Et Cadum Marsi memorem duelli.”—Od: xiv. Lib: 3.
Here Horace sends his Slave for a cask of the wine on which the Marian war was recorded, and which must therefore have been sixty-eight years old.
In ode xxviii. book 3, we find him calling for
“Bibuli Consulis amphoram.”
Now as the poet was born in the Consulate of Manlius, as above stated, which happened A. U. C. 688, and Bibulus was Consul in 694, the wine must have been hoarded from the time Horace was six years of age.
Wine however might, according to the opinion of our Poet, be too old; he terms wine of this description “Languidiora Vina,” and Plautus compares old wine which has lost its relish and strength, to a man who has lost his teeth by age, “Vinum vetustate edentulum.”
Nestor’s wine was eleven years old. Od. γ. 390.
The Romans had their wine cellars at the top of their houses; thus Horace,
“descende Corvino jubente.”
The object of such an arrangement was that the wine might ripen sooner by the smoke, for their fires were made in the middle of their rooms, with an opening above to let out the smoke, which is described as rolling to the top of the house, in the Eleventh Ode of the Fourth Book.