Give me the noble Spartan hound
With whose deep voice Eurotas' banks resound;
While the dark rocks
Of Scyrus give the choicest flocks

[[46]] Of milky goats; and, prompt at war's alarms,
Brave Argos burnishes the well-proved arms,
The Sicels build the rapid car,
And the fierce Thebans urge the chariot to the war.[46:1]

Critias tells us—

Know ye the land of the fair Proserpine,
Where the cottabus splashes the ominous wine;
Where the lightest and handsomest cars . . . .
* * * * *
And what can for tired limbs compare
With the soft and yielding Thessalian chair?
But no town with Miletus vies
In the bridal bed's rich canopies.
But none the golden bowl can chase,
Or give to brass such varied grace,
As that renowned hardy race
That dwells by Arno's tide;
Phœnicia, mother of the arts,
Letters to learned men imparts;
Thebes scaled the mountain's side,
Bade the tough ash its trunk to yield,
And fill'd with cars the battle-field;
While Carians, masters of the seas,
First launch'd the boat to woo the breeze.
Offspring of clay and furnace bright,
The choicest porcelain clear and light
Boasts, as its birth-place, of the towers
Which Neptune's and Minerva's powers
From ills and dangers shield;
Which beat back war's barbaric wave
When Mede and Persian found a grave
In Marathon's undying field.

And indeed the pottery of Attica is deservedly praised. But Eubulus says, "Cnidian pots, Sicilian platters, and Megarian jars." And Antiphanes enumerates "mustard, and also scammony juice from Cyprus; cardamums from Miletus; onions from Samothrace; cabbages, kail, and assafœtida from Carthage; thyme from Hymettus, and marjoram from Tenedos."

51. The Persian king used to drink no other wine but that called the Chalybonian, which Posidonius says is made in Damascus of Syria, from vines which were planted there by the Persians; and at Issa, which is an island in the Adriatic, Agatharchides says that wine is made which is superior to every other wine whatever. The Chian and Thasian wines

[[47]]are mentioned by Epilycus; who says that "the Chian and the Thasian wine must be strained." And also,—

For all the ills that men endure,
Thasian is a certain cure;
For any head or stomach ache,
Thasian wine I always take,
And think it, as I home am reeling,
A present from the God of healing.

Clearchus speaks of "Lesbian wine, which Maro himself appears to me to have been the maker of."

And Alexis says—