Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/371

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DRINKING-CUPS. which the Athenians used to pour mixed wine. "In hollow proara," says Pamphilus.

90. Then there is the pelica. Callistratus, in his Commentary on the Thracian Women of Cratinus, calls this a [Greek: kylix]. But Crates, in the second book of his treatise on the Attic Dialect, writes thus:—"Choes, as we have already said, were called pelicæ. But the form of this vessel was at first like that of the panathenaica, when it was called pelica; but afterwards it was made of the same shape as the œnochoe, such as those are which are put on the table at festivals, which they formerly used to call olpæ, using them for infusing the wine, as Ion the Chian, in his Sons of Eurytus, says—

You make a noise, intemperately drawing
Superfluous wine from the large casks with olpæ.

But now a vessel of that sort, which has been consecrated in some fashion or other, is placed on the table at festivals alone. And that which comes into every-day use has been altered in form, being now generally made like a ladle, and we call it choeus." But Clitarchus says that the Corinthians, and Byzantians, and Cyprians call an oil-cruet, which is usually called lecythus, olpa; and the Thessalians call it prochous. But Seleucus says that the Bœotians call a [Greek: kylix] pelichna; but Euphronius, in his Commentaries, says that they give this name to a choeus.

91. There is the pella. This is a vessel resembling the scyphus, having a wider bottom, into which men used to milk the cattle. Homer says—

Thick as beneath some shepherd's thatch'd abode,
The pails ([Greek: pellai]) high foaming with a milky flood,
The buzzing flies, a persevering train,
Incessant swarm, and chased, return again.

But Hipponax calls this pellis; saying,—

Drinking from pellides; for there was not
A culix there,—the slave had fallen down,
And broken it to pieces;

showing, I imagine, very plainly that the pellis was not a drinking-cup, but that on this occasion they used it as one, from want of a regular culix. And in another place he says—

And they at different times from out the pella
Did drink; and then again Arete pledged them.

But Phœnix the Colophonian, in his Iambics, interprets this word as identical with the phiala; saying,—