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trodden;" he further mentions "a mode (ratio) of preserving musts in the first stage of ferment" (in primo fervore); and again shows how to arrest ferment, when by carelessness it arises in must, by the use of anything that has sulphur in it, as pumice-stone (pumice) or lava, the yolk of eggs, or sulphur fumes.

Pliny closes this book (c. 28) with one of the most eloquent of total-abstinence appeals ever penned or uttered. "How strange," he exclaims, "that men will devote such labor and expense for wine, when water, as is seen in the case of animals, is the most healthful (saluberrimum) drink; a drink supplied, too, by nature; while wine takes away reason (mente), engenders insanity, leads to thousands of crimes, and imposes such an enormous expense on nations." He says that confirmed drinkers "through fear of death" resulting from intoxication, take as counteractives "poisons such as hemlock" (cicutam,) and "others which it would be shameful to name." yet," asks he, "why do they thus act?" drunkard never sees the sun-rise ; his life by drinking is shortened; from wine comes that pallid hue, those drooping eyelids, those sore eyes, those trembling hands, sleep made hideous by furies during nights of restlessness; and as the crowning penalty of intoxication (præmium summum inebrietatis) those dreams

"And

"The

Pliny on Abstinence from Wine. 145

of beastly lust whose enjoyment is forbidden." He adds that many are led into this condition "by the self-interested advice of physicians (medicorum placitis) who seek to commend themselves by some novel remedy." It was this "that led to the cruelty of Tiberius; this corrupts youth, as was even the son of Cicero;" while, he adds, "as I think, the great evils brought on us by Antony, came through his intoxication." In later allusions new and important light is thrown on Roman experience as to wine.

Closing up in the opening of his 23d book his statements as to wine, striking the balance between those who extol and those who condemn it, he says (xxiii. 1): "All must is useless for digestion (stomacho), but is a gentle aperient to the bowels" (venis). As to intoxicating wines, professedly taken as a medicine, he exclaims: "Moreover, how uncertain the result, whether in drinking there may be aid or poison (auxilium sit aut venenum"). "In the history of medicine," he continues, "differing views have been held ;" some saying," by the moderate use of wine the muscles are strengthened, but by its excess they are injured, and so with the eyes.' Among others, the physician Asclepiades extravagantly remarked: "The virtues possessed by wine are hardly equalled by the gods themselves." As the result of all testimonies Pliny

makes these notes: "Sweet wines are less useful for digestion (stomacho); old wine mixed with water is more nutritious; for while sweet wine is less inebriating it floods (innatat) the stomach." As to its effects on the mind, he notes," it has passed into a proverb 'Sapientiam vino adumbrari,' that wisdom is beclouded by wine." As to its unnatural influence on appetite, he declares, "We men owe it to wine that we alone, of all animals, drink when not thirsty." Many like suggestions are added.

If any age was ever advanced in its clear views of the nature of wine as "the fruit of that forbidden tree" which "brought death into the world," and much of "human woe," it was this. climactic age of Roman-Grecian culture. It should be observed that the language then perfected was chosen for the embodiment both of the first translation of the Old Testament and also of the New Testament. This climactic age, moreover, of the practical Romans, was the one Divinely chosen for the mission of Jesus and of His apostles; who taught the permanent law of duty as to intoxicating wines.

WINES IN THE GREEK TRANSLATION OF THE OLD

TESTAMENT.

In the century following Alexander's Grecian Empire, Hebrew translators prepared the Greek

Wine in the Greek Old Testament. 147

version of the Old Testament Scriptures which was used by Christ and His apostles; to which was added the books called "apocryphal" or "deutero-canonical;" containing valuable illustrations of Hebrew history and sentiment, written in the Greek of the Alexandrine age. These indicate how Hebrew terms for wine were translated into Greek; and what ideas as to wine were held by Hebrews associated with Greeks.

As to the Greek terms used for Hebrew terms for wines and their differing effects, a careful review of the authorities already cited is, for two reasons, demanded. First, the Greek language itself took on special modifications, when after the death of Alexander the Greeks who dwelt in Asia came to use Asiatic words and forms of speech. Second, the nature of those modifications is not so fully manifested in the Alexandrine Greek writers as it is in the Hebrew authors of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and in the New Testament writers. in Canada, the French natives have one class of provincialisms, and the English, speaking French, another class, so was it in Syria and Egypt from B.C. 250 to A.D. 100; the era of the Greek Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

As,

With two noteworthy exceptions, the Hebrew term tirosh, as well as the word yayin, is rendered by the general term oinos, wine. This, for a

double reason, was natural. First, foreigners usually learn, in a new country, general terms before they fully comprehend specific terms. Second, the Greek specific term for unfermented wine, gleukos, was of late invention; it was when invented, like the Latin "mustum," but an adjective slightly changed in form to be used as a noun; and yet more, as Aristotle intimates, it was, though a special term, ranked under the general term oinos. In two cases, however, as we have noted, the Greek translators are specific in their translation of tirosh. In Isaiah lxv. 8, it is rendered rox, or burst-fruit; the connection, as heretofore mentioned, indicating that the reference of tirosh is to fresh grape-juice, still in the grape, and so abundant as to burst the skin.

In Hosea iv. 11, however, where the English translation is, "Whoredom and wine (yayin) and new wine (tirosh) take away the heart," the Greeks make the object the subject; and bringing forward from v. 12, the words "my people" they render: "The heart of my people takes to (exdexato) fornication and wine (oinon) and methusma." The English translators agreeing with all mediæval versions, saw reasons for employing the words "new wine" to render tirosh; those reasons have already been indicated; and the ordinary Greek rendering of tirosh elsewhere was one among those reasons. The only re

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