DRINKING-CUPS.
There is a vessel, too, called the pristis; and that this is a
species of cup has been already stated in the discussion on
the batiacium.
94. There is the prochytes, too. This is a kind of drinking-cup, as Simaristus says, in the fourth book of his Synonymes. But Ion the Chian, in his Elegies, says—
But let the cupbearing maidens fill for us
A crater with their silver prochytæ;
and Philetas, in his Miscellanies, says it is a wooden vessel, from which the countrymen drink: and Alexander also mentions it in his Tigon. And Xenophon, in the eighth book of his Cyropædia, calls some kinds of culices, prochoides, writing thus (and it is of the Persians that he is speaking):—"But it was a custom among them not to bring prochoides into their banquets, evidently because they think that not drinking too much is good both for the body and the mind. And even now the custom prevails that they do not bring them; but they drink such a quantity of wine that, instead of carrying in their cups, they themselves are carried out, when they can no longer go out themselves in an upright attitude."
There is also the Prusias; and it has been already said that this is an upright kind of cup, and that it derived its name from Prusias king of Bithynia, who was a man very notorious for his luxury and effeminacy; as is mentioned by Nicander the Chalcedonian, in the fourth book of his History of the Events of the Life of Prusias.
95. There are also rheonta; for this was a name given to some cups: and Astydamas mentions them in his Mercury, speaking thus:—
First of all were two silver craters large,
And fifty phialæ, and ten cymbia,
And twelve rheonta, two of which were gold,
The others silver;—of the gold ones, one
Was like a griffin, one like Pegasus.
There is also the rhysis. This is called a golden phiala by Theodorus; and Cratinus, in his Laws, says—"Pouring a libation from a rhysis."
96. There is also the Rhodias. Diphilus, in his Stormer of Walls (but Callimachus calls the play The Eunuch), speaks thus—
And they intend to drink more plenteously
Than rhodiaca or rhyta can supply.
