Translated by C.B. Gulick (1933).
See key to translations for an explanation of the format. The page numbers in the Greek text are shown in red. The chapter numbers in the translation are shown in green.
{35.} G [469] Elephas. This was the name given to a kind of drinking-cup, as Damoxenus says in Mourning his own Demise : ''{A} If that isn't enough for you, the slave has come with the elephant. {B} In the gods' name, what is that? {A} A drinking-horn with two spouts, [469] big enough to hold six quarts, and made by Alcon. Adaeus once toasted me with it in Cypsela." This cup is mentioned also by Epinicus in Child-foisting Wives, whose testimony I will cite in the account of the drinking-horn { 497.a }.
{36.} G Ephebus. The cup called embasicoetas is also named ephebus according to Philemon of Athens in his work On Attic Words or Glosses. And the comic poet Stephanus says, in The Pro-Laconian : "{SOSIAS} To him the king pledged a village. {B} Is that some new kind of cup that is now the fashion ? {S} No, it is a real village in the territory of Thurii. {B} I was entirely carried away for the moment, Sosias, into thinking of those Rhodian vessels and those ephebi which are so hard to manage."
{37.} G Hedypotides. Lynceus of Samos says that the Rhodians manufactured these in competition with the Thericleians made at Athens ; that whereas the Athenians could make this style only for the rich, on account of the weight of metal contained in them, the Rhodians enabled even the poor to share in this beautiful luxury, because of the lightness of the cups. They are mentioned by Epigenes in these lines from The Glorified Woman : "A cooler, a ladle, sauceboats, four drinking-horns, three draught-sweeteners, a silver strainer." Semus, in the fifth book of his History of Delos, says that in Delos there is a votive offering of a gold draught-sweetener dedicated by a native woman named Echenicē ; this he mentions again in the eighth book. And Cratinus the Younger says : "From Archephon, a dozen draught-sweeteners."
{38.} G Heracleion. Peisander, in the second book of his Epic of Heracles, says that the cup in which Heracles traversed Oceanus belonged to the Sun, but that Heracles received it from Oceanus. Perhaps it was so called because the hero delighted in large cups, and on account of its size poets and writers in prose have invented in jest the story of his voyage in a cup (instead of a ship). But Panyassis, in the first book of his Epic of Heracles, declares that Heracles carried off the cup, which belonged to the Sun, from Nereus, and in it sailed across to Erytheia. That Heracles was one of those who drank great quantities we have stated already. And that the Sun also was conveyed to the west in a cup is told by Stesichorus in the following : Now the Sun, begotten of Hyperion, was descending into his golden cup, that he might traverse the Ocean and come to the depths of dark and awful night, even to his mother and wedded wife and beloved children. Meanwhile he, the son of Zeus, strode into the grove o'ershadowed with bay-trees." Antimachus, too, has this to say : "So then, in the golden cup Erytheia of glorious fame was conducting the Sun-god." And Aeschylus, in Daughters of the Sun : "There, at the place of thy Sire's setting, was the cup wrought by Hephaestus, wherein he crosses the mighty circling path of the billows as he speeds forth, flying into the dead of sacred night, driver of black steeds."
{39.} G [470] Mimnermus, in Nanno, says that it is in a couch of gold constructed for this purpose by Hephaestus that the Sun is conveyed, while he sleeps, toward the place of his rising ; thus the poet hints at the hollow shape of the cup. He says : "Yea, even the Sun-god hath received the lot of toil all his days, nor ever cometh any surcease for his horses or for himself, when rosy-fingered Dawn hath left Oceanus and mounted the sky ; for a lovely winged hollow couch of precious gold, made by the hands of Hephaestus, bears him lightly across the billow, on the top of the wave, while he sleeps ; it carries him from the land of the Hesperides even to the country of the Aethiopians, where his chariot and steeds stand waiting until early-born Dawn shall come. Then the son of Hyperion mounts his car." But Theolytus, in the second in book of his Chronicles, says that the Sun voyages in a cauldron, the first to describe it thus being the poet who wrote The Battle with the Titans. Pherecydes, in the third book of the Histories, speaks first of Oceanus and then proceeds : "Now Heracles was drawing his bow against him with the intention of shooting him, when the Sun bade him stop, and he in fear desisted. In return for this the Sun gave him the golden cup which was wont to carry him, when he sets, with his horses at night over Oceanus to the eastern land where the Sun rises. Thereupon Heracles journeyed in this cup to Erytheia, and when he was on the high seas, Oceanus made trial of him by appearing in a vision and rocking the cup. Heracles was just on the point of shooting him when Oceanus in fear bade him stop."
{40.} G Ethanion (strainer). Hellanicus in his History of Egpt writes as follows : "In the houses of Egyptians are kept a bronze phialē, a bronze ladle, and a bronze strainer."
Hemitomos (half-cut) is a kind of cup among the Athenians, so named from its shape, according to Pamphilus in his Glossary.
