Wine

Use in the book

Wine first appears as the object named in the compound φίλοινος. In the father-and-son comparison it becomes a supposed rescue measure: the father would value it if he believed it would save his son after drinking hemlock.

The conditional εἴπερ and the father’s belief matter. The passage illustrates a hierarchy of concern; it does not establish a reliable treatment for poisoning. The wine’s vessel is valued through the wine, and the wine through the son, making successive instrumental attachments concrete.

Places to read

1. 219eἆρα περὶ πολλοῦ ποιοῖτ’ ἂν οἶνον — Would he set great store by wine?
2. 219e–220a

Use in the book

The bottled-mind comparison makes constraint productive: a fixed subject and short time concentrate a lively fermentation that greater freedom would destroy. The contrast between ancient and modern writing compares first cuvée with wine from pomace; fuller body is not the same as fineness or distance from the lees. The comparison of Voltaire and Bossuet then allows more than one valuable kind of clarity: water and wine are both clear, while the latter continues to suggest nourishment and strength. These passages do not yield a simple hierarchy in which the strongest or most transparent writing is always best.

Places to read

1. I, p. 116, entry 11, ¶1Containment concentrates the wine’s and mind’s liveliness.
2. I, p. 358, entry 3, ¶1Body and fineness are distinguished through different products of winemaking.
3. II, p. 583, entry 5, ¶1Wine’s clarity can nourish and strengthen without becoming water.

Translation in this edition

The English translation renders printed mark as pomace and keeps it distinct from lees. First cuvée does not identify a vintage year. The final He at II.583 refers to Bossuet while leaving wine’s qualities active in the comparison.

Use in the book

The first comparison distinguishes physical benefit from understood generosity. Wine quenches thirst without reflection, but recognizing the giver’s love makes drinking spiritual enjoyment. Delight then reaches outward to everyone who benefits: the public mind rejoices in the gift’s distribution. In the Fifth Century, a drop of wine spreading through water illustrates the diffusion of actions, words, and thoughts within God’s omnipresence. Their being everywhere known enlarges the reach of praise and joy. The examples move from an ordinary drink to conscious gratitude, and from a small visible mixture to the immense visibility of a person’s life before God.

Places to read

1. I.27Wine’s bodily service becomes spiritual refreshment through consideration of divine love and others’ benefit.
2. V.9Wine diffusing in water figures the reach of human actions within divine omnipresence.

In this edition

Neither passage explicitly identifies its wine with the Eucharist; follow the particular comparison each meditation develops.

Use in the book

The wine statement brings botanical transformation under the general economy of enduring constituents and changing compounds. What seems to be a distinct substance can be explained through a prior material and the circumstances of its alteration. The phrase “in the wood” locates the process inside the living plant rather than treating wine as a substance with an independent origin.

The edition’s “rotted” is deliberately rough and should not be replaced without notice by the modern technical word fermentation. The printed line provides no yeast, sugar chemistry, or account of a winemaker’s procedure. Its significance is the explanation of a plant product through transformation of water.

B91 concerns compatibility instead of production. Whatever its missing subject is, it joins more readily with wine than with oil. That comparison cannot be used to conclude that B81 supplies a full molecular explanation of wine’s miscibility. The two fragments support a broader interest in how qualities and relations change when materials are mixed or processed, while addressing different local questions.

Places to read

1. B 81Wine is described as water from bark, altered within wood.
2. B 91Wine and oil serve as contrasting partners for an unnamed substance.

Translation in this edition

The English “rotted” retains the force of σαπὲν. A modernizing gloss should be clearly marked as a comparison, not substituted for the ancient claim; this entry accordingly leaves the line’s physical language intact.

Use in the book

Aëtius says that differences among vines do not make wine good, but differences in the soil nourishing them do. Within the surrounding account, this example puts strong weight on the quality of source material. The wider sentence nevertheless also says that plants draw nourishing materials differently. One should preserve that tension rather than deriving an absolute rule that plant constitution never matters. Nor is there enough information to decide whether the example concerns vines of the same kind grown in different places, all kinds of vines, or a narrower lost comparison. As testimony, it shows agricultural experience being used to make a general material explanation intelligible. It does not supply experimental controls or a universal ancient law of wine quality.

Places to read

1. A 70 (testimony)2Aëtius. Uses vines and the quality of wine to illustrate the contribution of nourishing soil.

Translation in this edition

Diels restores the wording for “good wine” from a corrupt transmitted phrase. The confident English comparison thus depends on a textual repair, though the contrast between vines and nourishing ground remains central to the reported argument.