CHAPTER II.

DIFFICULTY OF THE INQUIRY.

IT is difficult, if not impossible, in an inquiry which refers to the manners and customs of a far-off people in bygone ages, and to the meaning of words in a tongue now many centuries silent, to trace the original signification of obscure terms, and let in the light of knowledge to illume the darkness of our ignorance by the discovery of

"The jealous keys of Truth's eternal doors."

"We have to remember the difficulty which must be felt in discriminating words which have a close mutual connection, in that which has been near 2,000 years a dead language; and with respect to its niceties, even the ancient translations may be of little value, partly on account of the ignorance and carelessness of their authors, and partly also because these men assumed that their readers

were as familiar with the topic as they were themselves" (Prof. Douglas, " Imp. Bib. Dic.," art. Wine).

CHANGE OF TASTES AND FASHIONS.

Tastes and fashions alter. The delicacy of today will be the offal of to-morrow. Speaking of flour fried with oil, Calmet says, "Such sort of sauces will not go down now; but fashions alter, and there is no dispute about tastes. All these sorts of bread were offered in the temple of the Lord; and clear evidence of their being looked upon as the most exquisite" ("Ant.," ed. Tindal, p. 149. Lond. 1727).

As regards wine, there being a fashion in drink as there is in dress, our taste is the very antipodes of that of many of the ancient and modern peoples of the East.

RESINED WINE LIKED BY THE GREEKS, DISLIKED BY THE ENGLISH.

The addition of resin, turpentine, and sea-water to wine has always been a favourite practice in some countries.

Practised by the Ancients.-Wines were treated with resin, an infusion of pitch and sea-water (Dios.

v. 23; J. A. St. John, "Mann. and Cust. Anc. Gr." iii. 117. Lond. 1842). Amongst the plants used to flavour wine were wormwood, squills, myrtle, terebinth, and fir-cones (ibid. iii. 118, 119). Dodwell ("Class. and Top. Tour." Lond. 1819) says the ancients mixed resin with wine. (Cels. ii. 19;

Pliny, N. H. xxiii.) He terms it "vinum resinatum" and "pice conditum."

Practised by Moderns.-"The wines of Macedonia and Thessaly, on account of the tar or pitch which is added to keep them, are mostly of intolerable taste" (Thud. and Dupré, p. 703). Greek wines spoiled in taste with the "horrid preservatives of antiquity," as smoking with wood, and the vapour of rosins, pitching the barrels, adding turpentine, gypsum, chalk, salt, &c. (ibid. P. 705).

Thomson, speaking of the Cyprus wine, says, "It tastes of tar as it did in Lithgow's time, who characterized this practice as making the taste unpleasant to liquorish lips'" (J. Thomson, F.R.G.S., "Cyprus," ii. 30. Lond. 1879).

RESIN WINE DISLIKED BY THE ENGLISH AND

OTHERS.

"The wine of the Morea is positively undrinkable from the resin it contains" (Wm. Turner

"Tour Levant," i. 434. Lond. 1820). At the Bishop of Salona's "the wine was execrable, and so impregnated with rosin that it almost took the skin from our lips" (E. Dodwell, F.S.A., i. 155. Lond. 1819). The wine of Cyprus had so strong a taste of tar that Bernard Picart could not drink it ("Cer. and Rel. Cust.," ii. 579). "The best wines in Greece we found excessively unpalatable, so saturated with resin and vinegar that none of us could take a second sip" (Emily A. Beaufort, “Eg. Sep. and Syr. Shr.," ii. 376, 2nd edit. Lond. 1862). "Resined wine is about the nastiest thing you can conceive" (R. A. Arnold, "Fr. the Levant," i. 171. Lond. 1868).

LIKED BY THE GREEKS.

Though in Britain we turn with loathing from the resined wines of Greece, the inhabitants of that classic country drink with pleasure these, to us, nauseous compounds. "The present Greeks like it [resin] so much that it is difficult to prevail on them to take wine without it" (Sir T. Wyse, K.C.B., "An Exc. in the Pelopon.," ii. 142. Lond. 1865).

LANGUAGES CHANGE.

Not only do taste and fashion change; language itself is constantly undergoing alteration, the rate

and extent of alteration being dependent on a variety of circumstances. "Permanence is more or less regulated by circumstances. A language which resists influence for a century may fail to do so for a millennium; or a language which, with no alterative influence to touch it, may remain unchanged for a century, may, under conditions unfavourable to its permanence, transform itself into something else in a generation or two" (R. G. Latham, M.D., F.R.S., “El. of Comp. Phil.," p. 528. Lond. 1862).

THE MEANING OF WORDS CHANGES.

Words have a significance to-day altogether different from their meaning a few centuries back. Take, for example, the word "sherab," represented by our modern English word "syrup." Though with us designating only an unintoxicating sweet preparation, it was at one time, and in fact is now, in the East, a name for wine.

Persian." Sherap, wine. Ungee koob (good) sherabbas ? Is there good wine? Sherap bedee (some) zood-Give me some wine" (Sir Thos. Herbert, "Gloss. Trav.," p. 46. Lond. 1634). "Chiraup Zjieraas; noen Yesgadaes; seu de Yes"-Schiraz for wine; Yesdecast for bread; and Yest for women (Old Pers. prov.-Le Bruyn, "Musc. Pers. and E. I.," ii. 4.

Lond. 1737). "The word scharab, which