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72 pages 2 hours read

Tom Standage

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005

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Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Section 2: "Wine in Greece and Rome"

Chapter 3 Summary

Chapters 3 and 4 comprise Section 2 of the book: “Wine in Greece and Rome”. Chapter 3, “The Delight of Wine,” opens with an account of a Mesopotamian king, Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria, who marked the inauguration of his new capital at Nimrud with a mighty feast. This feast was notable because, as well as the customary beer, Ashurnasirpal provided his guests with an equal quantity of wine. Given that wine had to be imported to Mesopotamia, it was very expensive—ten times the price of beer—which made this an impressive show of wealth. Unlike beer, which was available to everyone in Mesopotamia, wine was only available to the elite and was used primarily in religious rituals. Under Ashurnasirpal’s rule, drinking wine “developed into an increasingly elaborate and formal social ritual” (46), so that wine became associated with power and privilege.

There is archaeological evidence for the existence of wine from the Neolithic period, between 9,000-4,000 BCE, in the Zagros Mountains, a region that corresponds to modern-day Armenia and northern Iran. The same agricultural developments that made brewing beer possible enabled the development of viticulture too: the production of surplus grain allowed wine-makers to focus on their craft without worrying about growing their own food, while the invention of pottery around 6,000 BCE allowed them to store wine for longer periods of time. Wine-making spread from the Zagros Mountains throughout the Mediterranean and the Near East, where it was similarly an elite or ceremonial beverage.

Ashurnasirpal’s feast made wine a fashionable social—rather than ceremonial—drink. As a result, demand for it increased and as larger volumes were produced and traded, so that it became more widely available. Two centuries later, wine was no longer considered appropriate as a religious offering. Even in Mesopotamia, beer was no longer considered the most civilized of drinks. Instead, wine came to occupy that position, and nowhere more so than in Ancient Greece, whose Golden Age provided the foundation for contemporary Western thought, including the distinction between East and West. While not a unified nation, the Greeks distinguished between those who spoke Greek and those who did not; those that didn't were called barbarians. In particular, the Greeks defined themselves in opposition to their eastern enemies, the Persians.

Wine held religious significance in Greek culture, as evinced by the Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, but they took a “scientific approach to viticulture” (53). Wine was Greece’s primary export, and its economic importance was such that grain had to be imported to Attica, where all agricultural efforts were directed towards the production of wine. While wine was available to all levels of Greek society, even slaves, the quality of wine people drank varied greatly. In this way, wine, much like beer in Mesopotamia, became a tool for social differentiation.

Standage pays particular attention to symposia, formal wine drinking parties that provide an insight into Greek attitudes toward wine, and to Greek society more broadly. The Greeks used these drinking parties as opportunities to outdo each other in wit, poetry, or rhetoric” (52), and to prove just how civilized they were compared to beer-drinking barbarians. The Greeks always mixed their wine with water; to drink undiluted wine was a form of barbarism and only Dionysus could do so safely. There were many formal elements to a symposium, which were “an all-male aristocratic ritual that took place in a special ‘men’s room’” (56). Despite their sophistication, these symposia could descend into rowdiness, where members of a drinking group, or hetaireia, would carouse in the streets to show their strength and loyalty.

Wine-drinking and the symposia played an important role in Greek philosophy, too, and inspired a popular literary form, epitomized by Plato’s Symposium. Drinking wine was thought to remove inhibitions and reveal one’s “true” nature, so it was a perfect aid to the pursuit of intellectual truth. These drinking parties also made useful political analogies, where they represented one of Ancient Greece’s most lasting legacies: democracy. However, the Ancient Greeks version of democracy was more limited than our modern one, and included only free men, not women or the slaves, that were a fundamental element of Greek society. Standage notes that by the fifth century BCE, “Greek wine was being exported as far afield as southern France to the west, Egypt to the South, the Crimean Peninsula to the east, and the Danube region to the north” (67). Along with its wine, Greece exported its knowledge of viticulture and many of its values. 

Chapter 4 Summary

Greek influence is particularly evident in the culture of the Roman Empire, which is the focus of Chapter 4. While the Romans superseded the Greeks as the dominant power in Europe by the second century BCE, they mimicked many of the Greeks traditions, including their love of wine. In fact, Standage suggests that the “cultivation and consumption of wine provided a way to bridge Greek and Roman values” (70). The agricultural origins of which the Romans were so proud were maintained by growing vines, while the wine produced was drunk at Greek style parties.

Wine was so popular in the Roman world that small farmers could not meet demand and many small farms were sold to become large estates as wine production became more commercial. These farmers and their families then moved to the cities. Wine production dominated Roman agriculture to the point that there was a limited amount of land available to grow grain, which had to be imported from Rome’s African colonies. Rome exported the habit of wine-drinking throughout its empire and Italian wine “was shipped as far as the southern Nile and northern India” (72).

