Come, my boy, and bring to me Such a cup as I may drink At one easy draught: pour in Ten cyathi of water pure, And five of richest Chian wine; That I may drink, from fear removed, And free from drunken insolence. And going on presently, he calls the drinking of unmixed wine, a Scythian draught— Come hither, now, and let us not Give way to vulgar shouts and noise, Indulging in the Scythian draughts While o'er our wine; but let us drink, Singing well-omen'd, pious hymns. And the Lacedæmonians, according to the statement of Herodotus, in his sixth book, say that Cleomenes the king, having lived among the Scythians, and got the habit of drinking unmixed wine, became perfectly mad from his habit of drunkenness. And the Lacedæmonians themselves, when they take it into their heads to drink hard, say that they are Episcythising. Accordingly, Chamæleon of Heraclea, in his book on Drunkenness, writes thus concerning them:—"Since the Lacedæmonians say also, that Cleomenes the Spartan became mad from having lived among the Scythians, and there learnt to drink unmixed wine; on which account, when they take a fancy to drink unmixed wine they desire their slaves to pour out in the Scythian fashion." And Achæus, in his Æthon, a satyric drama, represents the Satyrs as indignant at being compelled to drink their wine watered, and as saying— Was the whole Achelous in this wine? But even then this race would not cease drinking, For this is all a Scythian's happiness. 30. But the habit of pouring libations of pure wine, as Theophrastus says, in his treatise on Drinking, was not ancient; but originally libations were what is given to the Gods, and the cottabus, what was devoted to the object of one's love. For men practised throwing the cottabus with great care, it being originally a Sicilian sport, as Anacreon the Teian says— Throwing, with his well-bent arm The Sicilian cottabus. On which account those songs of the ancient poets, which are called scolia, are full of mention of the cottabus.[45] I mean, for instance, such a scolion as Pindar composed— And rightly I adore the Graces, Nymphs of Venus and of Love, While drinking with a loving heart This sounding cottabus I pour To Agathon, my heart's delight. And they also consecrated to those of their friends who were dead, all that portion of their victuals which fell from their tables. On which account Euripides says of Sthenobœa, when she thinks that Bellerophon is dead— Nothing escaped her from her hand which fell, But in a moment she did couple it With the loved name of the Corinthian stranger. 31. But the ancients were not in the habit of getting drunk. But Pittacus recommended Periander of Priene not to get drunk, nor to become too much addicted to feasting, "so that," says he, "it may not be discovered what sort of a person you really are, and that you are not what you pretend to be."— [Sidenote: DRINKING.]