SCAIFE, ROSS, From "Kottabos" to War in Aristophanes' "Acharnians" , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 33:1 (1992:Spring) p.25 

From Kottabos to War 
In Aristophanes' Acharnians 

Ross Scaife 

~r THE CENTER of a much-discussed speech in Acharnians 
(524-29), Aristophanes makes Dicaeopolis present the fol­
lowing aetiology of the Peloponnesian War: certain 

young Athenians, who were J.l(81)o01(o't'tu~ol-drunk from 
playing kottabos at a symposium-went to Megara and stole a 
whore named Simaitha. Then in turn the Megarians, whom 
Dicaeopolis describes as 7t£<puoryyroJ.l£vol-inflamed like fighting 
cocks from eating too much garlic-came to Athens and stole 
two whores from the brothel of Aspasia. So although there had 
been tit for tat, it was the Athenians who started the war, and 
somehow it was a game of kottabos that provoked them to vent 
their animal instincts so fatefully.l 

Elsewhere Aristophanes treats this game as just one among 
the many lighthearted diversions that his characters typically en­
joy, and thus as quite lacking any menacing aspect. At Pax 
339-45, Trygaeus tries to restrain the Chorus by reminding 
them of the pleasures that a little more patience will soon bring 
them: 

a'A'A' o'tuv 'Aa~roJ.l£v U'\hftv, 't11VlKUU'tU xuip£'t£ 
KUt ~u't£ KUt y£'Au't'· 11-
811 yap £~£o'tat 'toe' UJ.ltV 
7tAEtV J.l£VElV ~tv£'iv Ku8£1J8Elv, 
£~ 7tuv11yUPEt~ 8£rop£tv, 
EO'ttuo8ul Ko't'tu~i~Etv, 

1 For Aristophanes' literary debts in this passage see J. van Leeuwen, ed., 
Aristophanis Acharnenses cum prolegomenis et commentariis (Leiden 1968) 
ad loe.; D. M. MacDowell, "The Nature of Aristophanes' Akharnians," G & R 
30 (1983) 143-62, esp. 149ff, with earlier bibliography. 

25 



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26 FROM KOTTABOS TO WAR 

tau~upi~£lvt 
lOU lOU KEKPUyEVUl. 2 

Later in the same play (1242-45), Trygaeus suggests that the 
Arms ~ealer's war trumpet would make ideal furniture for the 
symposmm: 

JlOAu~80v fe; 'to'\Hl 'to KOlAoV EYXEUe; 
£nEt't' livro8Ev pa~80v Ev8de; \moJluKpOV, 
YEvilaE'tui aot 'troY KU'tUK'troV Ko't'ta~rov. 3 

And finally, at Nub. 1071-74, when Wrong Argument tries to 
seduce Pheidippides, his list of enticements resembles that of 
Trygaeus to the Chorus in Pax: 

aKE'Vut yap ib JlEtpaKtoV £v 'tep arocpPoVEtV anuv'tU 
aVEanV, i180vrov 8' oarov JlEAA£le; anoa'tEpEla8at, 
nui8rov YUVUtKroV KOTta~rov o'Vrov no-trov KtxAtaJlrov. 
KUi'tOt 'ti aot ~i1v li~tov, W1HroV faV a'tEP1l8ne;;4 

At least one of Aristophanes' contemporaries among the comic 
poets also used the motif as an evocative foil. 5 A speaker in Her­
mippus' M oirai warns about the discomforts of war: 

XAuvi8E<; 8' O-oAat KU'tU~E~AllV'tut, 
8WPUKU 8' anu<; EJlnEpOV(X'tat, 
KVllJll<; 8£ nEpl acpupov ap8pou'tut, 
~AUU'tll<; 8' 0-08£1.<; €'t' £pro<; AEUKi1<;, 

2 "Once we've got Peace back, then dance and shout and laugh; then you'll 
be able to travel, rest, screw, sleep, attend the festivals, go to banquets, play 
kottabos, become a Sybarite!" 

3 "Pour some lead into the mouth, then put a fairly long shaft on top, and 
you'll have a kottabos-stand!" 

