page_title: Kottabos
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Kottabos / Origin
caption_attribution_description: Drawing from Greek psykter painted by Euphronios, Hermitage 644: left side
context_page_description: Kottabos was a game of skill played at Ancient Greek and Etruscan symposia, especially in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. It involved flinging wine-lees at a target in the middle of the room. The winner would receive a prize, comprising cakes, sweetmeats, or kisses.
  Ancient writers, including Dionysius Chalcus, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Antiphanes, make frequent and familiar allusion to the practice; and it is depicted on contemporaneous red-figure vases. References to the practice by the writers of the Roman and Alexandrian periods show that the fashion had died out. In Latin literature it is almost entirely unknown.
  Dexterity was required to succeed in the game, and unusual ability was rated as highly as corresponding excellence in throwing the javelin. Kottabos was customary, and, at least in Sicily, special circular buildings were established, so the players might easily be arranged around the target, and follow each other in rapid succession.
context_section_description: The kottabos game seems to have originated in Sicily, or the land of the Sikels. But it spread through Greece, from Thessaly to Rhodes, becoming especially fashionable at Athens. Evidence of its origin can be found on an Attic red-figure psykter, by Euphronios, depicting four hetairai. One of the hetairai on the vase, Smikra, is swinging her cup, as a kottabos player. The inscription beside her is Doric, the dialect used by the Sicilians.
caption: Attic red-figure psykter, by Euphronios, ca. 520 BC.
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