OENO´PHORUM
OENO´PHORUM a vessel for holding wine. It had two
handles, as is clear from a passage (cited by Marquardt,
Privatleben, 650) from the comedy
Querolus,
where among dilapidated goods we have “oenophorum
exauriculatum.” It is described by Isidore (
Or. 20.6,
1) as “vas ferens vinum;” much larger than a drinking-cup
(
Juv. 6.425), and such that it could be held
by the handles and inverted, in pouring the contents into cups, as in the
line of Lucilius, “vertitur oenophoris fundus, sententia
[p. 2.262]nobis” (cf. “invertunt allifanis
vinaria tota,” Hor.
Sat. 2.8, 39).
It is clear from the above passages that it was
not
(as has often been stated by commentators on Hor.
Sat. 1.6, 109, and Pers. 5.140) a wine-basket or
“cellaret,” but a large wine-vessel. The slaves, in these
passages of Horace and Persius, carry it outside their luggage, ready for
use. The word “oenophorum” in
Plin.
Nat. 34.69, adduced by some as from
oenophorus and meaning “a slave bearing a wine-basket,”
cannot have anything to do with this subject: if the passage is so read, it
is merely a statue of a wine-carrier by Praxiteles--but the true reading
seems to be “canephoram.”
[
G.E.M]