Isaiah 1:22

Wine mixed with water - An image used for the adulteration of wines, with more propriety than may at first appear, if what Thevenot says of the people of the Levant of late times were true of them formerly. He says, "They never mingle water with their wine to drink; but drink by itself what water they think proper for abating the strength of the wine." " Lorsque les Persans boivent du vin, ils le prennent tout pur, a la facon des Levantins, qui ne le melent jamais avec de l'eua; mais en beuvant du vin, de temps en temps ils prennent un pot d'eau, et en boivent de grand traits ." Voyage, part ii., 54 ii., chap. 10. " Ils (les Turcs) n'y meslent jamais d'eau, et se moquent des Chretiens qui en mettent, ce qui leur semble tout a fait ridicule ." Ibid. part i., chap. 24. "The Turks never mingle water with their wine, and laugh at the Christians for doing it, which they consider altogether ridiculous."

It is remarkable that whereas the Greeks and Latins by mixed wine always understood wine diluted and lowered with water, the Hebrews on the contrary generally mean by it wine made stronger and more inebriating by the addition of higher and more powerful ingredients, such as honey, spices, defrutum , (or wine inspissated by boiling it down to two-thirds or one-half of the quantity), myrrh, mandragora, opiates, and other strong drugs. Such were the exhilarating, or rather stupefying, ingredients which Helen mixed in the bowl together with the wine for her guests oppressed with grief to raise their spirits, the composition of which she had learned in Egypt: -

Αυτικ ' αρ ' εις οινον βαλε φαρμακον, ενθεν επινον,π

Νηπενθες τ ' αχολον τε, κακων επιληθον ἁπαντων .

Homer. Odyss. lib. iv., ver. 220.