{41.} G Therikleios. This is a cylix which is sunk in at the sides; it is hollowed rather deeply, and has short handles like any cylix. And perhaps it is from a Therikleios that Alexis, in Hesionē, represents Heracles drinking, when he says : "Recovering his senses at last, he demanded a cylix ; and when he had got it he pulled off and swilled down many draughts in quick succession ; and so, as the proverb says, the fellow is ever at one time a very pretty wine-skin, at another a very pretty mealsack." That the Therikleios is a cylix Theophrastus clearly shows in his Inquiry into Plants. In his account of the terebinth-tree he says : " From it, too, Therikleian cylices can be turned on the lathe, such that no one could tell them from those made of clay." This cylix is said to have been made by Thericles of Corinth, a potter, from whom it got its name ; he lived about the same time as the comic poet Aristophanes. And Theopompus mentions the cylix thus in Nemea : "{SPINTHER} Come this way, trusty child of Thericles ; noble form, what name are we to give you? [471] You're the mirror of a man's features, aren't you ? Ay! If you are full when offered, you are nothing else in the world. This way, then, I am going to fill you up. Theolytē! old woman, I say, old woman! {THEOLYTĒ} : Why do you call me, dearest one ? {S} I want to kiss you ; this way, Theolytē, into my arms, to the arms of your new companion in slavery. That's nice. {T} Naughty Spinther, you're hurting me! {S} Yes, something like that. But I am going to pledge you this loving-cup. Take it ; and after you have drunk all that your heart desires, hand me what's left over." Now Cleanthes, in his treatise On Substitution of Terms, says : "The inventions of these men, and all of a similar character, have names easily understood, like Therikleios, Deinias, Iphikratis ; for such names at once indicated in earlier times their inventors, and make them plain even to this day ; if this is not so, the name must have been changed slightly. However, as has already been said, in such matters one is not to take the word of every casual person." But others record that the cup was named therikleios because it had the skins of wild animals {theria} figured on it. On the other hand, Pamphilus of Alexandria derives it from the circumstance that Dionysus drove away the wild beasts in confusion when he poured libations over them from these cylices. {42.} G The cup is mentioned also by Antiphanes in Just Alike, in these words : "When they had finished their dinner (for I want to cut short what they did in the interval), and there entered the therikleios, instrument of Zeus the Saviour, brimful and bubbling with the voluptuous drops from Lesbos made with reverent pains, and each guest [in turn] had seized it with right hand . . ." So Eubulus in Dolon : "I have never yet washed a single dish ; for I could make the crockery cleaner than Thericles could make his cylices when I was a youngster." And in The Dicers : "Only just now they were draining a big lusty vessel - a thericleian - bubbling the brim, lipped like a Spartan flask, shaped like a buzzing ballot-box, dark, beautifully rounded, pointed bottom, glistening, reflecting the rays of light, nicely washed, its head wreathed with teeming ivy-leaves; and as they swigged they named the draught in honour of Saviour Zeus." Again, Araros or Eubulus in The Hunchback : " O potter's Earth, what Thericles, I wonder, hath fashioned thee and broadened the depth of thy hollow flanks? Verily it was one who knew well the nature of woman, that she delights not in little cups." Alexis in The Horseman : "And a kind of thericleian cylix, with a wreath of gold about it ; for it wasn't a gilded thing." Also in The Scarf : "He drained a deep thericleian chock-full and foaming over with unmixed wine."
{43.} G But Timaeus, in the twenty-eighth book of his Histories, calls the cylix thericleian. He writes as follows : "Polyxenus, one of those who had gone over from Tauromenium, was assigned to the embassy and returned with gifts from Nicodemus, including a thericleian cylix." Adaeus in his chapters On the Use of Words assumes that therikleion and karchesion are the same thing. [472] But that they are different is clearly shown by Callixeinus, who says, in his account of events in Alexandria, that some persons in the procession carried thericleia, others karchesia. What the latter is will be explained in the following. But there is also a mixing-bowl called thericleios, mentioned by Alexis in The Swan : "There stands shining a thericleian mixing-bowl right in our midst, filled with white nectar of ancient vintage, all a-foam ; I had taken it empty and polished it up, making it bright ; I set it firmly on its base, and wreathed it with berry-laden sprigs of ivy which I had plaited together." Menander used the adjective thericleios as a feminine in The Inspired Woman : "Half-way drunk already, he drained the {fem.} thericleios." Also in The Priest of Mēnē : "Pledging one thericleios which held six kotylai." So Dioxippus in The Miser : "{A} I want that big {fem.} thericleios. {AESCHREAS} I know that well ! {A} And the Rhodian cups as well. For that's my custom ; I like most, Aeschreas, to drink from cups like those." Polemon, however, in the first book of his work On the Athenian Acropolis, mentioned the cup in the neuter gender : "The wooden {neut.} thericleia, coated with gold, were dedicated by Neoptolemus." {44.} G Apollodorus of Gela says, in Brothers in Love with Sisters, or Starving to Death : "One after the other - rugs for the couches, silver vessels, thericleioi, and expensive embossed cups besides." Aristophon in Philonides : "For that reason, just lately, my master gave me as a reward of merit the well-rounded bowl of thericleians ; he brought it to me foaming over the brim, daintily alluring, mixed half-and-half; I suppose it was because I am so good. He then let me go free, after he had soused me lustily." Theophilus in The Boeotian Woman : "He mixes a four-kotylē cylix, one of those thericleians made of pottery, you can't think how nicely ; it boils over with foam. Not even Autocles, Earth is my witness, could pick it up and manage it with his right hand so tidily." And in The Daughters of Proetus : "He brought in a thericleian cylix of unmixed wine, containing more than seven kotylai, in honour of Good Luck."
Isthmion. Pamphilus, in his work On Names, (says that) the Cyprians call the drinking-cup by this name.
