Page "Mithymna" Paragraph 13

Methymna gained a particular reputation among Romans for viticulture during the Imperial period.

Virgil speaks of the vines of Methymna as the best and most numerous on Lesbos, while Ovid invokes them as an example of something which is proverbially numerous and bountiful.

The distinctive strong taste of Methymnaean wine is mentioned by Silius Italicus, and Propertius uses this as a point of reference when describing another Greek wine.

When Virgil and Silius wished to indicate the exceptional quality of Phalernian wine, Methymnaean wine is among the vintages which they say it surpasses.

We also learn from Horace that Methymnaean grapes were equally prized for the excellent vinegar which could be produced from them and which he describes accompanying a sumptuous eel dish.

The medical writer Galen, who was a native of nearby Pergamon, considered all the wines of Lesbos to be excellent, but ranked that of Methymna the first in quality, that of Eresos second, and that of Mytilene third.

In the novel Daphnis and Chloe, thought to be by the Mytilenaean aristocrat Longus and set in the region of Lesbos between Methymna and Mytilene, the vine harvest is the most important time of the agricultural year, and the Mytilenaean owner of the land in this region times his annual visit to coincide with the end of this harvest when the year's profit can be established.