The cause of this Theophrastus thinks to be the heat of the soil; for pines grow most in chalky grounds.

Now chalk is hot, and therefore must very much conduce to the concoction of the wine; as a chalky spring affords the lightest and sweetest water; and if chalk is mixed with corn, by its heat it makes the grains swell, and considerably increases the heap.

Besides, it is probable that the vine itself is bettered by the pine, for that contains several things which are good to preserve wine.

All cover the insides of wine casks with rosin, and many mix rosin with wine, as the Euboeans in Greece, and in Italy those that live about the river Po.
From the parts of Gaul about Vienna there is a sort of pitched wine brought, which the Romans value very much; for such things mixed with it do not only give it a good flavor, but make the wine generous, taking away by their gentle heat all the crude, watery, and undigested particles.

When I had said thus much, a rhetorician in the company, a man well read in all sorts of polite learning, cried out: Good Gods! was it not but the other day that the Isthmian garland began to be made of pine?
And was not the crown anciently of twined parsley?
I am sure in a certain comedy a covetous man is brought in speaking thus:-- The Isthmian garland I will sell as cheap As common wreaths of parsley may be sold.
And Timaeus the historian says that, when the Corinthians were marching to fight the Carthaginians in the defence of Sicily, some persons carrying parsley met them, and when several looked upon this as a bad omen,--because parsley is accounted unlucky, and those that are dangerously sick we usually say have need of parsley,--Timoleon encouraged them by putting them in mind of the Isthmian parsley garland with which the Corinthians used to crown the conquerors.