{45.} G Kados. Simmias says this is a cup, citing the lines of Anacreon : "I have lunched on a small bit of cake which I had broken off, but I drank up a kados of wine." Epigenes says, in The Souvenir : "{A} There'll be mixing-bowls, jars {kadoi} basins, and jugs. {B} What ! there are jugs ? {A} Yes ; wash-basins - but why need I tell you in detail ? You shall see for yourself. {B} Do you mean that the son of the Carian king has arrived? {A} Sure as can be - Pixodarus." Hedylus in his Epigrams : [473] "Let us drink ; for it is true, ay, it is true, that in my cups I shall find a theme that's new, something subtle and sweet. So then, soak me in jars {kadoi} of Chian and say 'Write thy playful verse, Hedylus.' I hate living for nothing and not being drunk." And in another epigram : " From daybreak till nightfall and again from the night-watches until dawn, Soclēs drinks out of four-chous jars {kadoi} Then, all of a sudden, as chance will have it, he is gone ! Yet in his cups he can write his playful verse much more sweetly than Sicelidas, and he is also, as you know, much stronger. How his charm shines upon us ! Wherefore, dear friend, keep on writing and getting drunk." Cleitarchus, however, says in his Glossary that "the Ionians call the earthenware jar a a kados. So Herodotus in the third book has 'a jar of date wine.' "
{46.} G Kadiskos. Philemon, in the treatise before-mentioned, defines the kadiskos as a kind of drinking-cup. It is also a vessel in which they set up the images of Zeus, god of property, as Autocleides says in his Expositor, writing thus : "The figures of Zeus, god of property, are to be consecrated in the following manner : a new, two-handled kadiskos, furnished with a lid, should have its handles wreathed with white f wool, while from the right shoulder and the forehead . . . the fillet, and into the vessel you place whatever you find, and pour in ambrosia. This 'ambrosia' consists of pure water, olive-oil, and all kinds of fruit ; these things put in." The kadiskos is mentioned by the comic poet Strattis in Lemnomeda in these words : "The Hermes-potion, which they drain, some from a jug, others from a kadiskos, mixing thee half-and-half."
{47.} G Kantharos. That this is the name of a boat is well known, but that a kind of cup is also called by this name Ameipsias makes clear in Playing at Cottabus : "You, Mania, hand me vinegar-cruets and kantharoi." So Alexis in Crateias (the talk is about a man drinking in a wineshop) : "Thereupon I saw Hermaiscus drinking bottoms-up one of those fat kantharoi, and lying near him were his blanket and knapsack." Eubulus often mentions the word in Pamphilus, and says : "As for myself (there happened to be a large new wineshop across the street from the house) I was keeping an eye out there on the young girl's nurse, for I had ordered the bar-keeper to mix me up choa for an obol and to set beside us the largest kantharos he had." And again : "But the kantharos has long since been emptied dry." Then further : "With that she seized and made away with a very large loaf baked in the ashes - you can't think how big it was in size - and straightway drained that kantharos dry." Xenarchus, in Priapus, has these lines : "You there, boy, stop pouring out wine into a silver cup, and let's put off into the deep : [474] yes, by Zeus, pour it into the kantharos, boy, into the kantharos ! " Epigenes in The Glorified Woman : "But the potters don't even make those kantharoi to-day, you poor fool, those fat ones ; they all make things that are shallow and dainty, just as if it were the cups themselves we were going to drink, not the wine." {48.} G Sosicrates, on the other hand, uses the word of a boat in Brothers in Love with Sisters : "A light breeze, daughter of Sciron, laughing among the swelling billows, gently and nicely brought up the kantharos without a ripple." Phrynichus in The Revellers : "Then Chaerestratus, soberly working on his pots in the house, would weep daily a hundred kantharoi of wine." Nicostratus in The Slanderer : "{A} This ship - is it twenty-oared, or a 'swan,' or a kantharos ? For if I learn that further, I shall be able to infer all the rest myself. {B} Of course, it's a swan-kantharos." (This is a word plastered together from both of them.) Menander in The Skipper : "{A} From the salt depths of the Aegean has Theophilus come for our joy, Straton. How happily it turns out that I am the first to tell you that your son is successful, that he is safe and sound, and your golden kantharos as well. {STRATON} Kantharos indeed ! You mean the boat ? {A} You poor fool, you don't know anything." A little later he says : "{S} You mean my ship is safe and sound ? {A} Indeed I do, that ship which was built by Callicles of Calymna and piloted by Euphranor of Thurii." Polemon, in the chapters On Painters addressed to Antigonus, says : "In the Marriage of Peirithous , at Athens, Hippeus represents the wine-pitcher and the goblet as bejewelled, with the rims covered over with gilt ; the couches are fir-boughs laid on the ground, decorated with rugs in many designs, the drinking-cups are kantharoi of pottery, as is likewise the lamp which is suspended from the ceiling, with wide-spreading jets of flame." That the cup got its designation from a potter named Kantharus is stated by Philetaerus in Achilles : "Ay, Peleus ; for Peleus is a potter's surname - a lean lampmaker he is, Kantharus by name, miserably poor, no lordly person, I swear by That kantharos is also a brooch worn by women is asserted by Antiphanes in The Boeotian Woman.
{49.} G Karchesion. Callixeinus of Rhodes in his books On Alexandria says this is a tall drinking-cup, moderately contracted in the middle ; it has handles which extend down to the base. The cup known as the karchesion is rather tall and perhaps has been thus named because it extends so high. Moreover, the karchesion is a very old type of cup, seeing that Zeus, when he consorted with Alcmena, gave it as a reward for lying with her ; this is recorded by Pherecydes in the second book, and by Herodorus of Heracleia. Asclepiades of Myrlea says that its name is derived from one of the arrangements in a ship. "The lowest part of the mast is called the heel, which drops into the socket ; the part approximately in the middle is the neck, and that at the top is the karchesion. [475] This part has yards sloping downward on both sides, and upon it is fixed the so-called thorakion (crow's-nest), which is everywhere rectangular except at the base and the top ; these extend a little farther out in a straight line. Above the crow's-nest, reaching aloft and tapering to a point, is the so-called distaff." Sappho mentions the karchesia (as cups) in these lines : "And so they all, with karchesia in hand, began to pour libations ; and they fervently wished all good things for the bridegroom." Cratinus in Dionysalexander : "{A} What outfit did he have then ? Tell me that. {B} He had a thyrsus, a saffron-coloured tunic, an embroidered coat, a karchesion." Sophocles in Tyro : "Flew to the midmost table among the foods and the karchesia," by which he means that the serpents came up to the table and were found among the foods and the cups. For it was a custom among the people of old to place cups with wine already mixed upon the tables, even as Homer represents them. Now the karchesion got its name from the circumstance that it had bead-like {kerchnoeidē} roughnesses, and the word is formed by change of E to A, making karchesion instead of kerchesion ; hence also Homer { Iliad, 21.541 } calls men who are overcome with thirst karchaleoi (having rough throats). Charon of Lampsacus in his Annals says that even to his day there was shown at Sparta the cup which was given to Alcmena by Zeus when he disguised himself as Amphitryon.
