Athenaeus - Deipnosophists Book XI
Note: Book XI starts with sections 459 through 466, jumps to sections 781 through 784, and then returns to section 466.
Book XI. 781 f
Parmenion, summing up the booty taken from the Persians, in his Letters to Alexander, says: “Gold cups, weight seventy-three Babylonian talents, fifty-two minae; cups inlaid with precious stones, weight fifty-six Babylonian talents, thirty-four minae.
Note to the above: If the Babylonian gold talent is meant, the total weight of the gold cups was considerably over four tons.
Book XI. 783 e
Antigonis is a cup named after King Antigonus, just as the seleukis was named after Seleucus and the prusias after Prusias.
Book XI. 784 a - b
Batiakion, labronios, tragelaphos, and pristis are names of cups. The batiake is a Persian saucer. In the collection of Letters of King Alexander addressed to the satraps in Asia there is contained a letter in which the following is written: “Three silver batiakai, gilded. Silver kondya 176; of these thirty-three are gilded. One silver tisigites. Silver spoons, gilded, thirty-two. One silver flask-castor. One ornamented silver wine-container of native manufacture. Other small cups of every variety, twenty-nine; drinking-horns, gilded batiakai made in Lycia, censers, and bowls.”
Book XI. 784 c
Athenaeus further says that the men of Alexandria make glass, working it into many varied shapes of cups, and copying the shape of every kind of pottery that is imported among them from everywhere. They say that in order to gratify Cassander at the time when he founded the metropolis of Cassandreia, he being fond of glory and desirous of appropriating to himself a special kind of vessel because Mendaean wine was exported from his city in large quantities, the sculptor Lysippus exerted his best efforts and, after comparing many pieces of earthenware of every description, copied something from each and so invented a special model.
Book XI. 467 c
Gyalas. Philitas in Irregular Words says that the Megarians give this term to cups, gyalai. But Parthenius, the disciple of Dionysius, in the first book On Words found in the Historians, says: “The gyalas is a kind of cup, as Marsyas, the priest of Heracles writes: ‘Whenever the king* enters the capital, he is met by someone with a gyalas full of wine; taking it, he pours a libation (from it).’ ”
* Of Macedonia.
Book XI. 476 d
Hermippus in The Fates: “Do you know, then, what I want you to do? Don’t offer me that little cup, but just give me instead one drink out of the horn.” The orator Lycurgus, in the speech Against Demades, says that Philip always pledged with a horn those toward whom he felt friendly. And Theopompus, in the second book of his History of Philip, says that the kings of Paeonia, in which country the cattle grew horns so large that they hold three or four choes,* made drinking-cups of them, overlaying the rims with silver or gold.
* The chous nearly = 3 quarts.
Book XI. 484 c – d
Labronia are a kind of Persian cup, so named from the violence (labrotes) which arises in drinking. In design it is flat and large; it also has large handles; and it occurs, too, in the masculine form labronios; Menander in The Fisherman*: ‘We’re living high, and I don’t mean moderately; we have gold from Cyinda; purple robes from Persia lie in piles; we have in our house, gentlemen, embossed vessels, drinking-cups, and other silver ware, and masks in high relief, goat-stage drinking-horns, and labronioi.”
* Kock iii. 10, Allinson 316: the tile is sometimes given in the plural. A miles gloriosus boasts of his loot; the treasury at Cyinda was seized in 318 B.C. by Eumenes to carry on operations against Antigonus in the interest of Polyperchon and Olympias, Diod. xviii. 57, 58, Strab. 672.
Book XI. 497 b – c
Now the rhyton was earlier called a horn; and it appears to have been manufactured first under the orders of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, that it might be used as an attribute borne by the statues of Arsinoe. For in her left hand the queen carries that sort of object filled with all kinds of fruit, the artists thus indicating that this horn is even richer in blessings than the horn of Amaltheia. Theoces mentions it in his Ithyphallic Verses thus: “All we artists have today celebrated with sacrifice the festival of Salvation;* in their company I have drunk the double horn and am come into the presence of our dearest king.”
* Xen. Anab. Iii. 2. 8. But here the Saviour Gods are Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice.
Book XI. 497 f
Seleukis. That this cup got its designation from King Seleucus has been stated before*; the fact is recorded also by Apollodorus of Athens. And Polemon, in the first book of his Addresses to Adaeus, mentions as cups resembling each other the Seleukis, Rhodias, and Antigonis.
* Book XI. 783 e
Book XI. 500 d
Tabaite. Amyntas* in the first book of his Itinerary in Asia, discoursing on the so-called oak-manna, writes as follows: “They gather it, leaves and all, and press it in a mass, moulding it like a Syrian cake of fruit, or in some cases making balls of it. And when they are about to eat it, they break off portions from the mass into wooden cups which they call tabaitai, and after first soaking it and straining it off they drink (the syrup). And it is as if one soaked honey (in wine) and drank it, but very much pleasanter than that.”
* Amyntas, surveyor in Alexander’s army and writer on Persian geography.
Book XI. 506 d – f
In the Cimon* Plato is unsparing in his accusation of Themistocles, as also of Alcibiades and Myronides, and even Cimon himself. The Crito, also, contains an invective against Crito himself, the Republic against Sophocles, while the Gorgias is equally critical not only of the man from whose name the title is taken, but also of Archelaus, the king of Macedonia, of whom it is said not only that he was of shameful origin, but also that he had murdered his master.** So this is Plato, of whom Speusippus said that he was very friendly to Philip and was the cause of his becoming king! At least Carystius of Pergamum in Historical Notes writes as follows: ‘Speusippus, learning that Philip was uttering slanders about Plato, wrote in a letter something of this sort: “As if the whole world did not know that Philip acquired the beginning of his kingship through Plato’s agency. For Plato sent to Perdiccas Euphraeus of Oreus, who persuaded Perdiccas to portion off some territory to Philip. Here Philip kept a force, and when Perdiccas died, since he had this force in readiness, he at once plunged into the control of affairs.” ’ Now whether in fact this is really so God alone can know.
* There is not, and apparently never was, a dialogue by Plato so entitled. It is thought that the Gorgias is meant and the text has been altered accordingly.
** Gorg. 471. Archelaus was son of Perdiccas II and a woman who was a slave of his uncle (and therefore his master), Alcetas.
Book XI. 508 d – e
Euphraeus for example, when staying at the court of King Perdiccas in Macedonia, lorded it as regally as the king himself, though he was of low origin and given to slander; he was so pedantic in his selection of the king’s associates that nobody could share in the common mess if he did not know how to practise geometry or philosophy. For this reason, when Philip succeeded to the throne, Parmenion seized and killed Euphraeus in Oreus, according to Carystius in Historical Notes.
Book XI. 509 a
Then Timaeus of Cyzicus, as Demochares again says, after bestowing a largess of money and grain upon his fellow-citizens, thereby winning confidence among the Cyzicenes that he was a good man, a little while afterwards attacked their constitution through the agency of Aridaeus*. He was tried, convicted, and disgraced, and although he remained in the city old and worn with age, he passed his life in dishonour.
* Aridaeus, Macedonian general, active in intrigues at Cyzicus after the death of Antipater (319 B.C.)