instruments
in the hands of the oligarchies that govern. States and institutions
rest on this nameless mass, as a building rests upon its foundations.

I mean to show you now by a typical case the possible importance of
these little facts, so neglected in history. I shall speak to you
neither of proconsuls nor of emperors, neither of great conquests nor
of famous laws, but of wine-dealers and vine-tenders, of the fortuned
and famous plant that from wooded mountain-slopes, mirrored in the
Black Sea, began its slow, triumphal spread around the globe to
its twentieth century bivouac, California. I shall show you how the
branches and tendrils of the plant of Bacchus are entwined about the
history and the destiny of Rome.

For many centuries the Romans were water-drinkers. Little wine was
made in Italy, and that of inferior quality: commonly not even the
rich were wont to drink it daily; many used it only as medicine during
illness; women were never to take it. For a long time, any woman in
Rome who used wine inspired a sense of repulsion, like that excited in
Europe up to a short time ago by any woman who smoked. At the time
of Polybius, that is, toward the middle of the second century B.C.,
ladies were allowed to drink only a little _passum_,--a kind of sweet
wine, or syrup, made of raisins. About the women too much given to the
beverage of Dionysos, there were terrifying stories told. It was said,
for instance, that Egnatius Mecenius beat his wife to death, because
she secretly drank wine; and that Romulus absolved him (Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._, bk. 14, ch. 13). It was told, on the word of Fabius Pictor,
who mentioned it in his annals, that a Roman lady was condemned by
the family tribunal to die of hunger, because she had stolen from
her husband the keys of the wine-cellar. It was said the Greek judge
Dionysius condemned to the loss of her dower a wife who, unknown to
her husband, had drunk more than was good for her health: this story
is one which shows that women began to be allowed the use of wine as a
medicine. It was for a long time the vaunt of a true Roman to despise
fine wines. For example, ancient historians tell of Cato that, when
he returned in triumph from his proconsulship in Spain, he boasted
of having drunk on the voyage the same wine as his rowers; which
certainly was not, as we should say now, either Bordeaux or Champagne!

Cato, it is true, was a queer fellow, who pleased himself by throwing
in the face o