Kalpion. A class of cup from Erythrae, as Pamphilus says. It is like the skaphion.
{50.} G Kelebē. This drinking-cup is mentioned by Anacreon : "Up then, my boy, and hand us a cup {kelebē} that I may pledge a deep draught, pouring in ten cups of water and five of wine." It is uncertain whether the kelebē is a special kind of cup or any cup whatever, since it is so called from the act of pouring {cheein} the libation {loibēn} into it, that is, making a libation ; and they habitually applied this word {leibein} in the case of any liquid, hence the word lebēs (kettle) arose. Silenus and Cleitarchus say the Aeolians call a drinking-cup by this name. But Pamphilus says that only the so-called thermopotis is (properly) the kelebē. Further, Nicander of Colophon in his Glossary says the kelebē is a shepherd's bowl used for honey ; and this is borne out by Antimachus of Colophon, who says in the fifth book of his Thebaïs : "And (he commanded) that the heralds with them should bring a skin full of red wine, and the best kelebeion that lay in his halls, filled with honey." And again : "Then, grasping a kelebeion set with two handles and full of honey, the bowl which was his better one." In still another place he says : "And golden drinking-cups, and a kelebeion full of pure honey, the bowl which was his better one." Indeed he has in this example definitely used the word kelebeion for any bowl, since he has first mentioned drinking-cups in the word depastra. So Theocritus of Syracuse says in Girls practising Witchcraft { 2.2 } : "Wreath the bowl {kelebēn} with crimson tufts from the sheep." And Euphorion : "Or else from some rivers thou hast drawn of water in a kelebē." Anacreon : "Then the handmaid, holding a kelebē containing three kyathoi, poured out honey-sweet wine." But Dionysius the "Lanky" {Leptos} in his exposition of Theodoridas's song To Eros, says that the word kelebē is used of the tall drinking-cup such as the Prusian and the Therikleian.
{51.} G [476] The Horn. It is said that primitive men drank from the horns of oxen ; hence Dionysus is represented as growing horns, and he is still called a bull by many poets. So in Cyzicus there is set up a bull-shaped statue of him. That they used to drink from horns {kerata} is evident from the word employed even to-day when they mix together water with wine, for they say that they have "horned" {kerasai} it. And the vessel in which the wine is mixed is a krater, from the water being mixed together (with the wine) in it, being from keras, as though it were kerater, because the potion is poured into a keras from it. The manufacture of drinking-horns continues even to the present time. They are at any rate called rhyta by some people. So also many poets represent the men of old as drinking from horns. Pindar, for example, says of the Centaurs : "And when the Pheres perceived the man-subduing smell wafted from the honey-sweet wine, furiously they thrust with their hands the white milk from the tables, and drinking unbidden out of silver horns, they began to reel." Xenophon also, in the seventh book of The Anabasis { 7.2.23 } , writes as follows when describing the symposium held in the house of the Thracian Seuthes : "When Xenophon and his companions had entered and come before Seuthes, they first saluted one another and in accordance with the Thracian custom tendered horns of wine." Again, in the sixth book, when he describes the Paphlagonians he says : "They lay down on pallets and dined and wined from horn cups." Aeschylus in Women of Perrhaebia represents the Perrhaebians as using horns instead of cups, in these words : "With silver-mounted drinking-horns fitted with golden mouthpieces." And Sophocles in Pandora : "And when one has tossed off his brimming golden horn, he is full to repletion, she will hug him in her soft arms." Hermippus in The Fates : "Do you know, then, what I want you to do ? Don't offer me that little cup, but just give me instead one drink out of the horn." The orator Lycurgus, in the speech Against Demades, says that Philip always pledged with a horn those toward whom he felt friendly. And Theopompus, in the second book of his History of Philip, says that the kings of Paeonia, in which country the cattle grew horns so large that they hold three or four choes, made drinking-cups of them, overlaying the rims with silver or gold. Philoxenus of Cythera, also, in the poem entitled The Banquet, says : "The draught of nectar was drunk in the gilded faces of horned bulls,h and little by little they drenched themselves." The Athenians also manufactured horns of silver and drank out of them. At least one may find the following record inscribed in the list of confiscated goods . . . on a stele set up on the Acropolis, which contains votive articles : "A horn drinking-cup of silver, and attached to it is a silver support."
