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
After those monsters fierce
Learnt the invincible strength of luscious wine;
Then with a sudden fury,
With mighty hands they threw the snow-white milk
Down from the board,
And of their own accord
Drank away their senses in the silver-mounted horns.
And Xenophon, in the seventh book of his Anabasis, giving an account of
the banquet which was given by the Thracian Seuthes, writes thus: "But
when Xenophon, with his companions, arrived at Seuthes's palace, first
of all they embraced one another, and then, according to the Thracian
fashion, they were presented with horns of wine." And in his sixth book
he says, when he is speaking of the Paphlagonians, "And they supped
lying on couches made of leaves, and they drank out of cups made of
horn." And Æschylus, in his Perrhæbi, represents the Perrhæbi as using
horns for cups, in the following lines:—
With silver-mounted horns,
Fitted with mouthpieces of rich-wrought gold.
And Sophocles, in his Pandora, says—
And when a man has drain'd the golden cup,
She, pressing it beneath her tender arm,
Returns it to him full.
And Hermippus, in his Fates, says—
Do you now know the thing you ought to do?
Give not that cup to me; but from this horn
Give me but once more now to drink a draught.
And Lycurgus the orator, in his Oration against Demades, says that
Philip the king pledged those men whom he loved in a horn. And
Theopompus, in the second book of his history of the Affairs and
Actions of Philip, says that the kings of the Pæonians, as the oxen
in their countries have enormous horns, so large as to contain three
or four choes of wine, make drinking-cups of them, covering over the
brims with silver or with gold. And Philoxenus of Cythera, in his poem
entitled The Supper, says—
He then the sacred drink of nectar quaff'd
From the gold-mounted brims of th' ample horns,
And then they all did drink awhile.
And the Athenians made also silver goblets in the shape of horns, and
drank out of them. And one may ascertain that by seeing the articles
mentioned in writing among the list of confiscated goods on the pillar
which lies in the Acropolis, which contains the sacred offerings—"There
is also a silver horn drinking-cup, very solid."
52. There is also the cernus. This is a vessel made of earthenware,
having many little cup-like figures fastened to it, in which are white
poppies, wheat-ears, grains of barley, peas, pulse, vetches, and
lentils. And he who carries it, like the man who carries the mystic
fan, eats of these things, as Ammonius relates in the third book of his
treatise on Altars and Sacrifices.
53. There is also the cup called the cissybium. This is a cup with but
one handle, as Philemon says. And Neoptolemus the Parian, in the third
book of his Dialects, says that this word is used by Euripides in the
Andromache, to signify a cup made of (κίσσινον)—
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