Ancient Greece and wine have been uncovered by archaeologists, demonstrating the scope of Greek influence. A shipwreck discovered off the coast of southern France included nearly 10,000 amphoras containing nearly of Greek wine, presumably destined for trade up the Rhône and Saône rivers into Gaul. It is estimated that the Greeks shipped nearly 10 million liters of wine into Gaul each year through Massalia. In 1929, the discovery of the Vix Grave in Burgundy included several artifacts demonstrating the strong ties between Greek wine traders and local Celtic villagers. The most notable of these was a large Greek-made krater, designed to hold over of
Ancient Greece and wine wine. Ancient Greeks called the cultivated vine "hemeris" (Greek: ἡμερίς), after their adjective for "tame" (Greek: ἥμερος), differentiating it from its wild form. A massive rootstock was carved into a cult image of the Great Goddess and set up on the coast of Phrygia by the Argonauts. The late "Dionysiaca" of Nonnus recounts the primitive invention of wine-pressing, credited to Dionysus, and Homer's description of the Shield of Achilles describes that part of its wrought decoration illustrating the grape harvest from a vineyard protectively surrounded by a trench and a fence; the vines stand in rows supported on stakes. He