{52.} G Kernos. An earthenware vessel, holding within it a large number of small cups cemented together. "In these," Polemon says, "are white poppy-heads, grains of wheat and barley, peas, vetches, okra-seeds, and lentils. The man who carries it, resembling the bearer of the sacred winnowing-fan, tastes these articles, as Ammonius records in the third book On Altars and Sacrifices. "
{53.} G Kissybion. The cup with one handle, according to Philemon. But Neoptolemus of Parium in the third book of his Glossary says that it signifies the cup made of ivy-wood {kissos} in Euripides, Andromeda : [477] "All the shepherd folk rushed together, one man bringing an ivy bowl of milk, that gives refreshment after toil, another the joyous fruit of the vine." For the kissybion, he says, is always spoken of when rustics get together, since there the wooden cup is especially appropriate. Cleitarchus, however, says that the Aeolians call the skyphos a kissybion ; Marsyas calls the wooden cup also a hypellon. Eumolpus says that it is a variety of cup, perhaps so called, he says, because in the beginning it was made out of ivy wood. . Nicander of Colophon, in the first book of his Aetolian History, says : "In the ritual of the Zeus of Didyma they offer libations with leaves of ivy {kissos} whence the ancient drinking-cups are called kissybia." Homer { Odyssey, 9.346 } : "Holding in my hands a bowl {kissybion} of dark wine." Now Asclepiades of Myrlea, in his treatise On Nestor's Cup, says : "No dweller in a city, even in moderate circumstances, ever used a skyphos or a kissybion ; it is only swineherds, shepherds, and country-people who do ; thus Polyphemus drinks from the kissybion, but Eumaeus drinks from the other vessel." So it appears that Callimachus is in error in using the terms synonymously ; he says of the Ician stranger who was entertained with him at the house of the Athenian Pollis : "For verily he loathed swilling in greedy fashion a Thracian magnum of strong wine, and was content with a small bowl {kissybion} To him, then, I said, while the bowl {aleison} was going round for the third time . . ." Anyone, that is, who says that aleison and kissybion are the same fails to observe the exact use of the terms. One may conjecture that the kissybion was made in the beginning by shepherds from ivy wood. ers, however, derive the word from cheisthai, and that means "to hold" ; thus, "this threshold will hold us both." So also the snake's hiding-place is a cheiē, that which shelters the creature. Again, there is kethion, the box which holds dice. Finally, Dionysius of Samos, in his work on The Cycle, has called the Homeric kissybion a kymbion. He writes thus : "When Odysseus saw him doing that, he filled a kymbion with the wine and gave it to him to drink."
{54.} G Kiborion. Hegesander of Delphi says that the poet Euphorion was dining at the house of Prytanis when the latter displayed some kiboria of evidently expensive manufacture ; and as the drinking had advanced to a very high point, Euphorion seized one of the kiboria, being tipsy, and made water in it. Didymus says it is a kind of drinking-cup, and perhaps the so-called skyphia are the same, because they are contracted to a narrow point at the bottom, like Egyptian beans {kiboria}.
{55.} G Kondy, an Asiatic drinking-cup. Menander in The Flatterer : "In Cappadocia, Struthias, I drank up a golden beaker {kondy} holding ten kotylai." Hipparchus in Safe Home : "{A} Do you pay any attention to that trooper ? {B} This one here? He has a lot of money! {A} Nowhere ! Of that I'm sure ; except perhaps one embroidered rug that he loves dearly, with figures of monsters on it and some damned griffins in Persian style. [478] {B} To the devil with you, you jail-bird ! {A} Or perhaps a beaker {kondy} or cooler or sauce-boat." Nicomachus in the first book of his work On Egyptian Festivals says : "The kondy is a Persian drinking-cup ; but in the beginning it was what the astrologer Hermippus (describes) as the globe from which magic wonders and profitable signs sent by the gods appear upon the earth ; hence libations were poured from it. So Pancrates in the first book of his Bocchoreïs : 'Then he, after pouring a libation of nectar from the silvery kondy, set forth on a journey to foreign parts.' "
Kononeios. Istrus, the disciple of Callimachus, writes in the first book of his Ptolemaïs, the city in Egypt, as follows : "A pair of Kononeian cylices, and a pair of gold-washed Thericleians."
{56.} G Kotylos. The drinking-cups with one handle are kotyloi ; they are mentioned by Alcaeus as well as others. Diodorus in his Answer to Lycophron says this cup is common among the Sicyonians and the Tarentines, and that it is like a deep wash-bowl. It sometimes has a handle. Ion of Chios mentions it, saying, "a cup {kotylos} full of wine." So Hermippus in The Gods : "And first he brought the kotylos as security for the neighbours." Plato also, in Zeus Outraged, says "he brings the kotylos" ; Aristophanes in The Babylonians. Eubulus in Odysseus or The All-seeing Ones : "Then the priest Euegorus, standing in the midst of them in all his fair vestments, poured forth a libation of wine from a kotylos." Pamphilus says that it is a variety of cup and the peculiar attribute of Dionysus. Moreover Polemon, in the treatise On the Sacred Fleece, says : "After these preliminaries (the priest) proceeds to the celebration of the mystic rites ; he takes out the contents of the shrine and distributes them to all who have brought round their tray. The latter is an earthenware vessel, holding within it a large number of small cups cemented together ; and in them are sage, white poppy-seeds, grains of wheat and barley, peas, vetches, okra-seeds, lentils, beans, rice-wheat, oats, compressed fruit, honey, oil, wine, milk, and sheep's wool unwashed. The man who carries it, resembling the bearer of the sacred winnowing-fan, tastes these articles."
