rious to the health, or as a luxury dangerous to morals
and the purse; in that time when entire nations, like Gaul, hesitated
between the invitations of the ruddy vine-crowned Bacchus, come with
his legions victorious, and the desperate supplications of Cervisia,
the national mead, pale and fleeing to the forests. In those times and
among those men, Horace with his dithyrambics affected not only the
spirit but the will, uniting the subtle suggestion of his verses to
all the other incentives and solicitations that on every side were
persuading men to drink. He corroded the ancient Italian traditions,
which opposed with such repugnance and so many fears the efforts of
the vintners and the vineyard labourers to sell wine at a high price;
in this way he rendered service to Italian viticulture.

The books of Horace, while he was still living, became what we might
call school text-books; that is, they were read by young students,
which must have increased their influence on the mind. Imagine that
to-day a great European poet should describe and extol in magnificent
verses the sensuous delight of smoking opium; should deify, in a
mythology rich in imagery, the inebriating virtues of this product.
Imagine that the verses of this poet were read in the schools: you
may then by comparison picture to yourself the action of the poems of
Horace.

The political and military triumph of Rome in the Mediterranean world
signified therefore the world triumph of wine. So true is this, that
in Europe and America to-day the sons of Rome drink wine as their
national daily beverage. The Anglo-Saxons and Germans drink it in
the same way as the Romans of the second century B.C., on formal
occasions, or as a medicine. When you see at an European or American
table the gold or the ruby of the fair liquor gleaming in the glasses,
remember that this is another inheritance from the Roman Empire and
an ultimate effect of the victories of Rome; that probably we should
drink different beverages if Caesar had been overcome at Alesia or
if Mithridates had been able decisively to reconquer Asia Minor from
Rome. It astonishes you to see between politics and enology, between
the great historical events and the lot of a humble plant, so close a
bond.

I can show you another aspect of this phenomenon, even stranger and
more philosophical. I have already said that at the beginning of the
first century before Christ, although Italy had already planted many
vin