4 "Consider, boy, all that moderation entails, and all the pleasures you're 
about to lose: boys, women, kottabos games, eating, drinking laughter. Would 
your life really be worth living, if you were deprived of all that?" 

A similar contrast between a life of strict rectitude and a life of fun and 
kottabos games might lurk behind the fragment from Aristophanes' Daitaleis 
preserved at Ath. 667E (=K.-A., PCG III.2 fr.231). 

5 For fragments from Ameipsias' Apokottabizontes see K.-A. II 198ff. 
Cratinus' Nemesis both lampooned Aspasia and contained a reference to 
kottabos; cf K.-A. IV 184ffr.124. 



SCAIFE, ROSS, From "Kottabos" to War in Aristophanes' "Acharnians" , Greek, Roman and 
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ROSS SCAIFE 

pa!3<>oy <>' 0'l'n 'tl)Y KO't'tU!3U('l)Y 
£Y 'toLe; aXUPOlO'l KUAlY()OJl£YT\Y, 
JlclYlle; ()' OU()EY AU'tclYWY ain· 
'tl)Y ()E 'tclAUlYUY 1tAclO'nyy' (iy t()Ole; 
1tUpa 'tOY O''tpoq>£u 'tile; KT\1tuiue; 

£Y 'tOlO'lKoPTtJluO'lY 01)O'UY. 6 

27 

In the plays of Aristophanes and others, then, the games of 
kottabos normally figure among the delights of a life free from 
war and other afflictions. And yet, in the lament of Dicaeopolis 
in Acharnians, a contradiction with the standard practice arises, 
for playing kottabos soon leads to an egregious act of cross­
border hybris and puts an end to the peace. In this instance, 
according to Dicaeopolis, playing kottabos served as the 
Athenian equivalent of eating garlic. To put the problem another 
way, Aristophanes did not merely describe his imaginary 
Athenian warmongers as garden-variety drunks; for their par­
ticular kind of intoxication the poet felt inspired to produce a 
neologism, methysokottaboi. Surely we need to weigh both 
halves of this compound, along with its context, in order to 
understand all that Dicaeopolis implies about the origins of the 
war. 

What the symposiasts in Aristophanes went to Megara for in 
the first place was sex, and the fighting followed on that. 
Evidently their kottabos game had excited them. As the ico­
nography of vases and literary testimonia overwhelmingly attest, 
the game was regarded as highly erotic. The first clue lies in the 
poets' frequent usc of such epithets as "Cyprian" or «Aphro­
disiac" in reference to the wine dregs that flew through the air 
during games of kottabos (Ath. 668B). Part of the reason for 

6 Ath. 668A (=K.-A. V frA8): "The wooly cloaks are set aside, and every man 
fastens on his breastplate; the greave is fitted to the shin, and no one cares any 
longer about the white slipper. And you'll see the shaft of the kottabos-stand 
languish in the chaff, the manes pays no heed to the wine dregs; you'd see the 
pathetic plastinx in the sweepings by the socket of the garden gate." 

On the terminology of kottabos cf K. Schneider, "Kottabos," RE 11 (1922) 
1528-41; see also B. A. Sparkes, "Kottabos: An Athenian After-Dinner Game," 
Archaeology 13 (1960) 202-07, who argues that the plastinx was a small plate 
balanced as a target atop the stand, while the manes was a large plate visible 
halfway up the stand on many representations-and not, as sometimes 
thought, a terra-cotta figurine balanced on top. Sparkes also briefly discusses 
the erotic aspects of Aristophanes' allusion to kottabos at Ach. 524-29. 



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28 FROM KOTTABOS TO WAR 

these epithets was the practice of claiming sexual favors as the 
immediate reward for a successful cast. Thus a fragment from 
Sophocles' Salmoneus (a satyr-play) runs: 

'taO' £(nt lCYlcrJlOs Kat </H.A:T1Jla'trov ",6cp<x;' 
'tip KaAAlKocrcra~Ouv'tl VlKT\'tTtPla 
'ti81lJll Kat ~aA6v'tl xaAKclOv Kapa.? 

