In rich and level lands,[[1545]] particularly where the Aminian vine[[1546]] was cultivated, the props often rose to the height of five or six feet; but in hill-vineyards, where the soil was lighter and less nutritive, they were not suffered to exceed that of three feet. Where reeds were not procurable, ash-props[[1547]] were substituted, but they were always carefully barked, to prevent cantharides, and other insects hurtful to the vine, from making nests in them. Their price would appear to have been considerable, since we find a husbandman speaking of having laid out a hundred drachma in vine-props.[[1548]] To prevent their speedily decaying they were smeared a-top with pitch, and carefully, after the vintage, collected and laid up within doors.[[1549]]
A vineyard, consisting wholly of Anadendrades,[[1550]] most common in Attica, presented, in spring and summer, a very picturesque appearance, especially when situated on the sharp declivity of a hill.[[1551]] The trees designed for the support of the vines,[[1552]] planted in straight lines, and rising behind each other, terrace above terrace, at intervals of three or four and twenty feet, were beautiful in form and varied in feature, consisting generally of the black poplar, the ash, the maple, the elm,[[1553]] and probably, also, the platane, which is still employed for this purpose in Crete.[[1554]] Though kept low in some situations, where the soil was scanty, they were, in others, allowed to run to thirty or forty, and sometimes, as in Bithynia, even to sixty feet in height.
The face of the tree along which the vine climbed was cut down sheer like a wall, against which the purple or golden clusters hung thickly suspended, while the young branches crept along the boughs, or over bridges of reeds,[[1555]] uniting tree with tree, and, when touched with the rich tints of autumn, delighting the eye by an extraordinary variety of foliage. As the lower boughs of these noble trees were carefully lopped away, a series of lofty arches was created, beneath which the breezes could freely play, abundant currents of pure air being regarded as no less essential to the perfect maturing of the grape[[1556]] than constant sunshine. Sometimes the vine, in its ascent, was suffered to wind round the trunk of its supporter, which, however, by the most judicious husbandmen, was considered prejudicial, since the profusion of ligatures which it threw out in its passage upwards was thought to exhaust too much of its strength, to prevent which wooden wedges[[1557]] were here and there inserted between the vine stem and the tree. In trailing the branches, moreover, along the boughs, care was taken to keep them as much as possible on the upper side, that they might enjoy a greater amount of sunshine, and be the more exposed to be agitated by the winds.
These Anadendrades,[[1558]] which were supposed to produce the best and most lasting wines, probably, as at present, ripened their produce much later than the other sorts of vines on account of the trees by which they were shaded. In modern Crete,[[1559]] where, however, they are never pruned, their grapes seldom ripen before November, and sometimes they furnish the bazaar of Khania with fresh supplies till Christmas. The same is the case also in Egypt.
Occasionally, too, more especially in Cypros, the Anadendrades grew to an enormous size. At Populonium, in Etruria, there was a statue of Jupiter carved from a single vine; the pillars of the temple of Hera, at Metapontum, consisted of so many vines; and the whole staircase leading to the roof of the fane of Artemis, at Ephesos, was constructed with the timber of a single vine from Cypros. To render these things credible, we are informed, that, at Arambys, in Africa,[[1560]] there was a vine twelve feet in circumference, and modern travellers have found them of equal dimensions in other parts of the world.[[1561]] In France, for example, the celebrated Anne, Duc de Montmorenci, had a table made with a single slab of vinewood, which, two hundred years afterwards, Brotier[[1562]] saw preserved at the town of Ecouen.
To return, however: the wide spaces between the trees were not in this class of vineyards allowed to remain entirely idle, having been sometimes sown[[1563]] with corn, or planted with beans, and gourds, and cucumbers, and lentils.[[1564]] The cabbage[[1565]] was carefully excluded,[[1566]] as an enemy to Dionysos. In other cases these intervals were given up to the cultivation of fruit-trees, such as the pomegranate, the apple, the quince, and the olive. The fig-tree was regarded as pernicious, though often planted in rows on the outside of the vineyard.
