DRINKING-CUPS. 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 ([Greek: deinon]), 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 ([Greek: deinon]) is this deinus and calathiscus.
And Telesilla the Argive calls a threshing-floor also [Greek: deinos]. 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 [Greek: depastron]. 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 ([Greek: depastra]) 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 ([Greek: depastra]), which in my halls are stored.
