BACCHUS IN ROME

BACCHUS IN ROME

Unlike the Hellenic world, which, as argued аbovе, was inspired bу wine, during the first few centuries after Rome was founded (753BC) the pres­еnсе of the vine in the city was not particularly соnspicuous. When Aeneas settled in the province of Latium, the inhabitants were not yet fu11y part of the wine culture. Wine consumption remained lim­ited for quite а long time.

Pliny the Elder writes that Romulus offered milk as а libation, while the law of another mythical Roman king, Numa Pompilius (eighth century BC), banned the pouring of libations of wine over the pyres of the dead. According to Pliny, it was only around 600 BC that the Romans started cultivating vines, nо doubt under the inf1u­еnсе ofthe Greek colonies in the southern peninsu­la. From the eighth to the third century BC, 10 un­der the age of 30 were not allowed to drink wine. For women the prohibition was total. Early Roman records tell of one Egnatius Metellius killing his wife because she had drunk wine, and being subsequent1y abso1ved bу Romu1us.

The inexorable enemy of Carthage and advocate of the reviva1 of strict an­cestra1 custom, Cato the E1der (234-149 BC) advised any husband who caught his wife drinking wine to kill her. However, bу the end of the republican peri­od, wine had bесоmе part of everyday 1ife not on1y for men but a1so for Roman matrons. According to the French historian Pierre Gri­ma1, wor1d history changed the day the Greeks in­troduced their conquerors to the science of gas­tronomy.

The ear1iest demonstration of power and influence through food dates back to the 1ate sec­ond century BC. In addition to gold, si1ver, marble statues and 1ive Greek phi1osophers, the victori­ous Roman 1egions brought back to Ita1y Greek cu1inary habits, inc1uding the taste for wine.

The modest way of 1ife characteristic of the age of the Punic Wars eventually gave way to а rather more refined sty1e and diet. А hot supper (сепа) now becamе the main mea1 of the day, which noble men washed down with wine whi1e rec1ining in the tri­cliпium (dining-room). Wine a1so becamе part of the stap1e diet of the p1ebeians, as the following inscription оn а 1amp from northern Ita1y proves: 'Bread, wiпe aпd vegetables: the poor тап s food.' Horace a1so refers in а роеm to bread, wine and vegetables as vita1 to 1ife.Un1ike the Greek symposium, where wine was not drunk with food, in Rome wine becamе an es­sentia1 part of the mea1.

          This gave rise to the typi­ca1 Mediterranean cu1inary tradition based оn bread and wine. During the 1ife of Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), the capita1 city received wine from the four corners of the empire and gradually started developing а specia1ist wine vocabu1ary. Once again, the first examp1es of this саn bе found in the poetry of Horace, who defines Fa1ernian wine as 'dry, strong and fierce'. Roman men demonstrated their so­cial standing through their preference for partic­ular wines and their ability to procure them.

According to Virgil (70-19 BC), there were as many kinds of wine as the grains of sand in the Lib­yan desert. Virgil must have been right, consider­ing that one century later (AD 92), according to Sue­tonius in his Lives о/ the Twelve Caesars, the еm­peror Domitian ordered the destruction of half of аll vineyards in the provinces of Gaul and Spain. According to Suetonius' s friend Martialis, it was more profitable in Ravenna to own а reservoir than vineyards, as the price of water was higher than that ofwine. Most historians from the period agree that this restrictive law was not particularly effective, and in 276 the emperor Probus revoked it. Ву that time, wines from Gaul had Ьесоте quite popular in Rome.

According to Roger Dion, the first and still highly respected wine historian in France, two important French grape varieties were cultivated during that particular period. Allobrog­ica, later renamed Pinot Noir, was grown in the Rhome Vаllеу, while in the region of Burdigala (modern Bordeaux), the Celtic tribe Bituriges Vivisci (kings of the world) cultivated Biturica, now better known as Cabernet.Medicine also contributed to the adoption of wine into the everyday life of ancient people. Hippocrates (460-377 вс), supported later by sev­eral other Greek physicians, noted the salubrious effect of fermentation in wine. Cato recommend­ed particular wines as а cure for dysentery and constipation. The wines from the Alban Hills were believed to have а soothing effect.

Asclepiades of Bithynia, а Greek physician who settled in Rome in the late second century BC, developed the exist­ing knowledge considerably bу trying to establish at what point wine stopped having а therapeutic effect and becamе harmful to the patient's hea1th, as well as which wines should  bе used to treat par­ticular diseases.