1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

34

For more information on wines the reader may con- sult Sir Edward Barry, Dr. Alexander Henderson, and Cyrus Redding. Henderson, who was, like Barry, a physician, did not always agree with him. Barry's observations, according to Henderson, are chiefly borrowed from Bacci. Those not so borrowed are for the most part *' flimsy and tedious." The vessels and other drinking cups were com- monly ranged on an abacus of marble, something like our sideboard. It was large, if Philo Judeus is to be believed. Pliny, speaking of Pompey's spoils in the matter of the pirates, says the number of jewel-adorned drinking cups was enough to furnish nine abaci. Cicero charges Verres with having plundered the abaci. When Rome was in the height of her luxury, mur- rhine cups were introduced from the East. What this substance was, the ruins of Pompeii have never re- vealed ; some maintain it was porcelain, others think was a species of spar. Dr. Henderson adopts the opinion of M. de Roziere that these cups were of fluor-spar ; but this article is not found in Karamania, from which district of Par- thia both Pliny and Propertius agree that they came, though they differ with respect to their nature ; its geographic situation seems confined to Europe. The anecdote told by Lampridius of Heliogabalus (502) proves, not the similarity of material, but only the equal rareness and value of vessels of onyx and murrhine. A writer in the Westminster Review for July, 1825, believes them to have been porcelain cups from China it