In Zeus Kakoumenos by Plato Comicus, Heracles proposes 
kisses as the prize for the game, but the practical-minded brothel 
keeper with whom he is about to play refuses, and counters 
with the proposal that they play for boots and a cup. Heracles 
dimwittedly replies: 

~a~ata~' ou'tocrt 
Jld~rov a:ywv 't1le; 'Icr8Jllaooe; £1tEPxc'tal. 8 

Several testimonia also suggest that the wine dregs used for 
kottabos became known as "Aphrodisiac" because the game 
served a predictive function: a successful cast signalled success 
in love. 9 Finally, players frequently dedicated their throws to 
their anticipated lovers. According to Theophrastus (Dcpt JlE81l<;, 
Ath. 427D; cf 668B), ~v a1t' aPXll<; 'to Jl£V cr1tEVOnV a1tO­
OcOOJlEVOV 'tol<; 8col<; 0 O£ K6't'ta~0<; 'tol<; £proJlEVOle;.10 

Kottabos was most often the province of the male sym­
posiasts, but many sources rerresent women participating as 
well. Verses from the Erotika 0 Bacchylides read: 

7 "Here is tickling and the peck of kisses: I establish these as prizes of victory 
for the man who casts the kottabos most pleasingly and strikes the bronze 
head." Radt, TrGF IV 412 fr.537 (=Ath. 4870). 

8 K.-A. fr.46.9f (=Ath. 6660): "Babaiax! Here's a bigger agon than the 
Isthmian Games coming at me!" According to Ath. 6670, eggs, small cakes 
(pemmatia), and dried fruit (tragemata) were also common prizes. 

9 For relevant testimonia see E. Csapo and M. Miller, "The 'Kottabos-Toast' 
and an Inscribed Red-Figured Cup," Hesperia 60 (1991) 379 n.s7, who follow 
P. Mingazzini, "Sulla prete sa funzione oracolare del kottabos," AA 65-66 
(1950-51) 35-47, in minimizing the importance of these testimonia. 

10 "In the old days libations were reserved for the gods, while kottabos was 
reserved for the beloved." 



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~ ..... f\ytf 

ROSS SCAIFE 

'tllv a1t' ayKUA:rlC:; tTlCH 'tOtcrOf Vfa.Vtatc:; 
AfUlCOV av'tEtva.cra. 1tTlXUV. 11 

29 

A fragment from Cratinus is quite similar but, commensurate 
with its shift in genre, more direct: 

aAA' tcrov tcrcp ~aAtcr't' alCpa'tou ouo X6a.c:; 
1ttvoucr' a1t' aYlCuATlC:; E1tOVO~a~oucra 
tTlcrt Aa'ta.ya.c:; 'tip KoptvStcp 1t€£t. 12 

In both cases the hetairai aim their drops of wine directly at the 
men reclining on the couches around them, rather than at the 
usual inanimate targets. As a concession from the men in 
charge-one which we may consider less than breathtaking­
hetairai were evidently sometimes granted the freedom to 
choose their partners. Several vases support this interpretation, 
as for example a well-known hydria painted by Phintias (PLATE 
la).13 The inscription on the vase has generally been understood 
as an utterance by one of the women, and has usually been 
translated: "[I toss] this one for you, Euthymides" ('tOt 'tTlVOt 
EUS'U~lOn [Aa.'tacrcrw]). Euthymides is also the name of one of 
the youths in the main panel of this vase. Recently it has been 
proposed that the initial TOI should be understood as an inter­
rogative pronoun, with the result that here and on a few related 
vases an exchange of question-and-answer is involved with two 
speakers: "For whom do I toss this one?" "For Euthymides."14 
In any case, despite the skepticism of some scholars, I conclude 
that Phintias and other painters did not depict such scenes of 
kottabos-playing females only as a male fantasy or an absurd 
joke. Given the literary evidence, in combination with the 

11 "Raising her white arm, from a bent wrist she cast at the young men." H. 
Maehler, Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis (Leipzig 1970) 91 fr.17 (=Ath. 
782 E). The phrase U1t' uyJCUA:rls. which I translate here and in the next example 
with "from a bent wrist," became formulaic for the required posture. 

