The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

EXCURSUS X. ICED LiaUOES. 709
.ashes; bat, should the same slave commit a willful murder, the master
will mildly observe that he is a worthless fellow, but that, if he repeat tha
offence, he shall not escape punishment."'
EXCURSUS X.
lOED LIQUORS.
The ancients were also accustomed to have their beverages cooled and
iced in various ways. Both Galen and Pliny have described the method
which is still employed in tropical climates to reduce the temperature of
water, by exposing it to evaporation, in porous vessels, daring the nighttime
; and a simile in the Book of Proverbs^ seems to warrant the conclusion
that the custom of preserving snow for summer use must have
prevailed among Oriental nations from the earliest ages. That it was
long familiar to the Greeks and Bximans is abundantly certain. When
Alexander the Great besieged the town of Petra in India, he is reported
to have ordered a number of pits to he dug, and filled with snow, which,
being covered with oak branches, remained for a long time undissolved.'
A similar expedient is noticed by Plutarch, with this difference, that straw
and coarse cloths are recommended instead of oaken boughs.* The Bo.
mans adopted the same mode of preserving the snow which they collected
from the mountains, and which, in the time of Seneca, had become
an important article of merchandise at Home, being sold in shops appropriated
to the purpose, and even hawked about the streets.
At iirst the only mode of employing snow w as by fusing a portion of it in
the wine or water which was to be cooled ; and this was most conveniently
effected by introducing it into a strainer {colum nivarium), which was
usually made of silver, and pouring the liquor over it. But as the snow
had generally contracted some degree of impurity during the carriage, or
from the reservoirs in which it was kept, the solution was apt to be dark
and muddy, and to have an unpleasant flavor from the straw ; hence those
of fastidious taste preferred ice, which they were at pains to procure from
a great depth, that they might have it as fresh as possible. A more ele-
gant method of cooling liquors came into vogue during the reign of Nero,
to whom the invention was ascribed j namely, by placing water which
had been previously boiled in a thin glass vessel surrounded with snow,
so that it might he frozen without having its purity impaired. It had,
however, been long a prevailing opinion among the ancients, as we may
collect from Aristotle, Galen, and Plutarch, that boiled water was most
speedily converted into ice ; and the experiments of modern chemists
would seem to prove that this doctrine was not altogether without founda-
tion. At all events, the ice so obtained would be of a more compact substance
than that procured from water which had not undergone the pro
cess ; and this was suificient to justify the preference.
1. Ammim. MarceUin., xxviii., 4. 2. Ch. xxv., ver. 13.
3 Alheiucm in. 35. * Sympos., vi, outest. 6