Book 10
40
And a great many of the guests were drinking, and putting lumps of meal into their wine, a custom which Hegesander of Delphi mentions. Accordingly Epinicus, when Mnesiptolemus had given a recitation of his history, in which it was written how Seleucus had used meal in his wine, having written a drama entitled Mnesiptolemus, and having turned him into ridicule, as the comic poets do, and using his own words about that sort of drink, represents him as saying:— Once I beheld the noble king Seleucus, One summer's day, drinking with mighty pleasure Some wine with meal steep'd in it. (So I took A note of it, and show'd it to a crowd, Although it was an unimportant thing, Yet still my genius could make it serious.) He took some fine old Thasian wine, and eke Some of the liquor which the Attic bee Distils who culls the sweets from every flower; And that he mingled in a marble cup, And mix'd the liquor with fair Ceres' corn, And took the draught, a respite from the heat. And the same writer tells us that in the Therades islands men mash lentils and pease into meal, instead of ordinary corn, and put that into the wine, and that this drink is said to be better than that in which the meal is mixed.
