f the young nobility's incipient luxury a piece of almost
brutal rudeness; but he exaggerated, not falsified, the ideas and the
sentiments of Romanism. At that time, it was a thing unworthy of a
Roman to be a practised admirer of fine wines and to show too great
a propensity for them. Then not only was the vine little and ill
cultivated in Italy, but that country almost refused to admit its
ability to make fine wines with its grapes. As wines of luxury, only
the Greek were then accredited and esteemed--and paid for, like French
wines to-day; but, though admiring and paying well for them, the
Romans, still diffident and saving, made very spare use of them.
Lucullus, the famous conqueror of the Pontus, told how in his father's
house--in the house, therefore, of a noble family--Greek wine was
never served more than once, even at the most elegant dinners.
Moreover, this must have been a common custom, because Pliny says,
speaking of the beginning of the last century of the Republic, "Tanta
vero vino graeco gratia erat ut singulae potiones in convitu darentur";
that is, translating literally, "Greek wine was so prized that only
single potions of it were given at a meal." You understand at once the
significance of this phrase; Greek wine was served as to-day--at least
on European tables--Champagne is served; it was too expensive to give
in quantity.

This condition of things began to change after Rome became a world
power, went outside of Italy, interfered in the great affairs of the
Mediterranean, and came into more immediate contact with Greece and
the Orient. By a strange law of correlation, as the Roman Empire
spread about the Mediterranean, the vineyard spread in Italy;
gradually, as the world politics of Rome triumphed in Asia and Africa,
the grape harvest grew more abundant in Italy, the consumption of
wine increased, the quality was refined. The bond between the
two phenomena--the progress of conquest and the progress of
vine-growing--is not accidental, but organic, essential, intimate.
As, little by little, the policy of expansion grew, wealth and culture
increased in Rome; the spirit of tradition and of simplicity weakened;
luxury spread, and with it the appetite for sensations, including that
of the taste for intoxicating beverages.

We have but to notice what happens about us in the modern world--when
industry gains and wealth increases and cities grow, men drink more
eagerly and riotously inebriating beverages-