Hippeus made a wine jug and goblet of stone, inlaying its edges with gold. And he provided also couches of pinewood placed on the ground, adorned with coverlets of every sort, and for drinking cups there were canthari made of earthenware. And moreover, the lamp which was suspended from the roof, had a number of lights all kept distinct from one another. And that this kind of cup got its name originally from Cantharus a potter, who invented it, Philetærus tells us in his Achilles—
Peleus?—but Peleus[1] is a potter's name,
The name of some dry wither'd lamp-maker,
Known too as Cantharus, exceeding poor,
Far other than a king, by Jove.
And that cantharus is also the name of a piece of female ornament, we may gather from Antiphanes in his Bœotia.
49. There is also a kind of cup called carchesium. Callixenus the Rhodian, in his History of the Affairs and Customs of Alexandria, says that it is a cup of an oblong shape, slightly contracted in the middle, having ears which reach down to the bottom. And indeed, the carchesium is a tolerably oblong cup, and perhaps it has its name from its being stretched upwards. But the carchesium is an extremely old description of cup; if at least it is true that Jupiter, when he had gained the affections of Alcmena, gave her one as a love gift, as Pherecydes relates in his second book, and Herodorus of Heraclea tells the same story. But Asclepiades the Myrlean says that this cup derives its name from some one of the parts of the equipment of a ship. For the lower part of the mast is called the pterna, which goes down into the socket; and the middle of the mast is called the neck; and towards the upper part it is called carchesium. And the carchesium has yards running out on each side, and in it there is placed what is called the breastplate, being four-cornered on all sides, except just at the bottom and at the top. Both of which extend a little outwards in a straight line. And above the breastplate is a part which is called the distaff, running up to a great height, and being sharp-pointed. And Sappho also speaks of the carchesia, where she says—, clay.]
- ↑ There is a pun here on the name, as if Peleus were derived from
[Greek: pêlos
