1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

29

Pramnian wine with grated cheese, perhaps a sort of Gruyere, and flour. The most popular of these com- pound beverages was the olvoixeXi^ (mulstim), or honey wine, said by Pliny (xiv. 4) to have been invented by Aristaeus. Greek wines required no long time to ripen. The wine drank by Nestor [Odyss. iii. 391) of ten year old is an exception. The sweet wines of the Greeks (the produce of various islands on the ^gean and Ionian Seas) were probably something like modern Cyprus and Con- stantia, while the dry wines, such as the Pramnian and Corinthian, were remarkable for their astringency, and were indeed only drinkable after being preserved for many years. Of the former of these Aristophanes says that it shrivelled the features and obstructed the digestion of all who drank it, while to taste the latter was mere torture. ^ This is probably the murrhina of Plautus {Fseudol. ii. 4, 50) 2 This drink must not be confounded with vSpo/AcAt, honey and water, our mead, or vSpofxrfXov, our cider