In the oldest religious calendar[63] we find two festivals called Vinalia, one in April and the other in August; what exactly was the relation of each of them to the operations of viticulture is by no means clear, but we know that these operations were under the protection of Jupiter, and that his priest, the Flamen Dialis, offered to him the first-fruits of the vintage.

The production of rough wine must indeed have been large, for we happen to know that it was at times remarkably cheap.

In 250 B.C., in many ways a wonderfully productive year, wine was sold at an _as_ the _congius_, which is nearly three quarts;[64] under the early Empire Columella (iii.3.

10) reckoned the amphora (nearly 6 gallons) at 15 sesterces, i.e.about eightpence That the common citizen did expect to be able to qualify his water with wine seems proved by a story told by Suetonius, that when the people complained to Augustus that the price of wine was too high, he curtly and wisely answered that Agrippa had but lately given them an excellent water-supply.[65] It looks as though they were claiming to have wine as well as grain supplied them by the government at a low price or gratuitously; but this was too much even for Augustus.

For his water the Roman, it need hardly be said, paid nothing.