Grapes

Grapes, Vines, and Wine

In Ancient Greek Texts

In Greek literature, wine (οἶνος) is both a staple drink and a pharmakon-carrier: it shows up as the default medium for mixing, flavoring, and delivering stronger additives—exactly what the symposium’s krater is for. The drinking event is ritualized (symposium = “drinking together”), and the host-appointed symposiarch could regulate strength and amount.

Crucially, Greeks often frame unmixed wine as socially “barbaric” or physically risky. A compact ancient statement preserved by Athenaeus quotes the comic poet Eubulus, who has Dionysus describe “three bowls” as the limit for the temperate and explicitly links bad outcomes to excess; in the same discussion Athenaeus even remarks that half-and-half mixing brings madness, while unmixed brings bodily collapse - a clear ancient moral/physiological warning that strength matters, and ancient wine was often mixed strong in Dionysian events.

For “strong” Homeric wines: Pramnian wine appears as a named, high-status wine used as a base in mixtures (including the famous kykeon-like concoction in epic scenes), and later authors debated its origin and character.

On the archaeology side: the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii is famous for its initiation fresco cycle and is also a working rural villa with evidence of agricultural production; modern site documentation includes reference to a wine-making area within the complex. It’s reasonable to talk about it as a wine-producing estate and as part of a Dionysian cultural atmosphere.

In the Ancient Greek biblical texts

Grapes may not be psychoactive in and of themselves, but they produce one of the most popular intoxicating brews on the planet: wine. Wine is featured predominantly throughout the bible as well as in other ancient Babylonian texts. Its uses were many: medicine, food, intoxicant, commerce, ceremony, among other things. Wine was also was one of the most important economic crops in the biblical era of the Old Testament.

In medical and spiritual practice, wine was not only used alone. Archeological excavations in Israel upturned biblical-era wine jugs laced with residues of juniper, cinnamon, mint, cedar, Cyprus, and many other plants. Needless to say, wine and its various preparations were the most prominent and esteemed psychoactive concoctions in biblical history. Take this passage from the Talmud as an example: “It is only where there is no wine that drugs are necessary.” (Mas. Baba Bathra 58b).

See Also

• Pharmakon