Must be equally weak,
Since to check their decline
A prescription you seek.’[155]
Nor was the poet of the funereal cognomen backward in stepping into the field; for he published a metrical decree, supposed to be issued by the faculty of the island of Cos in the fourth year of the ninety-first Olympiad,[156] in which, though a verdict is nominally given in favour of Burgundy, Grenan’s pleas on behalf of this wine are treated with withering sarcasm.
But whilst these enthusiastic partisans thus belaboured one another, there were not wanting impartial spirits who could recognise that there were merits on both sides. Bellechaume, in an ode jointly addressed to the two combatants,[157] adjures them to live at peace on Parnassus, and, remembering that Horace praised both Falernian and Massica, to jointly animate their muse with Champagne and Burgundy:
‘To learn the difference between
The wine of Reims and that of Beaune,
The fairest plan would be, I ween,
To drink them both, not one alone.’[158]
Another equally judicious versifier called also on the Burgundian champion[159] to cease the futile contest, since