Ancient Greek Wine
Greek people grew wine both to drink themselves and to sell to other people, from the Bronze Age right through the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Most Greek people drank wine every day. Because the water was often unsafe to drink, people thought it was safer to drink wine.
But they did not think it was okay to get drunk. Most people mixed their wine with water, so that it wouldn't make them drunk. If a man or woman drank unmixed wine, people suspected that person of being an alcoholic.
A lot of Greek wine cups have a message at the bottom about what happens to you if you drink too much:
Did you notice that the little naked boy in the picture is a slave?
To find out more about Greek wine in antiquity, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Ancient Wine : The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, by Patrick E. McGovern (2003)
Story of Wine, by Hugh Johnson (1998).
Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece, by Andrew Dalby (reprinted 1996).
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