They order good deep [Greek: kylikes], good-sized,
Downright wine-carrying transports, wide and round,
Of delicate substance, swelling in the middle.
A crafty order: for with prudent foresight
They were providing how, without much notice,
They might procure the largest quantity
Of wine to drink themselves; and then when we
Reproach them that 'tis they who've drunk up everything,
They heap abuse on us, and swear that they,
Poor injured dears, have only drunk one cup,
Though their one's larger than a thousand common cups.
63. Then there are cymbia. These are a small hollow kind of cup, according to Simaristus. But Dorotheus says, "The cymbium is a kind of deep cup, upright, having no pedestal and no handles." But Ptolemy the father of Aristonicus calls them "curved goblets." And Nicander of Thyatira says that Theopompus, in his Mede, called a cup without handles cymbium. Philemon, in his Vision, says—
But when fair Rhode came and shook above you
A cymbium full of mighty unmix'd wine.
But Dionysius of Samos, in the sixth book of his treatise on the Cyclic Poets, thinks that the [Greek: kissybion] and the [Greek: kymbion] are the same. For he says that Ulysses, having filled a cymbium with unmixed wine, gave it to the Cyclops. But the cup mentioned in Homer, as having been given to him by Ulysses, is a good-sized cissybium; for if it had been a small cup, he, who was so enormous a monster, would not have been so quickly overcome by drunkenness, when he had only drunk it three times. And Demosthenes mentions the cymbium in his oration against Midias, saying that he was accompanied by rhyta and cymbia: and in his orations against Euergus and Mnesibulus. But Didymus the grammarian says that is a cup of an oblong shape, and narrow in figure, very like the shape of a boat. And Anaxandrides, in his Clowns, says—
Perhaps large cups ([Greek: potêria]) immoderately drain'd,
And cymbia full of strong unmixed wine,
Have bow'd your heads, and check'd your usual spirit.
And Alexis, in his Knight, says—
A. Had then those cymbia the faces of damsels
Carved on them in pure gold?
B. Indeed they had.
A. Wretched am I, and wholly lost. . . .