Despite being drunk by every member of Roman society, wine continues to be a tool of social distinction and the type of wine one drank, and one’s knowledge of wine, reflected one’s status in society. Standage relates the fate of a Roman politician, Marcus Antonius to illustrate this point. During a struggle for the leadership of Rome, Marcus Antonius sought refuge in the home of a low ranking acquaintance; because of the difference in their status, his friend could not serve Marcus Antonius the same wine he drank and so sent a servant out to buy a finer vintage. This aroused the suspicions of the wine merchant and Marcus Antonius was discovered and killed.

The finest of all Roman wines was Falernian, which became synonymous with luxury and which was thought to have been a gift from the god Bacchus to a farmer who, unaware of the god’s true identity, offered him shelter for the night. The indulgence in fine wines was condemned by many, who desired a return to the frugality which had formerly characterized the Romans. Other feared that such indulgence might incur the wrath of the poorer members of society. As a result, a number of “sumptuary laws” (77) were passed in an attempt to curb the worst excesses of the Roman elite.

Standage notes that, while the Romans mixed their wine with water as the Greeks did, there were significant differences between how wine was consumed in the two cultures. At Greek symposia, wine was mixed with water in a communal vessel and then served to the participants. At Roman banquets, or convivium, however, different wine was served to different guests according to their social status and the drinkers mixed water into their own wine. Cheaper wines were often mixed with other ingredients in an attempt to preserve them or to hide the fact that the wine had spoiled. Worse than these adulterated wines was posca, made by mixing water with sour wine and often given to soldiers during long campaigns when it was used to purify water. But even posca was better than lora, the wine served to slaves, which was made by “soaking and pressing the skins, seeds, and stalks left over from wine making to produce a thin, weak and bitter wine” (81).

Wine was also considered medicinal in Ancient Rome and was used as part of the humorous system of medicine developed by Hippocrates. This system posited that illness resulted from an imbalance in the body’s four “humors,” which were blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Wine “was regarded as being hot and dry, so that it promoted yellow bile and reduced phlegm” (82); it was bad for a fever but good for a cold. Standage also notes that wine was a key ingredient in the attempts to develop a universal antidote to illness and poisons.

When Rome fell to the beer-drinking Northern tribes in the fifth century, the availability of wine was reduced but wine-drinking was not eradicated altogether. One factor in wine-drinking culture’s survival was its association with Christianity, which gave wine divine significance. While the wine drinking culture of the Mediterranean remained largely the same, in other parts of the former Roman Empire it changed dramatically as a result of the rise of Islam. According to tradition, when two of Muhammad’s disciples got into a fight during a drinking party, he prayed to Allah for guidance. Allah answered by proscribing alcohol and gambling. This ban on alcohol included its medicinal use, although it wasn’t always adhered to and some Muslims argued that drunkenness, rather than alcohol itself, is what Muhammad proscribed. As Standage notes, by banning wine, a symbol of Greek and Roman civilization, “Muslims signaled their rejection of the old notions of civilization” (87). 

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

Standage’s discussion of wine begins with an account of a Mesopotamian king, drawing a connection between the first and second sections of the book. In this way, he posits a developmental relationship between these two stages of history and the drinks that he argues define them. While wine does not completely replace beer, certainly not in Mesopotamia or Ancient Egypt where it remains expensive, it does come, in those regions to be seen as a symbol of sophistication and civilization. In the Mediterranean, and Greece particularly, where the climate is particularly suited to viticulture, wine becomes an integral part of the culture. This is particularly evident in the development of rituals around wine-drinking, such as the symposia, or formal drinking parties. These rituals were central to the Greeks’ sense of themselves as a civilized people, who were different from, and superior to, their “barbaric” neighbors. Wine-drinking and its attendant rituals also offered a useful metaphor for Greek society and politics, as evinced in the work of philosophers such as Plato, for whom the ideal wine-drinker—Socrates—was also the perfect thinker. However, it is important to remember that these elements of Greek society—many of which continue to be celebrated as foundational to western culture—were limited to adult men of a certain class. Greece was not a democratic utopia; it relied on labor from enslaved individuals and was deeply misogynistic. The only women present at the symposia were servers or entertainers.

In some ways, wine-drinking in Ancient Rome made the exclusions at the heart of Greek society more explicit. Wine was a tool of social distinction, a way to differentiate between the patrons and clients that made up the Roman class system. However, the Romans were also concerned with distinguishing themselves from the Greeks, and the decadence that caused their downfall. This anxiety suggests how deeply wine was associated with Greece, from where wine and its associated values were exported farther than ever before. The Roman Empire expanded the borders of the wine-drinking world even further, and reinforced the connection between wine-drinking and European civilization. This took on a religious dimension with the rise of Christianity, in which wine played a divinely symbolic role. While both Greece and Rome had a god of wine, Dionysus and Bacchus, respectively, the rise of Christianity gave wine a divinely symbolic role. In this way, Islam’s prohibition of alcohol was also a rejection of those cultures it was most associated with: Greece and Rome. Much as the Greeks had formalized wine-drinking in an attempt to distinguish themselves from others, so the Muslim proscription of alcohol functioned to underline their independence from the European powers. 

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