The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/307

Exported from Wikisource on October 9, 2024

CUPS.   3. And I think it right that you should inquire, before we begin to make a catalogue of the cups of which this sideboard ([Greek: kylikeion]) is full,—(for that name is given to the cupboard where the cups are kept, by Aristophanes, in his Farmers—

As a cloth is placed in front of a sideboard ([Greek: kylikeion]);

and the same word occurs also in Anaxandrides in his Melilotus; and Eubulus in his Leda says—

As if he had been offering a libation,

He's broken all the goblets in the sideboard ([Greek: kylikeion]).

And in his Female Singer he says—

And he found out the use of sideboards ([Greek: kylikeia]) for us.

And in his Semele or Bacchus he says—

Hermes the son of Maia, polish'd well

Upon the sideboard. . . .

And the younger Cratinus, in his Chiron, says—

But, after many years, I now have come

Home from my enemies; and scarce have found

Relations who would own me, or companions

Of the same tribe or borough. I enroll'd

My name among a club of cup-collectors ([Greek: kylikeion]):

Jupiter is the guardian of my doors—

Protector of my tribe. I pay my taxes.)

4. It is worth while, I say, to inquire whether the ancients drank out of large cups. For Dicæarchus the Messenian, the pupil of Aristotle, in his Essay on Alcæus, says that they used small cups, and that they drank their wine mixed with a good deal of water. But Chamæleon of Heraclea, in his essay on Drunkenness, (if I only recollect his words correctly,) says—"But if those who are in power and who are rich prefer this drunkenness to other pleasures, it is no great wonder, for as they have no other pleasure superior to this, nor more easy to obtain, they naturally fly to wine: on which account it has become customary among the nobles to use large drinking-cups. For this is not at all an ancient custom among the Greeks; but one that has been lately adopted, and imported from the barbarians. For they, being destitute of education, rush eagerly to much wine, and provide themselves with all kinds of superfluous delicacies. But in the various countries of Greece, we neither find in pictures nor in poems any trace of any cups of large size being made, except indeed in the heroic times. For the cup which is called [Greek: rhyton] they

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The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/307

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