Wine, says Rhases, warms the stomach and liver, and dispels flatulence, promotes digestion, provokes the urinary and alvine discharges, and gladdens the mind.
Serapion copies mostly from Galen in delivering the general characters of wine. He disapproves of wine made with salt water. For an account of it, see Pliny and Athenæus, (l. c.)
The ancients were scarcely more agreed respecting the intoxicating properties of wine than they were as to the powers of the cabbage in counteracting them. Old Cato the Censor, who was in the practice “of warming his virtue with wine,” describes the following method of cooling it: “Si voles in convivio multum bibere cænareque, ante cæenam esto crudam brassicam quantum voles ex aceto, et item ubi cænaveris comesto aliqua V. folia, reddent te quasi nihil ederis, biberisque, bibesque quantum voles.” (De R. R. 156.) See a long dissertation on this property of the cabbage in Athenæus (Deipnos. i, ad finem); also Pliny (Hist. Nat. xx, 34); Pseudo-Dioscorides (Euporist. i, 24); Nonnius (14); Simeon Seth (in voce Brassica); Geopon. (xii, 17); Avicenna, Rhases, and Serapion give the same character of it. Plutarch affirms that almonds also are a preservative from intoxication. (Quæst. vi.)
Before quitting this subject, we must notice certain peculiar modes of preparing wine. The mustum was wine newly made, or the fresh juice of the grape. The protropum was the juice which runs from grapes without pressing. The mulsum was a preparation of wine and honey. Dioscorides recommends two parts of wine to one of honey; but there does not appear to have been any fixed proportion. The sapa, called by the Greeks hepsema and siræum, according to Pliny, is must boiled to a third; and the defrutum the same reduced to a half. They are now called robs, a term borrowed from the Arabians. The carenum, according to Isidorus, is must reduced to two thirds. The passum was a sweet wine prepared from grapes which had been much dried in the sun. The passum creticum, which is much praised by Pliny and Athenæus, and is often mentioned by our author, the learned Andreas Baccius and Nonnius believe to have resembled the modern malmsey. We have already mentioned a peculiar species of wine prepared with salt water. The ancients also gave artificial qualities to wine by adding rosin, pitch, and other substances to the casks in which it was deposited. See ‘Geoponica’ (vii.) Dioscorides gives receipts for preparing a great variety of vinous tinctures. These were used only for medicinal purposes. (Mat. Med. v.)
It is scarcely necessary for us to remark that the ancients generally drank their wines diluted either with hot or cold water. Hence the poet Juvenal says: “Quando vocatus adest calidæ gelidæque minister.” (Sat. v, 63.) According to Pliny, Staphylus first introduced this practice (H. N. viii, 56); but Athenæus refers it to Melampus (ii.) It would appear, however, from some passages in the ‘Ecclesiazusæ’ of Aristophanes, and from Eustathius’s Commentary on Homer (Iliad, ix, 203), that the ancients often drank their wines undiluted. It was customary, during the time of dinner, to drink off a cup of pure wine to “the good deity.” See Athenæus (xv, 17), with the learned note of Schweighäuser. The wine and water were commonly mixed together according to certain fixed proportions, such as one part of wine and two of water, or two of wine and three of water, or equal parts of both. (Eustathius in Odyss. vii.) In winter it was the rule to drink equal parts of wine and hot water; but in summer two parts of water were added to one of wine. (Anonymus de Diæta ap. Phys. et Med. Min. ed. Ideler, p. 197.) It would appear that it was a common practice to drink wine with other hot things in the morning during the cold months of winter. (Hierophilus de Nutr. Meth. ed. Ideler.)
SECT. XCVI.—ON HONEY AND HYDROMEL OR HONIED WATER.
Boiled honey is rather nutritious than laxative; but when unboiled the contrary. It agrees with cold and humid temperaments, but in the warm it is converted into bile. Honied water does not agree well with those who are affected with bitter bile, being converted into bile. In such constitutions the honied water ought to be very weak; but it is not proper for those whose bowels are easily affected. The honied water may be prepared by adding eight parts of water to the honey, and thus boiling it until it cease from frothing. It is expedient also to clear away the scum as soon as formed.
Commentary. Honey, says Hippocrates, when eaten with other food, is nutritious, and improves the colour; but, when taken alone, it rather attenuates than recruits. Actuarius says that scummed honey, when taken with other food, is nutritious and laxative. Democritus said, that health was best promoted by lubricating the inside with honey, and the outside with oil. Honey and bread formed the favorite food of the Pythagoreans. Athenæus (Deipnos. ii, 7.) See also Oribasius (Synops. iv, 38); Haly Abbas (v, 27); Simeon Seth (in voce Mel.)
Galen gives the following account of the phenomenon of a honey shower: “I have sometimes known in the season of summer a great quantity of honey to be found upon the leaves of trees, shrubs, and certain herbs, so that the country people said, jesting, ‘Jupiter has rained honey.’ A cold night, as for summer, had preceded (for it happened in summer); but the temperature of the former day had been hot and dry. It was thought, therefore, by those who were skilled in nature, that an exhalation from the earth and waters, finely attenuated and concocted by the heat of the sun, had been condensed and collected by the cold of the succeeding night. This phenomenon occurs rarely with us; but it takes place frequently in Mount Lebanon every summer.” (De Alim. Facult.) See also Fragmentum Theophrasti (de Melle, ed. Heinsius.) Ernestus Faber states that the honey here described is the manna of cedars. (De Manna Ebræorum, 12.)
A wine prepared from honey and aromatics is much commended by an intelligent writer on dietetics as possessing more heat and dryness than any other species of wine, and improving the appetite and colour. (Anonym. Tract. de Cibis ap. Ermerins Anecdota Græca, p. 237.)