The Liquor Problem in All Ages Author:Daniel Dorchester Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Gen. xl, 11. A singular corroboration of this view of ancient usages was afforded by the statue illustrated on this pagt exhumed at Pompeii: Bacchus stands by a ... more »pedestal, holding it, both hands a cluster of grapes, squeezing the juice into a cup. This was not, however, the only form in which wine was drank. PRESSING GRAPES BY HAND. But Herodotus (b. B. C. 484) states that grapes were not, in his day, grown in Egypt. Wine was an article of exportation from Greece into Egypt, being carried twice a year in large earthen jars. Egypt seems to have then been a favorite marketfor this article, that country being unsuited to its production. Herodotus says that the inhabitants of the corn-growing region of Egypt used a drink made from barley, because there were no vines in that country, the soil seldom serving for grain and for vineyards, the latter thriving best on the hill-sides. Virgil expressed a similar opinion when he said, " Apertos Bacchus umat colles."—Georg. ii, 113. Strabo, who nourished four hundred years after Herodotus, says that in his time both red and white wines were produced in the district of Tyoum, on the border of Lake Mareotis, and at Phinthium, at the extremities of the cultivated land. Pliny the Elder, (b. A. I). 23,) who devoted much attention to such matters, said that all the wines of Africa were sour and thin. He also speaks of beer made from " corn steeped in water," and quaintly adds:l " Iieu, mira vitiorum solertla ! inventum eat quemadmodum aqua quoque inebriaret." Athenseus, (d. A. D. 230,) writing of a period long prior to his day, represented the ancient Egyptians as great topers, and said they were accustomed to eat boiled cabbages, as a preventive against drunkenness. He cites Eubulus as saying : "Wife, quick ! some cabbage boil, of vir...« less