Talk:Ancient Rome and wine

Secondary sources

I have a suspicion this is full of nonsense, taken from secondary sources. I removed the most egregious item I saw on my quick fly-by: the bit about Pliny the Elder saying that Pompeiian bathers ran out of the baths naked to git them some wine. Nowhere does Pliny say anything of the sort, whether about Pompeii or any other baths. The closest he comes is a general remark (23.29) that must should not be drunk immediately after a bath without a breather, it'll kill you. As far as I can tell, he never mentions the baths at Pompeii at all; and I haven't found any story about anyone running naked out of baths. Bill (talk) 19:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I did use secondary sources from some of the most respected and reliable wine historians and experts. The particular Pliny references comes from Hugh Johnson's Vintage pg 64 where he describes Pliny being amused by the Pompeians and then quotes Pliny directly-

“ ...unable to wait to get to the table, no, not even to put on their clothes, but still naked and panting, they snatch up huge vessels as if to show off their strength, and pour down the whole of the contents, so as to bring them up again at once, and then drink another draught. And this they do a second and third time, as if they were born for the purpose of wasting wine, and as if it were impossible for liquor to be poured away unless by using the human body as a funnel. ”

While Johnson doesn't say which section of Pliny's work it came from in the source (Outside of noting he was using Rackham's 1938 translation), a google search quickly found this. In reading that section I do note that Pompeii itself is not mentioned in this particular part. I can accept that Johnson might have been combining sources to say that this Pliny quote was describing Pompeiian bathers and will gladly accept correction and improvement. However I do think it is a bit of a stretch to have suspicions that this entire article is full of nonsense. While no source is infallible, I think if you take the time to look a little deeper, you will find that this sources are very credible and reliable. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 20:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Old saying?

Growing up, my father once told me of a Roman saying, "only a barbarian would drink straight wine" (or something like that). Is there any validity to that? Or is it a little bit of urban legend? —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 23:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

While I don't know the source or validity of the saying itself, the Romans (and Greeks) were quite fond of diluting and mixing their wines with various ingredients. I can see them naturally assuming that anything they do is the "civilized way" with the opposite (drinking the wine straight) being barbaric. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 01:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Roman Writings on Wine

The Apicius, an ancient Roman cookbook, presents many ways the Roman's used wine in food preperation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MVossen (talk • contribs) 18:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Amount of Wine drunk per psrson

The phrase "about a bottle of wine per citizen" is misleading. Wine was drunk by slaves on a daily basis, and slaves vastly outnumbered citizens. So the average amount of wine drunk per PERSON is much lower, less than a glass a day. This should be made clear in the article, for accuracy and so prospective alcoholics are not enabled. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.141.37.103 (talk) 12:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

@190.141.37.103: I know this is an older comment, but I felt obliged to reply. That would actually yield a higher volume of wine drunk, not less. Aside from that, it's pretty ridiculous to censor information because you feel it is "enabling alcoholics". The fact is that we know, through both archaeological and textual sources, that people drank fairly liberally throughout most of history. In Tudor England, for example, we know that people were drinking way over a gallon of ale and/or beer per day, of varying strengths (and often to excess in the evening). It lessened with time certainly, but these practises really weren't curbed until fairly recently in history, with the excesses of the past downplayed through historical revisionism (largely as a result of the temperance movement). It's simply historical fact that your average Roman (whether citizen, freeman, or slave) drank more than we would today consider "proper", though it should be said that these are all rough estimates. Try to be neutral, please. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 12:25, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Roman women and wine

The article's claim, "Husbands were legally allowed to kill or divorce their wives if caught committing such an offense" (i.e., drinking wine) is probably based on Aulus Gellius' statement (in Attic Nights 10.23.3) that Cato the Elder "reports that women were not only judged put also punished by a judge no less severely if they had been guilty of drinking wine than if they had been guilty of unchastity and adultery." Once Gellius quotes Cato's own words, however, it becomes clear that Cato said no such thing: "The husband ... who divorces his wife is her judge, as though he were a censor. ... [I]f she has drunk wine, she is punished; if she has done wrong with another man, she is condemned to death." (Gellius, Attic Nights 10.23.4). Note that Cato nowhere says that women may be killed for drinking wine, only for committing adultery.

Moreover, we have evidence that women drank wine even in archaic Rome. Brigette Ford Russell, "Wine, Women and the Polis: Gender and the Formation of the City-State in Archaic Rome", Greece & Rome 50.1 (2003) 77-84, esp. 80 and 84, points out that 7th-century women in Latium were buried with "the paraphernalia of feasting and drinking: mixing bowls on folding bronze stands, and Punic amphorae containing imported Sardinian wine" (p. 80). Moreover, the Lucretia story in Livy (1.57.9) shows aristocratic "Roman women of the archaic period, socializing at a sumptuous banquet with their friends (in convivio luxuque cum aequalibus)" (p. 84). Xiphophilos (talk) 21:01, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

(And four years later) Exactly so. Gellius got it wrong - I came across the very same references when working on the Bona dea article. I don't think we need a section in which the sole supporting reference is authored by a non-historian (he's actually trained as a lawyer, and seems to have taken the misogynistic Cato's strictures as law, or at least evidence of custom and mos maiorum). Excessive drinking, and drunks, were not approved regardless of status or gender. Drinking habits should be dealt with under a single subhead, imo. Haploidavey (talk) 14:27, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Evidence required

I stumbled a bit over this line in the section regarding wine and women: "Some conservative Romans imagined an archaic period of their history when women were forbidden to drink wine at all, but modern writers who claim that there was such a prohibition in historical times are totally mistaken." Not only does it not sound like encyclopedic writing, but it also lacks a source. Trysalandra (talk) 03:12, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

(unindented post above) Quite; and I doubt that many, if any modern historians would make such a claim. "Some conservative Romans imagined an archaic period of their history when women were forbidden to drink wine at all" is enough. See also the previous talk-page section, and the Bona dea, Liber and Venus articles, and their sources. Haploidavey (talk) 10:59, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Just read the whole article. Some sections, and probably some sources, seem to glide over important matters central to wine as an essential part of Roman culture. Major ommissions include any reference to Rome's wine festivals (including Vinalia): to temeton (sacrificial grade wine) and its uses/misuses: ordinary wine and ritual impurity (spurcum): and the backgound to the supposed prohibitions against women drinking strong wine -- or any wine at all. Going to rewrite certain sections by stages. Haploidavey (talk) 11:25, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Epitaph

The epitaph quoted on the virtues and vices of wine contains the word "se<t>", presumably indicating that the "t" is missing from the inscription. The Latin word for "but" is however not "set" but "sed" so the restored letter should be "d", not "t". I have there made this correction on the assumption that "t" is an error. However, I have not seen the cited reference. If anyone has, is there some reason to believe that the restored letter should be "t"?Bill (talk) 09:13, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Strength of ancient wine

Following a query in my user talk, I thought about the below.

Wines were often very alcoholic, with Pliny noting that a cup of Falernian would catch fire from a candle flame drawn too close.

I am an experienced home wine maker and I know that it's impossible to make wine with more than about 15% alcohol. Wary of original research, I looked for a source for this. Although the following is not the best source, it bears out what I believed. I have therefore removed the suspect material.[1] --Wubslin (talk) 17:33, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

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