At Herculaneum a spacious cellar has been discovered, round which hogsheads were ranged, and built into the wall.[XXVIII_69] Another cellar, at Pompeii, remarkable for its small size, is divided into two compartments, both containing barrels, and divided one from the other by an horizontal wall.[XXVIII_70]
Large earthen vessels were found there, with and without handles, very carefully executed, and smeared with pitch.[XXVIII_71] We know that the cynic, Diogenes, dwelt in one of these vases; and that the king, Alexander, found him crouching in his strange kind of carapace.[XXVIII_72] The ancients had butts also, but they used them only in cold countries.[XXVIII_73]
The Dolia—for so they were named—were first subjected to a fumigation with aromatic plants; then watered with sea-water, and buried half way in the earth. They were separated each one from another, and strict attention was paid to see that the cellar contained neither leather, nor cheese, nor figs, nor old casks. Sometimes persons who inhabited the country paved the store-room, spread sand, and placed the dolia on it.[XXVIII_74]
At the end of nine days, when the fermentation had cleared the wine from those substances it rejects, they carefully covered the dolia, after having smeared all the upper part of the inside, as well as the covers themselves, with a mixture of defrutum, saffron, mastic, pitch, and pine nuts.[XXVIII_75] The butts of aqueous wine were exposed to the north; spirituous wines often braved the rain, the sun, and every change of temperature.[XXVIII_76]
They accelerated the fining of the wine by throwing in plaster, chalk, marble dust, salt, resin, dregs of new wine, sea-water, myrrh, and aromatic herbs.[XXVIII_77] The butts were uncovered once a month, or more frequently, in order to refresh the contents; and before the head was put on again, it was rubbed with pine nuts.[XXVIII_78] Wine was also clarified by drawing it off into another butt, and mixing yolks of eggs beaten with
DESCRIPTION OF [PLATE No. XXIII.]
Colum Nivarium.—A strainer, used to separate the dregs from the wine. Two are preserved in the collection of Herculaneum; they are made of white metal, and worked with elegance. Each is composed of two plates, round and concave, of four inches in diameter, supplied with flat handles. The two dishes (as it were) and their handles adapt to each other so well, that when put together they appear as one; holes in great number are symmetrically perforated in the upper dish, which keeps the dregs, and lets the clear liquid pass through the lower one. The strainer here represented is taken from Montfaucon’s “Antiquities,” and was found at Rome, towards the end of the 17th century. It is of bronze, and ornamented. On the handles are reliefs in silver, referring to the worship of Bacchus.
salt,[XXVIII_79] or straining it through the colum nivarium (already described),[XXVIII_80] covered with a piece of linen.[XXVIII_81]