1863 Cups and their customs

CUPS AND THEIR CUSTOMS.

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some occasions each person had his own cup, which a servant replenished as soon as it was emptied, as described in the feast of Homer^s heroes. The vessels from which they drank were generally made of wood, decorated with gold and silver, and crowned with garlands, as also were their heads, particular flowers and herbs being selected, which were supposed to keep all noxious vapours from the brain. In some cases their cups were formed entirely of gold, silver, or bronze. A beautiful example of a bronze cup was found in Wilt- shire, having the names of five Roman towns as an inscription, and richly decorated with scenes of the chase, from which it has been imagined that it belonged to a club or society of persons, probably hunters, and may have been one of their prizes : they also used cups made from the horns of animals. The chief beverage among the Greeks and Romans was the fermented juice of the grape, but the particular form of it is a matter of some uncertainty. The^^ vinum albinum ^^ was probably a kind of Frontignac, and of all wines was most esteemed by the Romans, — though Horace speaks in such glowing terms of Falernian, which was a strong and rough wine, and was not fit for drinking till it had been kept ten years, and even then it was customary to mix honey with it to soften it. Homer speaks of a famous wine of Maronea in Thrace, which would bear mixing with twenty times the quantity of water, although it was a common practice among the natives to drink it in its pure state. The customary dilution among the Greeks appears to have consisted of one part of wine to three