[*]Given in “Readings in Ancient History,” Vol.  I, p. 117, and in many other volumes.

Before the evening is over various games will be ordered in, especially the “cottabus,” which is in great vogue.  On the top of a high stand, something like a candelabrum, is balanced rather delicately a little saucer of brass.  The players stand at a considerable distance with cups of wine.  The game is to toss a small quantity of wine into the balanced saucer so smartly as to make the brass give out a clear ringing sound, and to tilt upon its side.[+] Much shouting, merriment, and a little wagering ensues.  While most of the company prefer the cottabus, two, who profess to be experts, call for a gaming board and soon are deep in the “game of towns”—­very like to latter-day “checkers,” played with a board divided into numerous squares.  Each contestant has thirty colored stones, and the effort is to surround your opponent’s stones and capture them.  Some of the company, however, regard this as too profound, and after trying their skill at the cottabus betake themselves to the never failing chances of dice.  Yet these games are never suffered (in refined dinner parties) to banish the conversation.  That after all is the center, although it is not good form to talk over learnedly of statecraft, military tactics, or philosophy.  If such are discussed, it must be with playful abandon, and a disclaimer of being serious; and even very grave and gray men remember Anacreon’s preference for the praise of “the glorious gifts of the Muses and of Aphrodite” rather than solid discussions of “conquest and war.”

[+]This was the simplest form of the cottabus game; there were numerous elaborations, but our accounts of them are by no means clear.

168.  Going Home from the Feast:  Midnight Revellers.—­At length the oil lamps have begun to burn dim.  The tired slaves are yawning.  Their masters, despite Prodicus’s intentions of having a very proper symposium, have all drunk enough to get unstable and silly.  Eunapius gives the signal.  All rise, and join in the final libation to Hermes.  “Shoes and himation, boy,” each says to his slave, and with thanks to their host they all fare homeward.

Such will be the ending to an extremely decorous feast.  With gay young bloods present, however, it might have degenerated into an orgy; the flute girl (or several of them) would have contributed over much to the “freedom”; and when the last deep crater had been emptied, the whole company would have rushed madly into the street, and gone whirling away through the darkness,—­harps and flutes sounding, boisterous songs pealing, red torches tossing.  Revellers in this mood would be ready for anything.  Perhaps they would end in some low tavern at the Peireus to sleep off their liquor; perhaps their leader would find some other Symposium in progress, and after loud knockings, force his way into the house, even as did the mad Alcibiades, who (once more to recall