Who can entertain a doubt that some kinds of wine are more agreeable to the palate than others, or that even out of the very same vat1 there are occasionally produced wines that are by no means of equal goodness, the one being much superior to the other, whether it is that it is owing to the cask,2 or to some other fortuitous circumstance? Let each person, therefore, constitute himself his own judge as to which kind it is that occupies the pre-eminence. Livia3 Augusta, who lived to her eighty-second year,4 attributed her longevity to the wine of Pucinum,5 as she never drank any other. This wine is grown near a bay of the Adriatic, not far from Mount Timavus, upon a piece of elevated rocky ground, where the sea-breeze ripens a few grapes, the produce of which supplies a few amphoræ: there is not a wine that is deemed superior to this for medicinal purposes. I am strongly of opinion that this is the same wine, the produce of the Adriatic Gulf, upon which the Greeks have bestowed such wonderful encomiums, under the name of Prætetianum.