The books of Horace, while he was still living, became what we might call school text-books; that is, they were read by young students, which must have increased their influence on the mind.  Imagine that to-day a great European poet should describe and extol in magnificent verses the sensuous delight of smoking opium; should deify, in a mythology rich in imagery, the inebriating virtues of this product.  Imagine that the verses of this poet were read in the schools:  you may then by comparison picture to yourself the action of the poems of Horace.

The political and military triumph of Rome in the Mediterranean world signified therefore the world triumph of wine.  So true is this, that in Europe and America to-day the sons of Rome drink wine as their national daily beverage.  The Anglo-Saxons and Germans drink it in the same way as the Romans of the second century B.C., on formal occasions, or as a medicine.  When you see at an European or American table the gold or the ruby of the fair liquor gleaming in the glasses, remember that this is another inheritance from the Roman Empire and an ultimate effect of the victories of Rome; that probably we should drink different beverages if Caesar had been overcome at Alesia or if Mithridates had been able decisively to reconquer Asia Minor from Rome.  It astonishes you to see between politics and enology, between the great historical events and the lot of a humble plant, so close a bond.

I can show you another aspect of this phenomenon, even stranger and more philosophical.  I have already said that at the beginning of the first century before Christ, although Italy had already planted many vineyards and gathered generous crops, Italian wines were still little sought after, while the contrary was true of the Greek.  Pliny writes: 

The wines of Italy were for long despised....  Foreign wines had great vogue for some time even after the consulate of Opimius [121 B.C.], and up to the times of our grandfathers, although then Falernian was already discovered.

In the second half of the last century of the Republic and the first half of the first century B.C., this condition of things changed; Italian wines rose to great fame and demand, and took from the Greek the pre-eminence they so long had held.  Finally, this pre-eminence formed one of the spoils of world conquest, and that not one of the meagrest.  Pliny, writing in the second half of the first century, says (bk. 14, ch. 11): 

    Among the eighty most celebrated qualities of wine made in all
    the world, Italy makes about two thirds; therefore in this it
    outdoes other peoples.