eyards 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.

The first wines that came into note seem to have been those of
southern Italy, especially Falernian, and Julius Caesar seems to have
done much to make it known. Pliny tells us (bk. 14, ch. 15) that, in
the great popular banquet offered to celebrate his triumph after his
return from Egypt, he gave to every group of banqueters a cask of
Chian and an _amphora_ of Falernian, and that in his third consulate
he distributed four kinds of wine to the populace, Lesbian, Chian,
Falernian, and Mamertine; two Greek qualities and two Italian. It is
evident that he wished officially to recognise national wines as equal
to the foreign, in favour of Italian vintners; so that Julius Caesar,
that universal man, has a place not only in the history of the great
Italian conquests, but also in that of Italian viticulture.

The wines of the valley of the Po were not long in making place for
themselves after those of southern Italy. We know that Augustus drank
only Rhetian wine; that is, of the Valtellina, one of the valleys
famous also to-day for several delicious wines; we know that Livia
drank Istrian wine.

I have said that Italy exported much wine to Gaul, to the Danube
regions, and to Germany; to this may be added another remark,
both curious and interesting. _The Periplus of the Erytrian Sea_,
attributed to Arrianus, a kind of practical manual of geography,
compiled in the second century A.D., tells us that in that century
Italian wine was exported as far as India; so far had