{57.} G Kotylē. Aristophanes in Cocalus : "But other rather oldish women with large earthen-made cups {kotylai} poured their bodies full, in no decorous fashion, of red Thasian, overcome as they were by a passion for the red, unmixed wine." Silenus, Cleitarchus, and Zenodotus besides define it as a cylix { Homer, Iliad, 23.34 } : "And on all sides round the corpse blood was flowing in cupfuls." Also : "Many things there are between the cup and the edge of the lip." Simaristus says that a little cup is called by this name. Diodorus says that the Poet has used the name kotylē for the kotylos of some authors, "wheat-bread and a cup {kotylē}" { Odyssey, 15.312 } ; this certainly is not a cylix, because it has not two handles, but it is like (in shape) a deep washbowl, though it is a variety of drinking-cup. It is also equivalent to the cup, called kotylos among the Aetolians and some Ionians, which, like it, has only one handle. It is mentioned by Crates in Games of Childhood and by Hermippus in The Gods. The Athenians, moreover, call a certain measure a kotylē. Thus Thucydides { 7.87.2 } : "They doled out to each of them, for a period of eight months, a kotylē of water and two kotylai of grain." Aristophanes in The Rehearsal : "But he, when he bought for me three choinikes of barley meal lacking a kotylē, charged me with the price of twenty kotylai." [479] Apollodorus describes it as a kind of cup, tall and deeply hollowed. Moreover he says that the ancients called anything that is hollow a kotylē, as, for example, the hollow of the hand ; whence also the expression "blood flowing in cupfuls " means what can be scooped up in both hands. There is also a game called "in-the-cup,' wherein the boys who lose hollow their hands to receive the knees of the boys who win, and so carry them about. Diodorus in Italic Glosses, also Heracleitus, according to Pamphilus, say that the kotylē is called also hemina ; Diodorus cites the verse of Epicharmus : "And to drink twice as much warm water, two heminai." Also Sophron : "Toss off the hemina, son, bottoms up ! " Pherecrates in Corianno has the (diminutive) form kotyliskē : "That tiny half-pint ? Never ! " Aristophanes has another diminutive kotyliskion in The Acharnians { 459 } : " A poor little half-pint cup with its brim nicked off." And kotylē is also the name given to the hollow part of the hip-joint ; and the growths on the arms of the polyp are called by the derived term kotyledons. Further, Aeschylus in The Edonians even calls cymbals kotylai : "And another crashes loudly with the brazen kotylai." Marsyas says that the bone in the hip-joint is called aleison, also cylix. Kotyliskos is the name given to the sacred basin of Dionysus used by the initiates at the Mysteries, according to Nicander of Thyateira, who cites the verse in The Clouds of Aristophanes : "Nor shall I wreath a kotyliskos." Simmias, too, renders the word kotylē by aleison.
{58.} G Kottabis. Harmodius of Lepreum in his work On the Customs of Phigaleia, describing the dinners of that place, writes the following : "Having consecrated this food, each man was permitted to drink a little from an earthenware basin {kottabis} and the one offering it would say 'Good dinner to you ! ' " Hegesander of Delphi in his Commentaries, which begin with the phrase, " In the best form of government, says : "The game called kottabos was introduced into their symposia, the inhabitants of Sicily, according to Dicaearchus, being the first to bring it in. So great an interest was aroused in the pastime that prizes, called kottabeia, were also introduced into the symposia. Thereupon cups {cylices} which were thought to be especially adapted to the purpose were manufactured, and they were called kottabides. In addition to this, circular rooms were constructed in order that when the kottabos was set up in the centre, all might compete for the victory at an equal distance and from similar positions. For they made it a point not merely to hit the mark, but also to carry through each motion in the correct form. For the player, leaning on his left elbow, was obliged to swing his right arm with supple motion and so toss the latax ; for that is what they called the liquid which fell from the cup ; consequently some persons took greater pride in playing kottabos well than do persons who pride themselves on hurling the javelin."
{59.} G Kratanion. Perhaps the cup which is now called kranion (skull) was thus named by the men of old. Polemon at any rate, or whoever is the author of the book entitled Of Hellas, when discussing the temple of the Metapontines at Olympia writes as follows : "The temple of the Metapontines, in which are 132 silver saucers, two silver wine-jugs, a silver vessel for sacrifice, three gilded saucers. [480] The temple of the Byzantians, in which are a Triton in cypress-wood holding a silver kratanion, a silver Siren, two silver karchesia, a silver cylix, a golden wine-jug, two horns. In the old temple of Hera there are thirty silver saucers, two silver kratania, a silver pot, a gold vessel for sacrifice, a golden mixing-bowl - a votive offering of the Cyrenaeans - a silver saucer."
Krouneia. Epigenes in The Souvenir : "A. There'll be mixing-bowls, jars, basins, and jugs {krouneia} B. What ! there are jugs ? A. Yes."
Kyathis, a vessel shaped like a kotylos. Sophron, in the mime entitled Women who say they will expel the Goddess : "Buried deep down in a cup {kyathis} is a triad of magic spells."
