DRINKING-CUPS. accused the treasurers. And Ptolemy sent for them, and ordered them to come with their books, in which were the lists of those who received those stipends. And when they had arrived, the king took the books into his hands, and looking into them himself, also asserted that Sosibius had received his money; making it out in this way:—These names were set down,—Soter, Sosigenes, Bion, Apollon, Dion; and the king, looking on these names, said—My excellent solver of difficulties, if you take [Greek: Sô] from [Greek: Sôtêr], and [Greek: si] from [Greek: Sôsigenês], and the first syllable [Greek: bi] from [Greek: Biôn], and the last syllable from [Greek: Apollônos], you will find, on your own principles, that you have received your stipend. And you are caught in this way, not owing to the actions of others, but by your own feathers, as the incomparable Æschylus says, since you yourself are always occupied about solutions of difficulties which are foreign to the subject in hand."
86. There is the holmus also. This, too, is a drinking-cup, made in the fashion of a horn. Menesthenes, in the fourth book of his Politics, writes thus—"A twisted albatanes and a golden holmus. But the holmus is a cup wrought after the fashion of a horn, about a cubit in height."
87. There is also the oxybaphum. Now common usage gives this name to the cruet that holds the vinegar; but it is also the name of a cup; and it is mentioned by Cratinus, in his Putina, in this way:—
How can a man now make him leave off this
Excessive drinking? I can tell a way;
For I will break his jugs and measures all,
And crush his casks as with a thunderbolt,
And all his other vessels which serve to drink:
Nor shall he have a single oxybaphum left,
Fit to hold wine.
But that the oxybaphum is a kind of small [Greek: kylix], made of earthenware, Antiphanes proves plainly enough, in his Mystis, in the following words.[1] There is a wine-bibbing old</poem>
and (perhaps) imitated by Waller—
"That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Who on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high."
]
- ↑ This refers to a line of the Myrmidons of Æschylus, quoted by Aristophanes— <poem> [Greek: tad' ouch hyp' allôn alla tois autôn pterois aliskomestha
