Kottabos – A Crazy Ancient Greek Drinking Game

 

 

Why not Party like an ancient Greek?

Let the wine flow freely, drink from cups decorated with decadent scenes intended to set the atmosphere for a crazy game of kottabos, where prizes included a kiss or other pleasurable favours, offered by a desired courtesan, or young boy.

Greeks never do things by halves; they invariably find the best way to have the most fun in life.

 Ancient Greece was no different; in fact, I would go as far to say that back then, life was certainly jollier; they took things to the extremes!

Take drinking for example; you were not likely to find a group of old Greek Philosophers sitting glumly in the local pub.

Oh no, they were sprawled on their plump, comfortable cushions, having a crazy game of Kottabos.

 

 

What is Kottabos?

 

‘What on earth is kottabos?’ I hear you ask.

Well, pay attention to what I am about to tell you, maybe even take notes, because I’m pretty sure, some of you wilder ones, will want to give this insane game a go!

Let me first set the scene, let’s go back in time; we’re in Athens; the year is around 550 BC.

It’s a warm balmy night, we’re sitting under the magnificent, spreading plane trees of Plato’s Academy, where anybody who was anybody is in attendance, reflecting on the meaning of life and to putting the world to rights.

The wine flows and the more it flowed, the more it was a case of anything goes, or, as Heraclitus, “the weeping philosopher”, would have put it:

“τὰ πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει” (ta panta rhei kai ouden menei), which roughly translates to, “everything flows, and nothing stays.”

This, my friends, is wine, women and wisdom, the scene of the ancient Greek symposium.

 

The Symposium of Ancient Greece

 

In ancient Greece, the symposium, from συμπίνειν–sympinein, “to drink together”, was a type of drawn out, after-banquet, wine-drinking extravaganza.

Usually it was men only but not always, women of high regard, did not deem it seemly to attend but hetairai; Courtesans of Ancient Greece, had no such qualms.

Symposiums were often held for special occasions, such as the introduction of young men into aristocratic society, or to celebrate victories in athletic and poetic contests.

The most famous symposium, described in Plato’s dialogue (of the same name), was held by the poet, Agathon, on his first victory at the talent contest of the 416 BC Dionysia.

According to Plato, the celebration was interrupted by the untimely entrance of the man of the moment, the flamboyant Athenian statesman, Alkibiades, naked and in an advanced state of inebriation, having just left another symposium.

 

 

Usually, at symposiums, things began in a civilized manner with the recitation of poetry and philosophical debates, more often than not about the subject of love, or gender.

The men were entertained by dancers, flute players, and courtesans, whom, let’s just say, offered earthly pleasures.

Slaves and boys also provided service and entertainment.

At any decent symposium, skolia, drinking songs of a bawdy nature, were never absent and were performed competitively with someone reciting the first part of a song and another improvising the end of it.

 

 

As to the effect the amount of wine could have on party-goers, Eubulus, a statesman of ancient Athens, stated the following:

“For sensible men I prepare only three kraters (carafes): one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more – it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.”.

Some things, it seems, thousands of years later, are still the same!

 

 

As the night wore on and wine flowed profusely, things began to rather lose control.

Especially after the the Sicels, who inhabited eastern Sicily during the Iron Age and gave Sicily its name, merged with the Greek settlers of Magna Graecia and introduced them to the messy drinking game of kottabos.

Kottabos did not take long to catch on and soon reached Athens, where it became all the rage.

 

 

Greeks are not ones known to leave things to chance, everything is by design.

So it was with the game of kottabos, to help things along, to get into the spirit of things, so to speak, they drank from the wine- drinking cup, called a kylix.

A kylix has a broad shallow, body raised on a stem, from a foot with two symmetrical horizontal handles, often depicting humorous, explicit scenes which were slowly revealed as the cup was drained.

 

The kylix:

The drinking Cup

 

The ceramic drinking cups used by the ancient Greeks, generally painted black and red, had two looped handles on either side of a wide, shallow bowl.

This may not appear practical for drinking but they were designed especially to accomplish the least spillage possible and the handles were necessary for throwing wine accurately!

Often painted on the bottom of the kylix were two large eyes, (named eye cups), so the drinker, as he took a gulp of his wine, looked as if he was staring at the room.

 However, it was the pictures on inside bottom of the cup, called the tondo, which were astonishing.

