Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/324

 Then u came next, and after that a sigma And omicron were not deficient.

But in this passage we want the final [Greek: u] which ought to have ended the word. Since all the ancients used the omicron not only with the power which it has now, but also when they meant to indicate the diphthong [Greek: ou] they wrote it by [Greek: o] only. And they did the same when they wished to write the vowel [Greek: e], whether it is sounded by itself, or when they wish to indicate the diphthong [Greek: ei] by the addition of iota. And accordingly, in the above-cited verses, the Satyrs wrote the final syllable of the genitive case [Greek: Dionysou] with [Greek: o] only; as being short to engrave: so that we are in these lines to understand the final upsilon, so as to make the whole word [Greek: Dionysou]. And the Dorians called sigma san; for the musicians, as Aristoxenus often tells us, used to avoid saying sigma whenever they could, because it was a hard-sounding letter, and unsuited to the flute; but they were fond of using the letter rho, because of the ease of pronouncing it. And the horses which have the letter [Greek: S] branded on them, they call samphoras. Aristophanes, in his Clouds, says—

Neither you, nor the carriage-horse, nor samphoras.

And Pindar says—

Before long series of songs were heard, And the ill-sounding san from out men's mouths.

And Eubulus also, in his Neottis, speaks of a lettered cup as being called by that identical name, saying—

A. Above all things I hate a letter'd cup, Since he, my son, the time he went away, Had such a cup with him. B. There are many like it.

31. There is a kind of cup also called gyala. Philetas, in his Miscellanies, says that the Megarians call their cups gyalæ. And Parthenius, the pupil of Dionysius, in the first book of his Discussions upon Words found in the Historians, says—"The gyala is a kind of drinking-cup, as Marsyas the priest of Hercules writes, where he says, 'Whenever the king comes into the city, a man meets him having a cup ([Greek: gyalên]) full of wine; and the king takes it, and pours a libation from it.'"

32. There is another sort of cup called the deinus. And that this is the name of a cup we are assured by Dionysius of Sinope, in his Female Saviour, where he gives a catalogue