1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

DRINKS ANCIENT AND MODERN 23 just the same. One of their philosopherSj upon being asked if they had nobody who played the flute in Scythia, replied that "they had not so much as any wine there." Which seems to hint to flute-playing being a thirsty trade, even in those days. The Babylonians were, according toHerodotus, habitual over-estimators of their swallowing capacity, and got merry after inhaling the fumes ofcertain herbs which they burned ; which sounds like anything but a comfortable debauch, and must have choked some of them. Strabo tells all who care to read him that the Indians drank the juice of sugar-canes, which we now call rum ; whilst according to Pliny and Athenaeus the Egyptians fuddled themselves with a drink made from barley ; evidently undeveloped beer. And it is quite on the cards that Cleopatra occasionally drew, with her own fair hands, for her beloved Antony, a glass of " bitter," with a head on it. But the quaintest and most awe-inspiring of all drinks seems to have been that affected by the Persians—now decent, sober people enough ; this was a liquor made from boiled poppy-seeds, and called Kokemaar. They drank it scalding hot, in the presence of many spectators, who may or may not have been charged for admission. " Before it operates," wrote a chronicler of the times, " they quarrel with one another, and give abusive language, without coming to blows; afterwards when the drug begins to have its