he kept for a "happy day" (III, xxi, 6). The
_Calenian_ wine, from Cales near Falernum, was of similar character.
He classes it with Caecuban as being too costly for a poor man's purse
(I, xx, 10): writing late in life to a friend, promises to find him
some, but says that his visitor must bring in exchange an alabaster box
of precious spikenard (IV, xii, 17). Next after these Campanian vintages
came the _Alban_. He tells Phyllis that he will broach for her a cask
of it nine years old (IV, xi, 1). It was offered, too, at Nasidienus'
dinner as an alternative to Caecuban; and Horace praises the raisins
made from its berries (Sat. II, iv, 72). Of the _Sabine_, poorest of
Italian wines, we have spoken (page 23).

The finest Greek wine was _Chian_, thick and luscious; he couples it
in the Epode to Maecenas (IX, 34) with _Lesbian_ which he elsewhere
(I, xvii, 21) calls "innocent" or mild. _Coan_ wine he mentions twice,
commending its medicinal value (Sat. II, iv, 29; II, viii, 9).

In justice to Horace and his friends, it is right to observe that
connoisseurship in wine must not be confounded with inebriety. They
drank to exhilarate, not to stupefy themselves, to make them what
Mr. Bradwardine called _ebrioli_ not _ebrii_; and he repeatedly warns
against excess. The vine was to him "a sacred tree," its god, Bacchus,
a gentle, gracious deity (I, xviii, 1):

'Tis thine the drooping heart to heal,
Thy strength uplifts the poor man's horn;
Inspired by thee, the soldier's steel,
The monarch's crown, he laughs to scorn.

III, xxi, 17.

"To total abstainers," he says, "heaven makes all things hard"
(I, xviii, 3); so let us drink, but drink with moderate wisdom, leave
quarrelsomeness in our cups to barbarous Scythians, to brute Centaurs
and Lapithae: let riot never profane our worship of the kindly god. We
must again remember that they did not drink wine neat, as we do, but
always mixed with water. Come, he says to his slave as they sit down,
quench the fire of the wine from the spring which babbles by (II, xi,
19). The common mixture was two of water to one of wine; sometimes nine
of water to three of wine, the Muses to the Graces; very rarely nine of
wine to three of water.

Who the uneven Muses loves,
Will fire his dizzy brain with three times three.
Three once told the Grace approves;
She with her two bright sisters, gay and free,
Hates lawless strife, loves decent glee.

III, xi