taunt his opponent Demosthenes in public with being a “water drinker”; and Socrates on many occasions has given proof that he possessed a very hard head.  Yet naturally the Athenian has too acute a sense of things fit and dignified, too noble a perception of the natural harmony, to commend drunkenness on any but rare occasions.  Wine is rather valued as imparting a happy moderate glow, making the thoughts come faster, and the tongue more witty.  Wine raises the spirits of youth, and makes old age forget its gray hairs.  It chases away thoughts of the dread hereafter, when one will lose consciousness of the beautiful sun, and perhaps wander a “strengthless shade” through the dreary underworld.

There is a song attributed to Anacreon, and nearly everybody in Athens approves the sentiment:—­

Thirsty earth drinks up the rain,
Trees from earth drink that again;
Ocean drinks the air, the sun
Drinks the sea, and him, the moon. 
Any reason, canst thou think,
I should thirst, while all these drink?[*]

[*]Translation from Von Falke’s “Greece and Rome.”

157.  Greek Vintages.—­All Greeks, however, drink their wine so diluted with water that it takes a decided quantity to produce a “reaction.”  The average drinker takes three parts water to two of wine.  If he is a little reckless the ratio is four of water to three of wine; equal parts “make men mad” as the poet says, and are probably reserved for very wild dinner parties.  As for drinking pure wine no one dreams of the thing—­it is a practice fit for Barbarians.  There is good reason, however, for this plentiful use of water.  In the original state Greek wines were very strong, perhaps almost as alcoholic as whisky, and the Athenians have no Scotch climate to excuse the use of such stimulants.[*]

[*]There was a wide difference of opinion as to the proper amount of dilution.  Odysseus ("Odyssey,” IX. 209) mixed his fabulously strong wine from Maron in Thrace with twenty times its bulk of water.  Hesiod abstemiously commended three parts of water to one of wine.  Zaleucus, the lawgiver of Italian Locri, established the death penalty for drinking unmixed wine save by physicians’ orders ("Atheneus,” X. 33).

No wine served in Athens, however, will appeal to a later-day connoisseur.  It is all mixed with resin, which perhaps makes it more wholesome, but to enjoy it then becomes an acquired taste.  There are any number of choice vintages, and you will be told that the local Attic wine is not very desirable, although of course it is the cheapest.  Black wine is the strongest and sweetest; white wine is the weakest; rich golden is the driest and most wholesome.  The rocky isles and headlands of the Aegean seem to produce the best vintage—­Thasos, Cos, Lesbos, Rhodes, all boast their grapes; but the best wine beyond a doubt is from Chios.[*] It will fetch a mina ($18 [1914 or $310.14 2000]) the “metreta,” i.e. nearly 50 cents [1914 or $8.62 2000] per quart.  At the same time you can buy a “metreta” of common Attic wine for four drachmae (72 cents [1914 or $12.41 2000]), or say two cents [1914 or 34 cents 2000] per quart.  The latter—­when one considers the dilution—­is surely cheap enough for the most humble.