Another name identified in antiquity with the ψυκτήρ is that of the δῖνος (sometimes spelled δεῖνος); but the identity was more probably one of usage than of form.[588] As to the latter, there is considerable discrepancy in the accounts of the grammarians[589]; one calls it a deep cup tapering down to a point; another, probably more correctly, since it was certainly not a drinking-vessel, a clay vessel for wine without a base, but rounded underneath. In virtue of this description the name has usually been applied to a class of vase, commoner in the earlier periods than the later, and more often found on Greek sites than on Italian, which has a rounded base without foot, and no handles (Fig. 42). These vases are found as early as the seventh century in Greece, and were very common at Naukratis, appearing also in most of the B.F. fabrics. That they were used to contain the ashes of the dead is shown by the B.M. example already referred to (p. 146), which belongs to the end of the R.F. period.[590] In Southern Italy this form of vase is generally placed on a separate high moulded stem, and has a cover with an ornamental knob. A variety with hemispherical cover nearly equal in size to the vase itself has been identified with the ἡμίτομος (“cut in half”), a form mentioned by Athenaeus.[591] This type of vase has more usually been described by the name of λέβης, denoting a kettle or caldron; but though the form of the λέβης was practically the same (as we may gather from the fact of its always being placed on a tripod), the purpose for which it was used (_i.e._ for boiling water) and the fact that it was always of metal, suggest that it is not such an appropriate name as δῖνος for this form of painted vase. The λέβης is constantly mentioned in Homer, both as a cooking-vessel and as a washing-basin.[592] Herodotos[593] says that the Scythians used a λέβης for cooking flesh, which resembled the Lesbian krater, but was much larger. It was also the vessel in which the ram, and subsequently Pelias, were boiled by Medeia; and may be seen depicted in several B.F. representations of that story.[594] A golden lebes was placed at each angle of the temple of Zeus at Olympia.[595] It is also the name of the vessel used by the Boeotians in their ingenious contrivance at the siege of Delion.[596] To its use as a cinerary urn in the tragic poets we have already alluded.