Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

---

There is also the horn. It is said that the first men drank out of the horns of oxen; from which circumstance Bacchus often figured with horns on his head, and is moreover called a bull by many of the poets. And at Cyzicus there is a statue of him with a bull's head. But that men drank out of horns (κέρατα) is plain from the fact that to this very day, when men mix water with wine, they say that they κερᾶσαι (mix it). And the vessel in which the wine is mixed is called κρατὴρ, from the fact of the water being mingled (συγκιρνᾶσθαι) in it, as if the word were κερατὴρ, from the drink being poured εἰς τὸ κέρας (into the horn); and even to this day the fashion of making horns into cups con- tinues: but some people call these cups rhyta. And many [p. 759] of the poets represent the ancients as drinking out of horns. Pindar, speaking of the Centaurs, says—

After those monsters fierce
Learnt the invincible strength of luscious wine;
Then with a sudden fury,
With mighty hands they threw the snow-white milk
Down from the board,
And of their own accord
Drank away their senses in the silver-mounted horns.

And Xenophon, in the seventh book of his Anabasis, giving an account of the banquet which was given by the Thracian Seuthes, writes thus: “But when Xenophon, with his companions, arrived at Seuthes's palace, first of all they embraced one another, and then, according to the Thracian fashion, they were presented with horns of wine.” And in his sixth book he says, when he is speaking of the Paphlagonians, “And they supped lying on couches made of leaves, and they drank out of cups made of horn.” And Aeschylus, in his Perrhæbi, represents the Perrhæbi as using horns for cups, in the following lines:—

With silver-mounted horns,
Fitted with mouthpieces of rich-wrought gold.

And Sophocles, in his Pandora, says—

And when a man has drain'd the golden cup,
She, pressing it beneath her tender arm,
Returns it to him full.

And Hermippus, in his Fates, says—

Do you now know the thing you ought to do?
Give not that cup to me; but from this horn
Give me but once more now to drink a draught.

And Lycurgus the orator, in his Oration against Demades, says that Philip the king pledged those men whom he loved in a horn. And Theopompus, in the second book of his history of the Affairs and Actions of Philip, says that the kings of the Pæonians, as the oxen in their countries have enormous horns, so large as to contain three or four choes of wine, make drinking-cups of them, covering over the brims with silver or with gold. And Philoxenus of Cythera, in his poem entitled The Supper, says—

He then the sacred drink of nectar quaff'd
From the gold-mounted brims of th' ample horns,
And then they all did drink awhile.

And the Athenians made also silver goblets in the shape of [p. 760] horns, and drank out of them. And one may ascertain that by seeing the articles mentioned in writing among the list of confiscated goods on the pillar which lies in the Acropolis, which contains the sacred offerings—“There is also a silver horn drinking-cup, very solid.”