12 K.-A. fr.299 (=Ath. 782 D-E): "After drinking two pitchers of strong wine 
mixed half and half, from a bent wrist she cast her wine dregs at the 
Corinthian prick, calling out the man's name as she did so." 

13 ARV2 23.7 (hydria by Phintias); cj, e.g., eVA 6,1984 Suisse, Taf. 28f (kylix 
by the Tarquinia Painter), ARV2 16.15 (psykter by Euphronios), ARVl 455.3 
(kylix in the Thorvaldsen Group), Collection Marcel Ebnother, Les Arcs 
(woman's head kantharos in the manner of Douris). 

14 Csapo and Miller (supra n.9) 367-82 with pis. 97-100. 



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30 FROM KOTTABOS TO WAR 

substantial number of images painted by different artists of 
different periods, there seems little reason to doubt that hetairai 
could sometimes play.15 

So much for the erotic dimension of kottabos; it should now 
be clear why the Athenians went to Megara in a state of sexual 
excitement. The second essential characteristic of these methy­
sokottaboi in Acharnians was their aggressiveness. This too had 
undoubtedly been aggravated by the peculiar kind of exercise in 
which they had just been engaged. Further consideration of the 
testimonia confirms that kottabos partly appealed to the Greeks 
as an agon that mimicked more hazardous forms of competition. 
Ancient authors consistently applied the vocabulary of javelin­
throwing, discus, or archery to this indoor contest, especially 
the verbs ~UAAEtV and \£vat and their cognates. 16 Typically 
suggestive language occurs in a couplet composed by Critias (fr. 
2 D.-K.=Ath. 666B): 

K6't,ta~0<;; £K LtKEATt<;; £an X80v6<;;, £K1tPE1tE<;; EP),OV, 
OV aK01tOV £<;; AU'tU)'(J)V 't6~u Ku8ta'tU~E8u' 17 

It is well known that Greek men spent long hours honing 
their athletic and martial skills in conspicuous displays of male 
beauty and prowess. It is no less certain that kottabos became 
the focus of much practice and narcissistic preening as well. The 
diction of Sophocles, notably his compound participle KUAAt­
KO't'tu~ouvn, points in this direction. Athenaeus alludes to the 
desired quality of gracefulness with the adverbs KUAW<;;. El)­
p'\)8~w<;;, and El)aX:T'\~ovw<;;.lgA passage from Dicaearchus begins 
with a straightforward enough description of the national ob­
session but ends with an intriguing trace of censure: 

For [the symposiasts] tried very hard not only to hit the 
target, but also to perform each part of the game 
beautifully (KUAffiS). One had to recline on his left elbow 
and make a supple arc (KUKAWOUV'tU u)'proS) with his 

15 Contra, E. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus (New York 1985) 160 with fig. 
134; see also Csapo and Miller (supra n.9) 380. 

16 For an exhaustive treatment of this shared vocabulary see E. K. 
Borthwick, "The Gymnasium of Bromius," ]HS 84 (1964) 49-53. 

17 "The kottabos comes from the land of Sicily-a remarkable creation that 
we set up as a target for shooting wine dregs." 

18 Ath. 782E, 666B; cf Plato Com. K.-A. fr.47. 



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ROSS SCAIFE 

right arm to throw the latax; for that is what they called 
the liquid that fell from the kylix. Thus some people 
took more pride in playing kottabos well than others 
took in their ability to hurl the javelin.19 

31 

Finally, in one striking anecdote, the game of kottabos 
functions as a direct metaphor for the greater contest of war. At 
Rh. 1373a, after he has explained the frame of mind of the 
wrongdoer, Aristotle catalogues the sorts of people who are 
liable to suffer wrong. Within this list he includes 

those who are going to be attacked by others, if we do 
not attack them first, since in such cases it is no longer 
possible to deliberate; thus Aenesidemus is said to have 
sent the prize in a game of kottabos to Gelon when the 
latter had reduced a town to slavery, because Gelon had 
anticipated him in something he was on the verge of 
doing himself. 

