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in the fifth century BC to be the leader in matters cultural. This century, so rich in stimulating events (Athens was at war on average once every decade), and this town, where it would have been possible to have known Socrates, Praxiteles, Plato, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Hippocrates, and Anaxagoras, together have left a treasure trove of opinions about alcohol, specifically wine. From this cultural age of gold a coherent portrait emerges. Poets, playwrights, politicians, and philosophers set down their feelings about wine, which generally were enthusiastic. Their compliments were almost universal, their warnings few, if dire. Wine was a force for good, a substance that enabled people to relax while simultaneously elevating their minds, inspiring drinkers to “laughter and wisdom and prudence and learning.” According to the epic poet Panyasis:
    Wine is like fire, an aid and sweet relief,
Wards off all ills and comforts every grief,
Wine can of every feast the joys enhance,
It kindles soft desire, it leads the dance.
    Not only were the Greeks passionate about wine, they were also discriminating drinkers. Like the Egyptians, with whom they traded and from whom they may have learned some of the skills of winemaking, they believed certain vineyards had been blessed with magical soil and that their vintages cast a spell on people lucky enough to drink them. Instead, however, of labeling them nfr nfr and leaving it at that, Greek poets rhapsodized over their favorites:
    There is a wine which Saprian they call,
Soon as the seals from whose rich amphorae fall,
Violets and roses mix their lovely scent,
And Hyacinths, in one rich fragrance blent;
You might believe Jove’s nectar sparkled there,
With such ambrosial odor reeks the air.
    While some vineyards produced wine with sensational flavors, others were believed to generate peculiar side effects, not all of them desirable. The wine of Heraea in Arcadia, for example, was reputed to “drive men out of their senses and make women inclined to pregnancy.” Moreover, certain vintages were reckoned to possess specific medicinal qualities. There were special wines for loosening the bowels or calming their wind, for sweetening the breath, and for healing wounds and cancers. Indeed Hippocrates (d. 370 BC), the father of Western medicine, advocated the use of wine to treat every illness he had identified, bar one—should a patient be suffering from “an overpowering heaviness of the brain,” then “there must be total abstinence from wine.”
    Notwithstanding the care taken in their manufacture, the taste and appearance of Greek wines would shock modern palates. Archaeological evidence suggests that most were resinated—i.e., were treated with and flavored by the gum of the terebinth tree. The purpose of this additive was to retard the oxidation process and prevent the wine from becoming vinegar. Other common additives included seawater, spices, and honey. Furthermore, wine was not filtered when it was made and had to be strained before being served, lest the drinker choke on stalks, pits, and other such detritus.
    As a general rule, the Greeks did not drink their beloved nectar straight but mixed it with water. This habit, according to the physician Philomides, could be traced back to a happy accident—once upon a time in the heroic age, while a group of Greeks were drinking by the seashore, a violent thunderstorm broke out that drove them undercover and topped up their wine bowl with water. When they returned after the storm had passed, they tasted the mixture and found it to be far more pleasant, and far less inflammatory, than neat wine. Inspiration for the beverage was credited to Zeus, the Thunderer, king of the gods, who ruled the world from Mount Olympus; and who was toasted thereafter at formal gatherings “as the originator of rain-storms, [and] the author of the painless mixture derived from the mingling of wine and rain.”
    The Greeks considered the consumption of