Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/354

 great deal of money on their drinking and intemperance, whom men call [Greek: laphyktai]. Aristophanes, in his Peace, says—

What will you do, then, when you've drunk One single lepaste full of new wine?

And it is from this word [Greek: lepastê] that the verb [Greek: laptô] comes, which means to swallow all at once, having a meaning just opposite to the bombylium; for the same author says, somewhere or other,—

You've drunk up all my blood, O king, my master!

which is as much as to say, you have utterly drained me. And in his Gerytades he says—

But there was then a festival: a slave Went round, and brought us all a lepaste, And pour'd in wine dark as the deep-blue sea;

but the poet means here to indicate the depth of the cup. And Antiphanes, in his Æsculapius, says—

He took an agèd woman, who had been A long time ill, sick of a ling'ring fever, And bruising some small root, and putting it Into a noble-sized lepaste there, He made her drink it all, to cure her sickness.

Philyllius, in his Auge, says—

For she was always in the company Of young men, who did nothing else but drink; And with a lot of aged women too, Who always do delight in good-sized cups.

And Theopompus says in his Pamphila—

A sponge, a dish, a feather; and, besides, A stout lepaste, which, when full, they drain To the Good Deity, raising loud his praises, As chirps a grasshopper upon a tree.

And in his Mede he says—

Callimachus, 'tis stated, once did charm The Grecian heroes by some promised gain, When he was seeking for their aid and friendship. The only thing he fail'd in was th' attempt To gain the poor, thin-bodied Rhadamanthus Lysander with a cothon, ere he gave him A full lepaste.

But Amerias says that the ladle with which the wine is poured into the cups is called lepaste; but Aristophanes and Apollodorus say that it is a sort of cup of the class [Greek: kylix]. Pherecrates, in his Crapatalli, says—