On this passage the translator of the Loeb edition succinctly 
notes that Aenesidemus sent Gelon the kottabos prize "as a 
compliment for having 'played the game' so skillfully. "20 I would 
add that Aenesidemus was moved to pay his witty compliment 
to Gelon by the specific resemblance of war and kottabos as 
competitions for some object of desire. 

The agonistic character of kottabos corresponds closely with 
other institutional attributes of the symposium. In his protracted 
Quaestiones conviviales, Plutarch passes over wine-tossing in 
silence; no doubt he-in company with most other Greek 
intellectuals-despised this pastime as altogether unseemly and 
coarsening.21 He does provide, however, much helpful detail 
about what he calls "challenges" (prostagmata). Any guest might 
issue a challenge, whether it involved answering riddles, singing 
the familiar skolia or other songs, or performing more physical 

19 F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, I: Dikaiarchos (Basel 1944) 33 fr.97 
(=Ath.4790). 

20 J. H. Freeze, Aristotle, The "Art" of Rhetoric (London 1926) 137 ad 1373a. 
21 Sober-minded Greek intellectuals had little patience with kottabos, 

ubiquitous though it clearly was in popular culture: a lexical search in the TLG 
reveals that-except for the one anecdote in Aristotle (quoted above) and the 
whiff of condemnation in Dicaearchus (cited above)-it receives no mention 
in Plutarch, Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, or even (surprisingly) Herodotus. 



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32 FROM KOTTABOS TO WAR 

feats. 22 The most renowned example, of course, occurs near the 
beginning of Plato's Symposium, when Eryximachus proposes a 
round of speeches on the nature of Love. Naturally the chal­
lenger could be expected to play to his own strengths, but this 
practice sometimes degenerated into outright cruelty. Therefore 
Plutarch, who thinks the chief aim of the symposiarch should be 
to preserve an atmosphere of cheerfulness (euphrosyne), warns 
against the bad feelings liable to be provoked when someone 
"orders stammerers to sing, or bald men to comb their hair, or 
the lame to dance on a greased wine skin."23 Just like other sym­
posiastic prostagmata, kottabos too sometimes generated 
notorious acts of insolence, at least if we are prepared to accept 
certain fragments from Attic satyr-plays as oblique reflections 
of actual circumstances. Thus a former symposiast in the 
Oeneus remembers how 

1tUlCYOl<;; ()' £~aA,A,ov BaKXlou 'to~n)lla(HV 
Kupa yEpOV'tO<;;· 'tOY ~aA.6v'ta ()E (HE<PEtV 
£yw 'n:'tuYIlTlV, &8A,a KO't'tU~(J)V ()l()OU<;;.24 

A second satyr-play, the Bone-Gatherers ( 'Ocr'tOA,OYOl) of Aes­
chylus, seems to have featured Eurymachus committing the 
same indignity in another context; but the text remains uncertain 

22 Pluto M or. 621 E-22A. The challenges resemble the competltlons that 
occurred at legendary and historical betrothal ceremonies, e.g. the contest of 
the bow in the Odyssey, or the lengthy contests to which, according to 
Herodotus (6.126-30), Cleisthenes of Sicyon subjected the suitors of his 
daughter. Cf N. Robertson, "The Betrothal Symposium in Early Greece," in 
W. J. Slater, ed., Dining in a Classical Context (Ann Arbor 1991: hereafter 
'DCC') 25-28. W. Burkert offers the challenge at the marriage feast of Samson 
in Judges as an oriental parallel for this Greek tradition: "Oriental Symposia: 
Contrasts and Parallels,» DCC 7-24. 

23 Plutarch also (Mor. 621F-622A) provides heartwarming anecdotes that 
show how the victims of such pranks occasionally turned the tables on their 
tormentors, e.g. the man with the atrophied foot who challenged his fellow 
symposiasts to insert a leg into a narrow-necked amphora. There is a perfect 
analogy in the first book I can remember reading, Wacky the Small Boy, in 
which Wacky foils the big boys in a game of follow-the-Ieader by walking 
erect under a low tree limb. 

