DRINKING-CUPS. And Xenarchus, in his Priapus, says this—
Pour, boy, no longer in the silver tankard,
But let us have again recourse to the deep.
Pour, boy, I bid you, in the cantharus,
Pour quick, by Jove, aye, by the Cantharus,[1] pour.
And Epigenes, in his Heroine, says—
But now they do no longer canthari make,
At least not large ones; but small shallow cups
Are come in fashion, and they call them neater,
As if they drank the cups, and not the wine.
48. And Sosicrates, in his Philadelphi, says—
A gentle breeze mocking the curling waves,
Sciron's fair daughter, gently on its course
Brought with a noiseless foot the cantharus;
where cantharus evidently means a boat.
And Phrynichus, in his Revellers, says—
And then Chærestratus, in his own abode,
Working with modest zeal, did weep each day
A hundred canthari well fill'd with wine.
And Nicostratus, in his Calumniator, says—
A. Is it a ship of twenty banks of oars,
Or a swan, or a cantharus? For when
I have learnt that, I then shall be prepared
Myself t' encounter everything.
B. It is
A cycnocantharus, an animal
Compounded carefully of each.
And Menander, in his Captain of a Ship, says—
A. Leaving the salt depths of the Ægean sea,
Theophilus has come to us, O Strato.
How seasonably now do I say your son
Is in a prosperous and good condition,
And so's that golden cantharus.
B. What cantharus?
A. Your vessel.
And a few lines afterwards he says—
B. You say my ship is safe?
A. Indeed I do,
That gallant ship which Callicles did build,
And which the Thurian Euphranor steer'd.
And Polemo, in his treatise on Painters, addressed to Antigonus, says—"At Athens, at the marriage of Pirithous,
- ↑ The cantharus was also a kind of beetle worshipped in Egypt, and
as such occasionally invoked in an oath.
