Ancient Rome and wine Gaul. The Romans established lucrative trading relations with local tribes of Gaul, despite their potential to produce wine of their own. The Gallic tribes paid high prices for Roman wine, with a single amphora worth the value of a slave. From the Mediterranean coast, the Romans pushed further up the Rhone Valley, to areas where olives and figs were unable to grow but where oak trees were still found. As a result of their experience in what is now northeastern Italy, the Romans knew that regions where "Quercus ilex" were found had climates sufficiently warm enough to allow the full
Balanos oil Balanos oil Balanos oil is a semidrying oil pressed from the seeds of "Balanites aegyptiaca"; it was used in ancient Egypt as the base for perfumes. "The fact that perfumes are absorbed and retained by oils and fats was known in Egypt at an early date, and later to the Greeks and Romans; it was the basis of perfume-making in the ancient world, and it is still the principle of one of the modern methods employed when dealing with certain delicate flower-perfumes. Balanos oil, which is obtained from the seeds of "Balanitesa egyptiaca", a tree that at one time grew