The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
[Sidenote: DRINKING-CUPS.]
32. There is another sort of cup called the deinus. And that this is
the name of a cup we are assured by Dionysius of Sinope, in his Female
Saviour, where he gives a catalogue of the names of cups, and mentions
this among them, speaking as follows—
And as for all the kinds of drinking-cups,
Lady, all fair to see,—dicotyli,
Tricotyli besides, the mighty deinus,
Which holds an entire measure, and the cymbion,
The scyphus and the rhytum; on all these
The old woman keeps her eyes, and minds nought else.
And Cleanthes the philosopher, in his book on Interpretation, says,
that the cups called the Thericlean, and that called the Deinias, are
both named from the original makers of them. And Seleucus, saying that
the deinus is a kind of cup, quotes some lines of Stratis, from his
Medea—
Dost know, O Creon, what the upper part
Of your head doth resemble? I can tell you:
'Tis like a deinus turned upside down.
And Archedicus, in his Man in Error, introducing a servant speaking of
some courtesans, says—
_A._ I lately introduced a hook-nosed woman,
Her name Nicostrata; but surnamed also
Scotodeina, since (at least that is the story)
She stole a silver deinus in the dark.
_B._ A terrible thing (δεινὸν), by Jove; a terrible thing!
The deinus is also the name of a kind of dance, as Apollophanes tells
us in his Dalis, where he says—
A strange thing (δεινὸν) is this deinus and calathiscus.
And Telesilla the Argive calls a threshing-floor also δεῖνος. And the
Cyrenæans give the same name to a foot-tub, as Philetas tells us in his
Attic Miscellanies.
33. There is also a kind of drinking-cup called δέπαστρον. Silenus
and Clitarchus, in their Dialects, say that this is a name given to
drinking-cups among the Clitorians; but Antimachus the Colophonian, in
the fifth book of his Thebais, says—
And carefully they all commands obey'd
Which wise Adrastus laid on them. They took
A silver goblet, and they pour'd therein
Water, and honey pure, compounding deftly;
And quickly then they all distributed
The cups (δέπαστπα) among the princes of the Greeks,
Who there were feasting; and from a golden jug
They pour'd them wine for due libations.
And in another place he says—
Let others bring the bowl of solid silver,
Or golden cups (δέπαστρα), which in my halls are stored.
And immediately afterwards he says—
And golden cups (δέπαστρα), and a pure untouch'd vessel
Of honey sweet, which will be best for him.
34. There is also a kind of cup called δακτυλωτὸν, with
finger-like handles; and it is called so by Ion, in the Agamemnon—
And you shall have a gift worth running for,
A finger-handled cup, not touch'd by fire,
The mighty prize once given by Pelias,
And by swift Castor won.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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