Respecting those vines which were cultivated without the aid of props,[[1567]] or trees, we possess little information, except that there were such. But, as they are still found in the country, it is probable, that the mode of dressing them now prevailing nearly resembles that of antiquity. They are generally, in Syria, planted along the steep sides of mountains, where they spread and rest upon the stones, and have their fruit early ripened by the heat reflected from the earth. Frequently, also, they are planted on more level ground, in which case, as soon as the grapes acquire any size, the husbandman passes through the vineyard with an armful of forked wooden props which he skilfully introduces beneath the branches and fixes firmly so as to keep the clusters from touching the mould. The reason for adopting this method is the furious winds which at certain seasons of the year prevail in many of the Grecian islands, preventing the growth of woods and prostrating the fig and every other fruit-tree to the earth. The spaces between the lines are turned up annually by a peculiar sort of plough[[1568]] drawn by oxen, in front of which a man advances, lifting up the vines and holding them aside while they pass. This destroys the weeds, and, at the same time, all the upper roots of the vine, which compels it to descend deeper into the earth, where it finds a cooler and more abundant nourishment. In this respect the practice of the Syrotes closely resembles that of their ancestors. Some husbandmen were careful, likewise, while weeding,[[1569]] to remove the larger stones, though they are often supposed, by preserving moisture, to do more good than harm.
It is a peculiar feature in the character of the ancients that they loved to attribute to the inferior animals the first hints of various useful practices. Thus they maintained it was the ass that, by browsing on the extremities of the vine, which only made it bear the more luxuriantly, taught them the art of pruning as well perhaps as that of feeding on the tendrils and tender branches,[[1570]] which among them were esteemed a delicacy. To manifest their gratitude for this piece of instruction they erected at Nauplia,[[1571]] a marble statue in honour of this ill-used quadruped, who has seldom, I fear, from that day to this, been so well treated. The rules observed in pruning[[1572]] resembling those still in use, it is unnecessary to repeat them, though it may be worth mentioning, that the husbandman, who coveted an abundant vintage, was careful to lop his vines[[1573]] with his brows shaded by an ivy crown. They esteemed it a sign of a fruitful year when the fig-tree and the white vine put forth luxuriantly in spring,[[1574]] after which they had only to petition the gods against too much rain, or too much drought,[[1575]] and those terrible hailstorms which sometimes devastate whole districts. Against this calamity, however, they had a preservative, which was to bind an amulet in the shape of a thong of seal-hide or eagle’s wing, about one of the stocks,[[1576]] after which the whole vineyard was supposed to be secure from injury. The same effect was produced by striking a chalezite stone with a piece of iron on the approach of a storm, and by hanging up in the vineyard a picture of a bunch of grapes at the setting of the constellation of the Lyre.[[1577]] To repel the ascent of vermin along the trunk it was smeared with a thick coat of bitumen,[[1578]] imported from Cilicia, while to preserve the branches from wasps a little olive-oil was blown over them.[[1579]]
While the grapes were growing, the ancients, following in the track of nature, supposed them to need shade, since the leaves at that time put forth most abundantly, to screen the young fruit from the scorching sun; but when they began to don their gold or purple hues, observing the foliage shrivel and shrink from about them, in order to admit the warm rays to penetrate and pervade the fruit they then stripped the branches and hastened the vintage,[[1580]] plucking moreover the clusters as they ripened, lest they should drop off and be lost. But this partial gathering of the grapes could only take place in their gardens, or where the vine was trained about the house; for in the regular vineyards the season of the vintage was regulated by law,[[1581]] as in Burgundy and the south of France, in order to protect the public against the pernicious frauds which would otherwise be practised. This, in Attica, usually coincided with the heliacal rising of the constellation Arcturus.[[1582]]
When the magistrate had declared that the season of the vintage[[1583]] was come, the servants of Bacchos hurried forth to the vine-clad hills, converting their labours into a pretext for superabundant mirth and revelry. The troops of vintagers, composed of youths and maidens, with crowns of ivy on their heads, and accompanied by rural performers on the flute or phorminx, moved forward with shout, and dance, and song, to the sacred enclosures of Dionysos, surrounded with plaited hedgerows, and blue streamlets.[[1584]] Here, where