24 "With frequent arrows of Bacchus they aimed at the old man's head. I 
myself had been appointed to crown the one who hit him, by awarding him 
the prizes of the kottabos game." Despite attribution to Euripides at Ath. 666c, 
the Oeneus may be Sophoclean; cf the comments of D. L. Page, in the Loeb 
Select Papyri III (London 1941) 158f. 



SCAIFE, ROSS, From "Kottabos" to War in Aristophanes' "Acharnians" , Greek, Roman and 
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SCAIFE PLATE 1 

(a) 

(b) 

(a) Hydria by Phintias (detail; ARV2 23,7) 
(b) Type A amphora by the Kleophrades Painter (detail; ARV2 

181,1; both after ]. C. Hoppin, Euthymides and His Fellows, pIs. XII 
and XXVIII) 



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ROSS SCAIFE 33 

(el Borthwick [supra n.16] 52; Radt, TrGE III fr.179). In the 
realm of iconography, we might compare the scene on an 
amphora by the Kleophrades Painter (PLATE Ib): here the 
musician in the center has his genitals prodded by the flute­
wielding hetaira on the right at the same time as he is kottabized 
by the younger symposiast on the left, who incidentally uses the 
standard throw (a.n' a.YKUA:Tl~).25 All such incidents fit squarely 
into Plutarch's admonitory category of the symposium gone 
awry.26 Perhaps Theophrastus was not far off when he 
maintained that the Greeks wasted most of their wine playing 
kottabos (Ath. 782B). 

Another of Plutarch's views on symposiastic eutaxia also ad­
vances our understanding of the social function of kottabos. He 
argues repeatedly (Mor. 621 D, 614A, 620D) that the symposiarch 
ought to sponsor a mixture of serious and playful events suited 
to the individual characters of the particular men in attendance. 
His reasoning is that the more frivolous symposiasts need to be 
improved by the occasion, while the over-serious participants 
need opportunities to shrug off the weight of the world for a 
time. Though Plutarch casts this notion in prescriptive terms, it 
must also be descriptive of actual practices. That is, the 
therapeutic and psychagogic effects of the symposium must 
have had a great deal to do with the lasting appeal of this 
institution. Even if Plutarch's silence means that he considered 
kottabos too ridiculous to be worthy of inclusion in any 
respectable symposium, evidently many people did not follow 
him in this bit of intellectual snobbery. Rather, between the 
sixth and fourth centuries, the ancients in general found 
kottabos immensely diverting. 

Plutarch's insistence on the necessity of combining the 
elements of the symposium in such a way as to improve the 
souls of the participants derives in part from Plato, who argued 
in the first two books of the Laws for a specific kind of 
synthesis constructed from the Athenian symposium and the 
Dorian syssition. It is interesting to note that kottabos, a game 
that had a widely acknowledged Dorian pedigree and that 
readily gave rise to athletic and military metaphors, also became 
ubiquitous at Athenian symposia. At least in this respect, the 

25 ARV2 181.1 (type A amphora by the Kleophrades Painter). 
26 On the failed symposium as a historiographic motif cf G. Paul, 

"Symposia and Deipna in Plutarch's Lives and Other Historical Writings," 
Dee 157-70. 



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34 FROM KOTTABOS TO WAR 

fusion of disparate ethnic traditions that Plato recommended in 
the Laws had actually been initiated long before; but on the 
other hand there can be no doubt that Plato would have ex­
cluded kottabos from his reorganization of the symposium, 
especially considering the hybris that the game all too readily 
inspiredP 

The ancient insight that the symposium holds the key to the 
organization of Greek society continues to resonate strongly in 
modern scholarship.28 Oswyn Murray, for example, has inves­
tigated the symposium as a means of developing and maintaining 
cohesion within an elite group of warriors. Drinking customs 
receive particular emphasis in his studies, as in the following 
passage: 

Loyalties that unite and preserve the group in moments 
of danger are created and maintained by the activities of 
the group at play .... Ritualized consumption in the form 
of alchohol actually promotes the virtues required on the 
battlefield, without the dangers (or the expense) of 
realistic military maneuvers.29 

Though Murray's hypothesis may seem a bit risky as a strategy 
for military preparedness, it corresponds to the equally 
paradoxical boast of Pericles in the Funeral Oration (Thuc. 
2.39.1): "In regard to education, whereas our rivals from their 
very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at 
Athens we live in a milder way, and yet are just as ready to 
encounter every hasard.» A recreation such as kottabos that 
reminded men, however dimly, of archery and javelin-throwing 
fits perfectly into this miraculously painless regime. 

