ell under Roman dominion; even also while they
preserved independence, as little by little the Roman influence
intensified in strength. By example, with the merchants, in
literature, Rome poured out everywhere the ruddy and perfumed drink
of Dionysos, and drove to the wilds and the villages, remote and poor,
the national mead--the beverage of fermented barley akin to modern
beer.

The Italian proprietors who were enlarging their vineyards--especially
those of the valley of the Po, where already at the time of Strabo the
grape-crop was very abundant--soon learned that beyond the Alps lived
numerous customers. Under Augustus, Arles was already a large market
for wines, both Greek and Italian; during the same period, there
passed through Aquileia and Leibach considerable trade in Italian wine
with the Danube regions. In the Roman castles along the Rhine, among
the multitudes of Italians who followed the armies, there was not
wanting the wine-dealer who sought with his liquor to infuse into the
torpid blood of the barbarian a ray of southern warmth. Everywhere
the Roman influence conquered national traditions; wine reigned on the
tables of the rich as the lordly beverage, and the more the Gauls, the
Pannonians, the Dalmatians, drank, the more money Italian proprietors
made from their vineyards.

I have said that Rome diffused at once its wine and its literature:
it also diffused its wine through its literature, a fact upon which
I should like to dwell a moment, since it is odd and interesting
for diverse reasons. We always make a mistake in judging the great
literary works of the past. Two or three centuries after they were
written, they serve only to bring a certain delight to the mind;
consequently, we take for granted they were written only to bring us
this delight. On the contrary, almost all literary works, even the
greatest, had at first quite another office; they served to spread
or to counteract among the author's contemporaries certain ideas and
sentiments that the interests of certain directing forces favoured or
opposed; indeed very often the authors were admired and remunerated
far more for these services rendered to their contemporaries than for
the lofty beauty of the literary works themselves.

This is the case with the odes of Horace. To understand all that they
meant to say to contemporaries, one must imagine Roman society as it
was then, hardly out of a century of conquests and revolutions, in
disorder