Archaeology Magazine - September 1960 - 46

Kottabos

continued

represented on vase-paintings. It might be objected that
the painter is not concerned with such details, but the
total absence of the figure is significant and the painter
has concerned himself with other embellishments not
strictly essential for the game. What is always represented
is the large central disk, which is well situated for breaking the fall of the plastinx and also for producing the
requisite noise. The comparison of the manes with the
house slave in Antiphanes comedy comes not from their
physical similarity but from the 'very loud noise" they
both make when struck!
The earliest representation of a kottabos stand occurs
on a red -figured cup belonging to the Severeano Group
(Figure 6). The cup is unfortunately very fragmentary
and a vital part is lost; the vertical line seen behind the
player's feet is certainly the lower rod of the shaft. The
motif of the kottabos thrower was a common one in
Attic vase-painting; in the second half of the fifth
century the artists of South Italy created a new motifthe balancing of the plastinx. The assistant could be male
or female, more usually the latter. On a krater by the
Amykos painter (Figure 7) a naked youth, plastinx held
between index and middle finger, stretches up to set the
disk in position. Another figure, the obese and simian
satyr emptying the wine jar, removes the scene from the
realm of everyday life to another world. On other vases
gods are shown playing at kottabos, usually Dionysos
with his attendants (Figure 8) ; the combination of a
stereotyped motif and the presence of divinities indicates
that the game was more popular in heaven than on earth,
more common in the painter's studio than in the diner's
banquet hall.
The other type of kottabos mentioned by the comic
dramatists was called "kottabos in a bowl" or "kottabos
with dishes." The type has been confused with the previous one, and there are similarities. The flying wine-lees
are still a feature of play but the target of the throw is
not a stand but a bowl, or lekane. The lekane was filled
with water, and empty oxybapha, or small dishes, were
set floating on the water (Figure 9). The wine-lees were
then thrown against the oxybapha in an attempt to sink
them. The person who sank the most was proclaimed
the winner.
The lekane was for household use and served many
different purposes- mainly to hold foodstuffs but also
doing duty as a wine-vat, a sick basin, a hod, a footbath.
It is frequently represented on vases, and examples have
been found in excavations. The dish, or oxybaphon, still
defies identification, though many facts are known about
it. As a unit of measure it was roughly equal to a coffee
206

6. This fragmentarycup showsthe shaft of the kottabosstand
behind the player's feet. A kylix in Adria belongingto the
SevereanoGroup. Ca. 510 b.c. From Corpus Vasorurn AntiquorumAdria1, plate 3,3-

7. Party scene:wine, a flute girl, kottabosand Dionysoshimself (at extremeleft) with his attendantsatyrs.A SouthItalian
volutekraterby the Amykospainter,in Bari.Ca. 410 b.c. From
Vasen,plate 10 a.
Trendall,Frühitaliotische
cup. Its shape must have been that of a saucer, as it
could float. The name oxybaphon is inscribed on a number of vases but usually as one of a batch of items
scratched either under the foot or on broken fragments.
These batches are most likely shopping lists and bear
little, if any, relation to the vases on which they are
scratched. So we cannot claim to identify oxybaphon
simply by the appearance of its name inscribed on a vase.
No certain representations of this type of game are
known. This need not surprise us, as it would have been
difficult to indicate on a red-figured vase the inside of a
bowl with dishes floating in it. One vase has been cited
as depicting the game (Figure 10). It shows a young
girl swinging her cup. She faces a washstand in which
sits a duck, beak raised, attracted by the twirling cup. A

Archaeology Magazine - September 1960

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - September 1960