James Davidson - Courtesans and Fishcakes - The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens

We are now in a position to subvert Critias’ special pleading and to restore to the kōthōn its normal connotations. It was a very useful cup for scooping, not from streams of mountain water, but from vats of wine as described with such relish by Archilochus. Its contents would be less visible than in an ordinary flat sympotic cup, not to disguise the dirtiness of the water drawn from mountain streams, but simply because it was a deep cup made for deep drinking. The ridging was suitable not for catching Critias’ river-dirt but for saving the swigger from getting a mouthful of lees and all the other bits and pieces left in ancient Greek wine. It may have started as a military cup, but it seems to have found its way into the symposium at an early date. 47 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. There it will have stood alongside the keras and other deep cups as a challenge to the orderly blending and distribution of the wine. The kōthōn , with its characteristic single handle does not look like a cup made for sharing.

From the name of this cup the Greeks generated the noun kōthōnismos and the verb kōthōnizein which first appear in the fourth century. They refer to ‘deep drinking’: ‘je vide la grande coupe’ is how a French commentator begins the conjugation of this interesting verb. The physician Mnesitheus wrote a treatise in the form of a letter around the middle of the century, suggesting that in certain circumstances kōthōnismos could be good for you, like an emetic or a purgative. He gives three main points to bear in mind when engaging in such drinking: ‘not to drink poor wine or akratos , and not to eat tragēmata [dried fruits and nuts and other desserts of the second table] in the middle of kōthōnismoi . When you have had enough, don’t go to sleep until you have vomited more or less. Then, if you vomit sufficiently go to bed after a light bath. If, however, you weren’t able fully to purge yourself, use more water and completely immerse yourself in a warm tub.’ 48 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. This kind of drinking had probably always gone on, but it wasn’t until the fourth century that the culture of kōthōnismos caught the attention of the orators and moralists.

Demosthenes, according to Hyperides, considered it a particular vice of the young. He described them as akratokōthōnes , a remark that subsequently became notorious. The parasite known as the Lark demonstrated the wit that excused his gate-crashing by connecting Demosthenes’ remark to his notorious readiness to accept bribes, accusing the orator of a kind of metaphorical hypocrisy: ‘This man who calls other men akratokōthōnes has himself drained the big cup dry.’ Such drinking seems to have been social and competitive and may well have taken place in a sympotic context, although it transgressed so many of the symposium’s rules. By the early third century kōthōn means a cup no longer, but a drinking-bout, or drinking-party. Two kinds are mentioned, sumbolikos and asumbolos , with and without contributions, the former requiring each participant to bring his own wine, the second providing an open bar. When Lycon the Peripatetic arrived as a student in Athens in the early third century he made great progress in acquiring knowledge of these p.b.a.b. parties as well as the rates charged by each of the city’s courtesans. 49 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

As Demosthenes’ coinage indicates, the kōthōn was associated not simply with slugging deep draughts, but with drinking strong wine. This is something it had in common with other deep cups. The notion of ‘depth’ is the key to the problematic of drinking at Athens, enabling us to draw up a division along two axes. One kind of consumption emphasizes the horizontal plane: the wine is blended expansively with water; it is sipped slowly from smaller shallower cups; there are as a result more rounds, more of those processes of circulation and distribution which make the symposium such a bonding experience; words join water in diluting the wine whose proper role is to facilitate conversation. In this shallow form of drinking the emphasis is not on the wine but on the company of drinkers joined around the kratēr , protected from the power of liquor by a whole theatre of mitigation, and the distracting play of discourse and representation. Wine is effectively flattened and rendered negligible. This is the wine of commensality, of Brillat-Savarin and the anthropologists. 50 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. Opposed to this is the degenerate consumption of the vertical axis, the wine of Baudelaire and the alcoholists: the wine is akratos , thick, three-dimensional and strong; the cups are large and deep; drinking is long and breathless. Wine can reassert its primacy and, in the stampede to inebriation, the niceties of social interaction get trampled underfoot. Here wine is no longer a catalyst of conversation. It is a drug once more.