AN ARCHÆOLOGICAL DRINF.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1157, 2 May 1884, Page 4

AN ARCHÆ OLOGICAL DRINF.

There was lately discovered in the neighborhood of Marseilles a Homan cemetery. The most interesting of the tombs opened was undoubtedly that oi the Con>u! Caius Septimus. Besides arms and mousy it contained an amphora with an almost illegible inscription on it, hilled to a fourth !j>art with a red and thick fluid. An •authority on matters arc Ecological, whose word had great weight with the Academic des Inscriptions, after studying the inscription, declared nis belief that the contents of the bottle were real r alerniau wine—the celebrated Falerna of which Horace sang. The Consul Cains Septimus in his lile time had evidently been “a merrv brother,” and had had an amphora of his luvorite wine buried with him. To an antiquary such a discovery was not to be kept to oneself; Mon P

took the amphora with him to Paris and invited a dozen of his colleagues of the Academy to dinner. The historic Falerna was reverently handed round in small glasses, and drunk upstanding in memoriam of Caius Septimus and ■of Horace. Hardly were the glasses replaced on the table than the servant of the host entered with a telegram. Making an apolocy, the host opened the letter and read, but suddenly flushed to the roots of his hair, and then became deadly pale, finally starting to his feet and fleeing from the room with aery horror. The. astonished guests took up the telegram and one of tnem read it oat—lt ran—“ Marseilles, 7 o’clock evening. Don’t drink contents of amphora. Not Falerna. Inscription cn socle overlooked. The liquid is the body itself o Consul Caius Septimus, liquified by the balsam process.” The unlucky antiquaries had drank the Consul in the amphora !