole nights at table, and with a full glass of unmixed wine in their hands, they glory in vieing with them; and if they can, in overcoming them. Theophrastus says that great drunkards, when they drank for a wager, used to take the powder of pumice stone before setting to. This probably gave rise to the invention of "devils," those choice and whetting tit bits, so much resorted to after dinner by the topers of the present day. Some of the Romans even went so far as to take hemlock in Pliny, b. xxxvi. chap. 21.

Pliny, book xiv. chap. 13. † Ibid.