Psycter
（
ψυκτήρ). A vessel for cooling wine or water. It was of
various shapes, but probably in general resembled the
calathus. (See
Calathus.) The name might be given to any vessel in
which wine was cooled, even when the process was merely putting in snow, but the contrivance
especially so called consisted of a smaller vessel placed within a larger one. Sometimes the
wine or water to be iced was placed in the smaller and plunged into the larger vessel which
contained snow; sometimes the snow was placed in the smaller vessel and let down into the
larger vase of wine. When the wine was sufficiently iced, the smaller vessel was no doubt
removed, and the wine ladled out with a
cyathus (Athen. xi. 503): we have
no reason to suppose that a tap was used, as seems to have been sometimes the case in the
Authepsa for hot drinks. See
Authepsa.
Iced water, the
gelida of
Juv.v. 63（
frigida,
Tac. Ann. xiii. 16),
which, like the
calida, was handed round to mix with the wine, or was
used as a drink by itself (Athen. iii. p. 121 e, 122 f), was prepared in a
ψυκτήρ as above described (in
Mart.xiv.
116,
lagona nivaria), and a special term
decocta belongs to it, because it was boiled first in order that it might more readily
be iced afterwards (
Juv.v. 50, with Mayor's note). Pliny says that
this
decocta was an invention of Nero's (cf.
Suet. Ner. 48), and that the water, which had sometime previously been
boiled, was placed in a glass vessel and so plunged into a larger vessel of snow, that it
might escape any impurities (
vitia) of the snow.
The snow for this purpose, or for use in the
colus or
saccus nivarius, was kept through the summer in pits covered over with chaff and
woollen cloths (
Plut.
Symp. vi. 6). Another method of Antiochus, whereby
ὑδρίαι κεράμεαι were placed on straw on the top of the house at
night, seems to have been the method of freezing by evaporation which is common in Persia at
the present time. See Ussing in
Annal. d. Inst. (1849); Beckmann,
Hist. of Inventions, iii. 322; Becker-Göll,
Charikles,
ii. 346;
Gallus, iii. 430; Marquardt,
Privatleben, 333.
