Fragments on Wine

Ἀμφίβολα Ἀποσπάσματα Χοιρίλου Ἰασίου

The Fragments on Wine is a modern scholarly designation for five surviving excerpts from the epic poet Choerilus of Samos. Preserved as quotations within Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae, these passages collectively discuss wine and sympotic customs, though they do not constitute a single, unified poem. The content addresses the qualities of specific wines, such as the potent Maronian wine used by Odysseus in Homer’s epic, and describes contemporary drinking practices, including the mixture of wine with grated cheese and barley. The fragments also contain broader mythological and cultural references embedded within the Greek literary tradition. The work survives exclusively through secondary citation, primarily in Athenaeus’s compendium written in the late second or early third century CE; there is no independent manuscript tradition. While these fragments possess minimal direct literary influence, they offer valuable philological and ethnographic details on ancient Greek culture, serving as important source material for the study of dietary habits and fragmentary epic poetry.