{60.} G Kylix. Pherecrates in Slave-teacher : "And now rinse out the cylix and give me a drink, putting the strainer over it before you pour in the wine." These are earthenware drinking-cups, and the name is derived from their being rolled {kyliesthai} on the wheel ; from them also comes the term kylikeion, the place in which the cups are kept if they happen to be of silver, and the verb kylikegorein, said when one talks over one's cups. The Athenians also call the physician's box a kylichnis, because it has been turned {kekylisthai} on the lathe. Celebrated cups of the cylix-type were those of Argos and of Attica. The Attic cylices are mentioned by Pindar in these verses : "I send thee, Thrasybulus, this chariot of lovely songs to follow the banquet. To thy companions gathered at the feast, to the fruit which Dionysus grants, and to the cups from Athens, they shall be a sweet goad." {61.} G But the Argive cylices seem to have had a shape different from those of Attica. At any rate they were pointed {phoxai} at the brim, as Semonides of Amorgos says : "This is an Argive cylix with pointed brim," that is, one that is raised to a point, like the spouted cups called ambikes. For they use the adjective phoxos of this, as Homer does in the case of Thersites { Iliad, 2.219 } : "His head was pointed at the top." The word, therefore, is for phaoxos, that which looks pointed at the place where the eyes are. Excellent cylices are also made in Naucratis, the native city of our boon-companion Athenaeus. They are like phialai, made not as on a lathe but as if fashioned by the finger ; moreover they have four handles and a broadly extended base (there are, by the way, many potters in Naucratis ; from them also the gate which is near the potters' workshops is called the Ceramic Gate) ; and these cups are dyed to look as if they were of silver. In high esteem also are the cylices of Chios ; they are mentioned by Hermippus in Soldiers : " And the Chian cylix is now being hung high on its peg.' Glaucon in his Glossary says that the Cyprians call the kotylē a cylix. Hermonax, in Synonyms, writes thus : "The aleison is a drinking-cup, so also kypellon, amphotis, skyphos, kylix, kothon, karchesion, and phialē." Achaeus of Eretria, in Alcmeon, uses the derived form kylichnides in place of kylikes in these lines : "Up then! With all speed you must fetch here a black lamb, a mixing-bowl for all, and some cups {kylichnidas}." And Alcaeus has kylichnai in one place : [481] "Let us drink! Why wait we for the lamps? Daylight hath but a finger's breadth. Boy, take down the large painted cups {kylichnai} ; for the son of Semelē and Zeus gave wine to men to banish care. Pour it out, mixing it one and two, full to the brim." And in the tenth book Alcaeus has : "The wine-drops fly from the Teian cups {kylichnai,} showing that in Teos also the cylices were very fine.
{62.} G Pherecrates in Corianno ( has the form kyliskē ) : "{A} I've come from the bath completely boiled, with a throat all dry. {B} I'll give you a drink. {A} Yes, my spit is sticky, by the two goddesses. {B} What shall I get ? Shall I mix you up a little cup {kyliskē} ? {A} No, by no means a little one. For the bile gets stirred up in me at once, ever since I drank medicine from that kind of cup. Pour it now into this bigger cup that I have." That women liked to use big cups is attested by Pherecrates again in these verses from Tyranny : "Thereupon, for the men, they caused to be made flat drinking-cups which had no sides, only just a bottom holding not even so much as a thimbleful, like little 'tasters' ; but for themselves alone they had cups {cylices} manufactured as deep as wine-transporting merchantmen, well rounded, delicately fashioned, yet bellying out in the middle ; the women had had them made not without shrewd planning, and long before, for they wanted to be able to drink up the greatest possible quantity of wine without being called to account. And then, when we men accuse them of drinking up all the wine, they scold us and swear they haven't taken more than a single cup. But this single cup is mightier than a thousand ! "
{63.} G Kymbia are cups, and also small boats, according to Simaristus. Dorotheus says : "The kymbia are a variety of cups, deep and high, having no stem and no handles." But Ptolemy the son of Aristonicus says they are the kind with curving brim. Nicander of Thyateira says that Theopompus, in The Mede, so named the cup which has no handles. Philemon in The Ghost : "Rosa drank a kymbion of unmixed wine; she soon had you all under the table." Dionysius of Samos, in the sixth book of his work On the Cycle, expresses the belief that kymbion and kissybion are the same thing. For he says that Odysseus filled a kymbion with unmixed wine and handed it to the Cyclops. Certainly the kissybion given to him in Homer cannot be small ; otherwise he, so huge of body, would not have been quickly overcome with intoxication after only three drinks. The kymbion is mentioned by Demosthenes, also, in the speech Against Meidias { 158 }, in which he says that Meidias was accompanied by drinking-horns and kymbia. And in the same speech again { 133 } : "He rode on a pillion from Argura in Euboea, with fine robes and kymbia and jars in a cart, which were seized by the customs-officers." The word occurs also in the speech Against Euergus and Mnesibulus. Didymus the grammarian says that the cup is long and narrow in shape, similar to a boat which is called kymbē. So Anaxandrides in The Farmers : "{A} Perhaps the big cups with which we were challenged and the kymbia full of unmixed wine have stupefied us. {B} Stupefied! They've upset us completely ! " Alexis in The Horseman : "{A} And how about the kymbia ? [482] Did they have faces of girls in gold? {B} Yes, by Zeus, they did indeed. {A} Alas, what bad luck is mine ! " {64.} G Eratosthenes, on the other hand, in the Letter to Agetor of Lacedaemon, represents the kymbion as shaped like a kyathos. He writes as follows : "The same persons wonder how it was that if he had no kyathos, but only a kymbion, he also owned a phialē. It seems to me, then, that the first was for the use of men, whereas he had acquired possession of the second in order to honour the gods. In those days they made no use of a kyathos, nor again of a kotylē. For they used to set up a mixing-bowl in honour of the gods, one not made of silver, nor set with precious stones, but made of clay from Cape Colias. Every time that they filled up this bowl they would make a libation to the gods from the phialē, and then have the wine poured for themselves in due order, dipping up the fresh mixture with the kymbion,a just as people do to-day in your messes at Sparta. But if they ever wanted to drink more, they used also to set before them the so-called kotyloi, best and easiest of all cups to drink from. These also were of the same clay workmanship." Again, when Ephippus in The Recruits says, "Does not Chaeremon always bring cylices to dinners, hasn't Euripides fought with kymbia ?" he does not mean the tragic poet but someone with the same name, a wine-bibber, that is, or one having a bad reputation, as Antiochus of Alexandria avers in his work On the Poets ridiculed in the Middle Comedy. For to bring along kymbia to an entertainment and to have the reputation of fighting with them points in each direction. This Euripides is mentioned also by Anaxandrides in The Nereids : "You there, Comus, fetch the kymbion and give the pitcher to him. He will turn into a Euripides to-day." And Ephippus in Just Alike or The Obeliaphoroi : "Yes, and may I have to learn by heart some plays of Dionysius, or Demophon's lines against Cotys ; and may I have to listen to Theodorus reciting pieces at dinner, and live next door to Laches, and supply the kymbia when I entertain Euripides." That the kymbē is also a boat Sophocles shows in Andromeda : "With horses or in boats {kymbai} dost thou travel over the earth ? "
Kybba is a cup, Apollodorus says, in Paphos.
