Cups and Their Customs

by George Edwin Roberts; M. D. Henry Porter

The wines of Chio, however, held the greatest reputation, which was such that the inhabitants of that island were thought to have been the first who planted the vine and taught the use of it to other nations. These wines were held in such esteem and were of so high a value at Rome, that in the time of Lucullus, at their greatest entertainments, they drank only one cup of them, at the end of the feast; but as sweetness and delicacy of flavour were their prevailing qualities, this final cup may have been taken as a liqueur. Both the Greeks and the Romans kept their wine in large earthenware jars, made with narrow necks, swollen bodies, and pointed at the bottom, by which they were fixed into the earth; these vessels, called Amphoræ, though generally of earthenware, are mentioned by Homer as being constructed of gold and of stone. Among the Romans it was customary, at the time of filling their wine-vessels, to inscribe upon them the name of the consul under whose office they were filled, thus supplying them with a good means of distinguishing their vintages and pointing out the excellence of particular ones, much in the same way as we now speak of the vintages of '20, '34, or '41. Thus, Pliny mentions a celebrated wine which took its name from Opimius, in whose consulate it was made, and was preserved good to his time (a period of nearly 200 years). The vessel used for carrying the wine to the table was called Ampulla, being a small bulging bottle covered with leather and having two handles, which it would be fair to consider the original type of the famous "leathern bottel," the inventor of which is so highly eulogized in the old song,—

"I wish that his soul in heaven may dwell,

Who first invented the leathern bottel."

The wine was frequently cooled by keeping the vessels in snow; and it was brought to the table in flasks, which, instead of being corked, had a little fine oil poured into the necks to exclude the air.

Although the ancients were well acquainted with the excellence of wine, they were not ignorant of the dangers attending the abuse of it. Salencus passed a law forbidding the use of wine, upon pain of death, except in case of sickness; and the inhabitants of Marseilles and Miletus prohibited the use of it to women. At Rome, in the early ages, young persons of high birth were not permitted to drink wine till they attained the age of thirty, and to women the use of it was absolutely forbidden; but Seneca complains of the violation of this law, and says that in his day the women valued themselves upon carrying excess of wine to as great a height as the most robust men. "Like them," says he, "they pass whole nights at tables, and, with a full glass of unmixed wine in their hands, they glory in vying with them, and, if they can, in overcoming them." This worthy philosopher, however, appears not to have considered excess of drinking in men a vice; for he goes so far as to advise men of high-strained minds to get intoxicated now and then. "Not," says he, "that it may over-power us, but only relax our overstrained faculties." Soon afterwards he adds, "Do you call Cato's excess in wine a vice? Much sooner may you be able to prove drunkenness to be a virtue, than Cato to be vicious."

The first history of wine was written in Latin by Bacci in the 16th century; and in 1775 Sir Edward Barry composed his observations on "Wines of the Ancients," whose authority, though not reliable, is curious. After him came Dr. Henderson on Wines; and the best treatise of the present day is the History of Wine by Cyrus Redding. To all wine-keepers and consumers I would recommend a perusal of a little work called 'The Wine Guide,' by Frederick C. Mills (1861).

Let us, with these casual remarks, leave the Greeks and Romans, with jovial old Horace at their head, quaffing his cup of rosy Falernian, his brow smothered in evergreens (as was his wont), and pass on to our immediate ancestry, the Anglo-Saxon race—not forgetting, however, that the ancient Britons had their veritable cup of honeyed drink, called Metheglin, though this may be said indeed to have had a still greater antiquity, if Ben Johnson is right in pronouncing it to have been the favourite drink of Demosthenes while composing his excellent and mellifluous orations. The Anglo-Saxons not only enjoyed their potations, but conducted them with considerable pomp and ceremony, although, as may readily be conceived, from want of civilization, excess prevailed. In one of our earliest Saxon romances we learn that "it came to the mind of Hrothgar to build a great mead-hall, which was to be the chief palace;" and, further on, we find this palace spoken of as "the beer-hall, where the Thane performed his office—he that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup, from which he poured the bright, sweet liquor, while the poet sang serene, and the guests boasted of their exploits." Furthermore we learn that, when the queen entered, she served out the liquor, first offering the cup to her lord and master, and afterwards to the guests. In this romance, "the dear or precious drinking-cup, from which they quaffed the mead," is also spoken of: and as these worthies had the peculiar custom of burying the drinking-cups with their dead, we may conclude they were held in high esteem, while at the same time it gives us an opportunity of actually seeing the vessels of which the romance informs us; for in Saxon graves, or barrows, they are now frequently found. They were principally made of glass; and the twisted pattern alluded to appears to have been the most prevailing shape. Several other forms have been discovered, all of which, however, are so formed with rounded bottoms that they will not stand by themselves; consequently their contents must have been quaffed before replacing them on the table. It is probable that from this peculiar shape we derive our modern word "tumbler;" and, if so, the freak attributed to the Prince Regent, and since his time, occasionally performed at our Universities, of breaking the stems off the wine-glasses in order to ensure their being emptied of the contents, was no new scheme, it having been employed by our ancestors in a more legitimate and less expensive manner. We also find, in Anglo-Saxon graves, pitchers from which the drink was poured, differing but little from those now in common use, as well as buckets in which the ale was conveyed from the cellar. That drinking-cups among the Anglo-Saxons were held in high esteem, and were probably of considerable value, there can be no doubt, from the frequent mention made of their being bequeathed after death; in proof of which, from among many others, we may quote the instance of the Mercian king Witlaf giving to the Abbey of Crowland the horn of his table, "that the elder monks may drink from it on festivals, and in their benedictions remember sometimes the soul of the donor," as well as the one mentioned in Gale's 'History of Ramsey,' to the Abbey of which place the Lady Ethelgiva presented "two silver cups for the use of the brethren in the refectory, in order that, while drink is served in them, my memory may be more firmly imprinted on their hearts." Another curious proof of the estimation in which they were held is, that in pictures of warlike expeditions, where representations of the valuable spoils are given, we invariably find drinking-vessels portrayed most prominently. The ordinary drinks of the Anglo-Saxons were ale and mead, though wine was also used by them; but wine is spoken of as "not the drink of children or of fools, but of elders and wise men:" and the scholar says he does not drink wine, because he is not rich enough to buy it; from which, en passant, we may notice that scholars were not rich men even in those days, and up to the present time, we fear, have but little improved their worldly estate. We cannot learn that the Saxons were in the habit of compounding drinks, and, beyond the fact of their pledging each other with the words "Drinc-hæl" and "Wæss-hæl," accompanying the words with a kiss, and that minstrelsy formed a conspicuous adjunct to their drinking-festivities, we can obtain but little knowledge of the customs they pursued. The Vedic "cup-drink" was "Soma," which is described as being "sweet, honied, sharp and well-flavoured," the liquor of the Gods. One of the many hymns in the Vedas in its praise may be thus translated—

"We have drunk the Soma

And are entered into Light,

So that we know the Gods.