There were also a great number of games played at the symposium, and also at other times, chiefly by young people. The one which was the most popular at the symposia, and which in consequence we find on numerous monuments, was _Cottabus_, a game introduced from Sicily, which fell into disuse during the age of Alexander’s successors, and was unknown to the Romans, so that the accounts we have of it are somewhat confused. This much is certain, that it consisted in skilfully throwing drops of wine left in the cup at some definite goal, and producing a certain effect in striking it. The cup was held, not by the foot, but by one handle with the fingers, and they did not use the whole arm in throwing it, but only the wrist, or, if the arm was bent, only the lower arm. There were various ways of playing this game; for the commonest, they seem to have used a stand something like a high candelabrum (see the one represented in Fig. 101), the shaft of which could be screwed higher or lower according to requirement. On the top of it was balanced, placed loosely upon it, a little saucer or bowl of brass, and the wine which was thrown had to fall with a ringing noise upon it, and throw down the disc; it is clear, from various vase paintings, that this was not fastened to the top, since we see girls in the act of laying the disc on the top of the shaft. This, however, was not enough; various complications were added to increase the difficulty. On some of the cottabus stands they fastened the figure of a slave, called “Manes,” made of brass, which must also be struck in throwing, and according as it was fastened on the shaft, either first or last. Sometimes the disc on to which the wine was thrown must, when struck, fall down on to another small scale fixed a little lower down, and the sound then made, according as it was strong or weak, was regarded as a kind of oracle in love. In Fig. 101, the bearded man lying on the couch is in the act of throwing the wine left in his cup, which he holds by the first finger of the right hand, at the cottabus stand. Near him lies a youth with a thyrsus, who is handing fruit, or something of the kind, to a woman with a tambourine, sitting on a cushion in front of him. On the right is a cup-bearer, a naked boy with a wine can. Sometimes they seem to have spirited the wine from their mouths instead of from a cup; or they set little saucers or nut-shells to swim empty on the water, and tried to fill them by throwing in the wine drops and making them sink. This occupation, in spite of the great popularity it seems to have had in the fifth and fourth centuries, can but be regarded as a very unintellectual one. [Illustration: FIG. 101.]