Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/327

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DRINKING-CUPS. which a person can insert his fingers on both sides. But some say that it is one which has figures in the shape of fingers carved all round it."

35. There is also the elephant; and this was the name of a kind of cup, as we are told by Damoxenus, in the Man who laments himself—

A. If that is not enough, here is the boy
     Bringing the elephant.
                            B. In God's name tell me,
     What beast is that?
                         A. 'Tis a mighty cup,
     Pregnant with double springs of rosy wine,
     And able to contain three ample measures:
     The work of Alcon. When I was at Cypseli,
     Adæus pledged me in this selfsame cup.

And Epinicus also mentions this cup, in his Supposititious Damsels; and I will quote his testimony when I come to speak of the rhytum.

36. There is another kind of cup called the Ephebus. And Philemon the Athenian, in his treatise on Attic Nouns and Attic Dialects, says that this cup is also called the embasicoitas; but Stephanus the comic poet, in his Friend of the Lacedæmonians, says—

Sos. The king then pledged him in a certain village.
  B. A wondrous thing. What can you mean? Is this
       A kind of goblet?
                         Sos. No; I mean a village
       Near Thyria.
                    B. Why, my whole thoughts were borne
       Off to the Rhodian cups, O Sosia,
       And to those heavy bowls they call ephebi.

37. There are also some cups which are called [Greek: hêdypotides]. "These," says Lynceus the Samian, "were made by the Rhodians in emulation of the Thericlean goblets which were in use at Athens. But as the Athenians, on account of the great weight of metal employed in them, only made this shape for the use of the richer classes, the Rhodians made theirs so light that they were able to put these ornaments within the reach even of the poor. And Epigenes mentions them, in his Heroine, in these words—

A psycter, and a cyathus, and cymbia,
Four rhyta, and three hedypotides,
A silver strainer, too.

And Sermus, in the fifth book of his Delias, says that there is