27 On the artificiality of the antithesis that Plato establishes between 
Athenian and Spartan customs, cf O. Murray, "War and the Symposium," in 
DCC90ff. 

28 Cf most recently N. R. E. Fisher, "Drink, Hybris and the Promotion of 
Harmony at Sparta," in A. Powell, cd., Classical Sparta. Techniques Behind 
Her Success (Norman 1989) 26-50; D CC; O. Murray, cd., Sympotica. A 
Symposium on the Symposion (Oxford 1990); D. Levine, "Symposium and the 
Polis," in T. J. Figueira and G. Nagy, edd., Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the 
Polis (Baltimore 1985) 176-96. 

29 Murray (supra n.27 8M; see also his "The Symposion as Social Or­
ganization," in R. Hagg, ed., The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century 
B.C. (Stockholm 1983) 195-99. 



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ROSS SCAIFE 35 

As we have seen, the diverse testimonia that preserve our 
awareness of kottabos generally accentuate the erotic, athletic, 
and martial associations of the sport. I have tried to suggest how 
such aspects of kottabos correspond to certain ancient and 
modern views, both on the social function of the symposium 
and on the larger patterns of classical culture. Finally, however 
whimsical the aetiology of the Peloponnesian War propounded 
by Dicaeopolis may seem, it is evident that Aristophanes did not 
coin his new word methysokottaboi arbitrarily, but rather with a 
hint of didactic purpose. The widely-acknowledged erotic and 
competitive dimensions of kottabos would have made the 
impetuous abduction of a prositute by young warriors, after 
their symposium had gotten out of hand, perfectly intelligible 
for a fifth-century audience, both in itself and as a metaphor for 
the recent history of a predatory Athens. And although else­
where Aristophanes chose not to portray kottabos as in any way 
perilous, it perfectly sui ted his purposes to do so in the 
Acharnians, a "wine-song" (trygoidia, 500) in which the chorus, 
by the time of the second parabasis (971-99), has been per­
suaded to exclude the "obnoxiously drunk" (paroinikos) 
Polemos from the symposium, in which a vine stake ultimately 
wounds the general Lamachus, and in which wine and the 
accoutrements of drinking finally come to symbolize the 
victories of the playwright and his protagonist, whose struggles 
for peace had initially seemed so unpatriotic. 30 Hence Aristoph­
anes' playful evocation of the intriguing cultural phenomenon of 
kottabos as a symbolic 'cause' of a devastating war must be seen 
as one small element of that larger Aristophanic mission of 
political enlightenment that the chorus in the parabasis of the 
Acharnians (658) describes as o,)c)£ 1tuvouPYwv o,)c)£ Ku'tapc)wv 
&AAo. 'to. ~£A na'tu c)tc)aaKWV. 31 

UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY 

August, 1992 

30 On the wounding of Lamachus and its correspondence to Dionysus' 
punishment of Telephus see H. P. Foley, "Tragedy and Politics in Aris­
tophanes' Acharnians, " ] HS 108 (1988) 33-47, esp. 39 with n.24; on the 
renunciation of Polemos see T. K. Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy (Ithaca 
1991) 56ff. 

31 Cf. MacDowell (supra n.1) 148: "It is generally agreed that, if Aris­
tophanes is making serious points about the war anywhere in this play, he is 
doing so in this place" (i.e., in the speech of Dicaeopolis at 497-556). My 
thanks to Dana Burgess, Jane Phillips, and Cathy Scaife for their comments 
on earlier versions of this paper. Errors that remain are of course my own.