Book 13
31
The words of the passage in which that proverb is found are as follows: Fr. 575, Bücheler. Do you not know that Mnesitheus A celebrated Athenian physician of the fourth century before our era. writes that there are three kinds of wine, dark, light and medium, which the Greeks call kirro/s or 'tawny'; and new, old and medium? And that the dark gives virility, the light increases the urine, and the medium helps digestion? That the new cools, the old heats, and the medium is a dinner for a dog (caninum prandium)? The meaning of a dinner for a dog, though a slight matter, I have investigated long and anxiously. Now an abstemious meal, at which there is no drinking, is called a dog's meal, since the dog has no need of wine. Therefore when Mnesitheus named a medium wine, which was neither new nor old—and many men speak as if all wine was either new or old—he meant that the medium wine had the power neither of the old nor of the new, and was therefore not to be considered wine at all, because it neither cooled nor heated. By refrigerare (to cool), he means the same as the Greek yu/xein.
