Gaulish wine through Greek eyes: the testimony of Diodorus Siculus
Marseille and the Phocaeans · ANTIQUITY
The main chapter showed how commercial viticulture, introduced by the Massaliotes, became a major vector of exchange with the Celtic world. This zoom focuses on a precise and vivid ancient testimony: that of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who described, in the 1st century BCE, in Book V of his Historical Library, the Gauls’ drinking habits — a cultural shock recounted from the Mediterranean point of view.
🍇 Wine drunk “unmixed”
For the Greeks and Romans, wine was always drunk diluted with water: drinking it undiluted was seen as a sign of barbarism or uncontrolled drunkenness. Diodorus observed, with a mixture of fascination and disapproval, that the Gauls did exactly the opposite. He wrote that “loving to excess the wine that merchants bring them undiluted, they drink it so eagerly that, once drunk, they fall into a deep sleep or into fits of madness.” This description, though filtered through the gaze of a foreign observer inclined to emphasize his subjects’ otherness, matches the archaeological record: Massaliote amphorae found in Gaulish contexts show no trace of mixing installations comparable to those used in the Greek world.
🔗 A slave for a jar of wine
The wine trade, according to Diodorus, came with a far darker exchange attached. “For a jar of wine, they receive a slave,” the historian reports, adding elsewhere that an entire cask could be traded for a young slave, “thus bartering their drink for a cupbearer.” While the exact exchange rate Diodorus reports is likely more a striking anecdote than a rigorous commercial statistic, it illustrates a well-documented economic reality elsewhere: the wine trade was part of a broader exchange network in which captives also circulated, partly feeding the slave markets of the ancient Mediterranean from within Gaulish territory itself.
🧠 Key points
- The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE) offers a direct, though partial, testimony on wine consumption among the Gauls.
- Unlike Mediterranean customs, the Gauls drank wine undiluted, which Diodorus associated with violent drunkenness.
- According to him, the wine trade came with a barter in slaves — a darker side of Massaliote commerce with the Gaulish hinterland.