Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/245

Rh bosom of their family, with wife by the side and children on the knee. And, finally, we find pictures of them using wine like beasts—men being carried home from supper on the backs of slaves; women staggering round, hopelessly and indecently intoxicated. Verily "there is nothing new under the sun."

The ancient Persian writings, the Zend Avesta, dating back to the period of Zoroaster, possibly 4000 to 6000 contain like the Rig-Veda many references to a sacred drink, homa, and a popular drink, hura. Wine seems to have been of somewhat later discovery, but, once introduced, proved extremely popular. The lowlanders, living in the rich, warm plains of Asia Minor, were especially addicted to its use, and the temperate young prince Cyrus, coming down from the mountains with his Persian warriors, found little difficulty in routing the effeminate Medes. But the attractions of luxury proved too strong for them, and, in a few generations, both rulers and people had badly degenerated. The famous Xerxes, the Great King, the descendant of Cyrus and monarch of Asia Minor, left as his epitaph no great record of valiant deeds, but the sole fact that "he was able to drink more wine than any man in his dominions." Small wonder, then, that his forces were so easily routed by the Greeks.

For, of all races that have yet appeared, the Greeks have been best able to use alcoholic beverages freely and yet with temperance. Their land was fertile and their crops varied, and they early learned how to prepare intoxicating drinks from barley, figs, the palm, and other sources. And their wines, especially those from the Greek islands, have retained their reputation, not for hundreds but for thousands of years. The vine was widely cultivated, and valued as one of the greatest gifts of the gods to man; and yet, such was their respect for the human body and such their dread of injuring it by excesses, that we