 

 

The bottom of Greek wine cups, for the most part, would depict positively unreserved, crude scenes that would be revealed, bit by bit as the cup was emptied.

Dionysus, god of fertility and wine and his satyrs, as on the “Bomford cup”, of the late sixth century, were common subjects.

 

 

 

 The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is home to some very racy Greek drinking cups.

One shows a man wiping his bottom with a stone while another shows an image of a man standing behind a woman with the words, “Hold still”.

Yet another kylix shows a satyr chiseling vertical grooves into a column between his legs, a wineskin in the background suggests he is perhaps already “in his cups”.

The user of the cup would have recognized the phallic column and the intended joke, “working with the hand” or “handiwork”, as an insinuation to pleasuring oneself.

 

 

All these unseemly images represented the commonplace bawdiness and excesses of the typical drinking parties enjoyed by the aristocratic ancient Greeks and helped set the scene for a rowdy game of kottabos.

 

 

How to Play Kottabos

 

Essentially, the purpose of the wacky, ancient Greek drinking game of kottabos, was to fling the remaining wine dregs of your cup toward a target atop a metal pole and bring it crashing to the ground.

The men would gather in a circle, lazing on their cushions, drinking wine.

Yes, they swilled back their booze whilst in a reclining position; all the better to gain the most pleasure with the least effort!

 

 

What wine was left in their cups was then flung towards the center of the room.

Here, a small saucer or disc, called a plastinx, or, sometimes a  manes, μάνης; a bronze figurine in the shape of a man, with his right arm and leg uplifted, sometimes holding a drinking horn (or rhytum), was balanced on top of a rhabdus (metal pole).

Halfway down the rhabdus (metal pole), was a larger saucer or disc, called the lecanis, the plastinx.

 The upper small saucer, disc, or figurine, had to be knocked off in such a way that it would fall into the larger saucer, the lecanis and make a bell sound.

 

 

Variations of the game kottabos, were to toss the dregs of wine so they landed in the smaller saucer-like disc at the top of the pole.

The winner was the one whose dregs filled the saucer enough to tip it over into the larger saucer, lower down the pole.

In another version, the object was to sink small saucers floating in a large basin of water, by tossing the dregs left in the cups, into them.

 

 

Both the wine thrown and the noise made were called latax (λάταξ).

The game was played with players reclining on their left sides, usually around a table, and when flinging the wine dregs, only the right hand was to be used.

 

 

The best results were achieved with a strategic flick of the wrist, or throwing overhand at the target, as when pitching a baseball or throwing a Frisbee.

It was also thought to help if the player uttered the name of the woman of his affection, who, if he was the lucky winner, may be his prize!

Prizes included eggs, pastries, an apple, or the kiss and other erotic favours of a desired woman, or boy (obviously the most coveted prizes) and often the player dedicated his launch to the object of his desire.

 

 

To add to the fun, players would wager bets to predict the winner and although kottabos required a certain amount of skill and a good aim, luck also played a part in deciding the victor.

 

How the ancient Greek drinking game of kottabos came to light

 

We know this crazy drinking game was the most practiced game in ancient Etruria, along with details of how it was played, thanks to discoveries at Etruscan burial sites in Umbria, by by Wolfgang Helbig in 1886, of two sets of apparatus used for playing kottabos.

Further evidence of the game was discovered in the Tomb of the Diver, an archaeological monument, built in about 470 BC, found by the Italian archaeologist, Mario Napoli in 1968 during his excavations of Greek city of Paestum in Magna Graecia, in what is now southern Italy

The tomb is now displayed in the museum at Paestum.

One of the Greek wall paintings in the Tomb of the Diver shows scenes of a Symposium, male lovers, Kottabos players and a diver.

 

 

In The Hypogeum of the Volumnus family, an Etruscan tomb in Ponte San Giovanni, a suburb of Perugia, dating back to the 6th-5th century BC, excavated in 1840, a kottabos, or a thin metal rod about 1.80 meters high, on which plates are placed and, on the top, a bronze figurine holding a balanced disk, was found.

 

 

Historians believe that the drinking game of kottabos originated in Sicily and towards the 6th century BC, was introduced into Etruria and Greece.

 

“Pull out all  the Stops!”

 

After writing an account of something of this manner, the author usually advices you:

“Do not try this at home”

I, being no usual author, encourage you to party like it’s 550 BC and pull out all stops!

However, please, do remember, back in ancient Greece, they had plenty of slaves to clean up the mess!