1892 The flowing bowl when and what to drink (1892, c1891)

HISTORY

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Lady Sale, in her memoirs from Afghanistan, speaks of grapes of which a single berry weighed one hundred and twenty-nine grains. The mythology of the Greeks mentions the birth of Dionysos, or Bacchus or what is identical to both, the home of the vine as taking place upon the mountain Nysa, a peak of the Hindoo Koosh, an Indian chain of the gigantic Himalaya system. This god was brought up by mountain-nymphs, and educated by the muses, fauns, the old Silen, and the satyrs; in harmony with this education his worshipers represented him as a bewitching youth, with forms re- sembling woman, and with gladness on his brow, or as adorned with vine-wreaths, resting among beautiful women, who, singing and dancing, give us the prettiest and oldest allegory of "Wine, Wife, and Song." He is also represented as rambling over wide fields, drawn by panthers. In a different light appears the vine in the history of the Jews, but also here, in closest connection with their elder father; Noah's wine soon became a favorite bev- erage among the Hebrews, who were anything but teetotalers. When the Israelites left Egypt to return to their old country, Canaan, explorers, sent out, brought back a huge bunch of grapes, the best proof for the wine-cul- ture in Palestine at this early time, 1250 B. C. The travels of Bacchus allegorically allude to the spreading of the wine-culture from east to west.