*

DRINKING-CUPS. conceived the ambition of inventing some peculiar kind of utensil in earthenware, on account of the extraordinary quantity of Mendean wine which was exported from the city, took a great deal of pains with that study, and brought Cassander a great number of cups of every imaginable fashion, all made of earthenware, and taking a part of the pattern of each, thus made one goblet of a design of his own.

29. There is also a kind of cup called bicus. Xenophon, in the first book of his Anabasis, says:—"And Cyrus sent him a number of goblets ([Greek: bikous]) of wine half full; and it is a cup of a flat shallow shape, like a [Greek: phialê], according to the description given of it by Pollux the Parian.

There is another kind of cup called the bombylius; a sort of Rhodian Thericlean cup; concerning the shape of which Socrates says,—"Those who drink out of the phiale as much as they please will very soon give over; but those who drink out of a bombylius drink by small drops." There is also an animal of the same name.

There is also a kind of drinking-cup called the bromias, in form like the larger kind of scyphus.

30. There is another kind called the lettered cup, having writing engraved round it. Alexis says—

And we have seen a lettered cup of this kind lying at Capua in Campania, in the temple of Diana; covered with writing taken from the poems of Homer, and beautifully engraved; having the verses inlaid in golden characters, like the drinking-cup of Nestor. And Achæus the tragic poet, in his Omphale, himself also represents the Satyrs speaking in the following manner about a lettered drinking-cup—

, eleven, being the number of letters in [Greek: Dios

Sôtêros]. I have altered the number to make it correspond to the letters in "To Jupiter the Saviour."]

1. ↑ The Greek has [Greek: hendeka