BOTTLES OF SKIN.
The Ancients made use of bottles of skin to hold their wine, as is usual in many countries to this day. Thus Homer mentions wine being brought in a goat’s skin. (Il. II. iii. line 247. Odys. VI. line 78, IX. line 196, 212) Herodotus (ii. 121,) mentions skins being filled with wine. And Maundrell in his Travels to Jerusalem, speaking of the Greek Convent at Bellmount, near Tripoli, in Syria, says, “The same person whom we saw officiating at the altar in his embroidered sacerdotal robe, brought us the next day on his own back, a kid, and a goat’s skin of wine as a present from the Convent.”