{65.} G Kypellon. Is this the same cup as the aleison and the depas, differing only in name - "So then the sons of the Achaeans, standing upon this side and on that, pledged them in cups {kypella} of gold" { Homer, Iliad, 9.670 } - or can it be that the kypellon had a different shape, and was not a double-cup {amphikypellon} as the depas and the aleison were, but simply had a curving brim ? For the word kypellon is derived from the word meaning rotundity just as the word amphikypellon is ; or perhaps it is called kypellon because it resembles the pellai, though with a more contracted curve ; or else amphikypella may be as it were amphikyrta or doubly convex, said of the handles, since they are like that in construction. For the Poet says { Odyssey, 22.9 } : "Now he was just on the point of raising a fair golden, two-handled cup {aleison).} So Antimachus in the fifth book of the Thebaïs : "And the heralds, going to them in turn, dispensed to all the leaders fair cups {kypella} wrought in gold." But Silenus says : "Kypella are drinking-cups similar to skyphoi, as Nicander of Colophon shows . . . 'The swineherd distributed kypella.' { Homer, Odyssey, 20.253 } " [483] Eumolpus says that it is a kind of cup, derived from the word hyphos (curved). Simaristus, however, defines it as the two-handled cup among the Cyprians, whereas in Crete it is the two-handled and four-handled cup. Again, Philitas says that the people of Syracuse call the crumbs of barley-cake and wheat loaves left on the table kypella.
Kymbē. Philemon in his Attic Words says that this is a kind of cylix. Apollodorus in his work On Etymologies says that the inhabitants of Paphos call this cup kybba.
{66.} G Kothon. A Lacedaemonian cup which Xenophon mentions in the first book of Cyropaedeia { 1.2.8 } . And Critias in The Constitution of the Lacedaemonians writes as follows : "Apart from those things, the smallest details of their daily life (are commendable) : Lacedaemonian shoes are the best ; their cloaks are the pleasantest and most convenient to wear ; the Lacedaemonian kothon is a drinking-vessel most suitable for military service and most easily carried in a knapsack. It is adapted to military purposes for the reason that it is often necessary to drink water that is not pure. In the first place it was useful in that the water drunk could not be too clearly seen ; and in the second place, since the kothon had inward-curving edges, it retained a residue of the impurities inside it." Polemon, also, in the book of his Address to Adaeus and Antigonus, after saying that the Lacedaemonians used vessels of earthenware, writes as follows: "But certainly, that this sort of discipline was ancient (It is a custom) which may be seen even to-day among some of the Greek peoples : in Argos at the public banquets, in Lacedaemon during their festivals and on the occasion of dinners celebrating victory or the marriage of their maidens, they drink from earthenware cups ; but in the case of the symposia and at the public mess (the wine is mingled) in casks . . ." Archilochus mentions the kothon as a drinking-cup in his Elegiac Verses thus : "Up then, and with your wine-bottle pace up and down by the rowing-benches of the swift ship, and pull off the lids from the hollow jars; take the red wine from the very lees ; for even we shall not be able to keep sober on such a watch as this." Evidently the kothon here is what is ordinarily called a cylix. Aristophanes in The Knights { 599 } : "They leaped aboard the cavalry-transports like men, after purchasing wine-bottles {kothones} or garlic and onions." Heniochus in Gorgons : "Here, somebody ! Seize the fire-born, round, small-eared, thick-lipped wine-bottle {kothon} minister to our throats, and pour out a drink, a drink ! " Theopompus in Militant Females : "What, am I to bend my throat away back and drink from a neck-twisting canteen {kothon} ? " Alexis in Toilers : "Thereupon he socked me with a quart canteen - O ancient chattel of our house ! " It is from this kind of cup that those who take too large a pull at unmixed wine are called "neat-wine-canteeners," as Hypereides says in the Speech against Demosthenes. And Callixeinus, describing in the fourth book of his work On Alexandria the procession of Philadelphus, in which he enumerates many drinking-cups, writes also, "Two canteens holding twenty measures." {67.} G Now with regard to drinking from these large cups, and demonstrating that such hard drinking, at intervals of time, is beneficial, Mnesitheus, the Athenian physician, says in his letter On Hard Drinking this : "The result of people drinking large quantities of unmixed wine at social gatherings is considerable injury done to body and to mind. [484] And yet hard drinking after several days' interval seems to me to produce a kind of purgation of the body and a relaxation of the mind. For certain superficial manifestations of acidity are caused in our systems by daily attendance at symposia ; the most appropriate outlet for them is by means of urination, while among the purgative processes that which is brought about by hard drinking is the most natural. For the body is thoroughly washed out by wine, since wine is both liquid and warm ; the urine which is filtered out of us is acrid. At any rate the fullers cleanse garments by the use of it as a washing agent. Observe three points when you indulge in hard drinking. First, do not drink poor wine or neat wine, or chew nuts and raisins while drinking. Secondly, when you have had enough of it, do not lie down until you have vomited more or less. Thirdly, when you have vomited sufficiently, go to bed after a light shower-bath ; but if you have not been able to empty yourself sufficiently, take a more extended bath, lying in a tub of very warm water." Polemon in the fifth book of his Address to Adaeus and Antigonus says : "Dionysus Perfecter. He is seated on a rock ; on his left is a bald-headed satyr, holding in the right hand a canteen with one handle and fluted sides."
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