And drink large draughts of scarcely mingled wine.[[381]]”
A sacrifice[[382]] was likewise this day offered up for the life of the child, probably to the god Amphidromos, first mentioned, and therefore supposed to have been invented by Æschylus.[[383]] It has moreover been imagined that the name was now imposed, and gifts were presented by the friends and household slaves.[[384]]
But it was on the seventh day that the child generally received its name,[[385]] amid the festivities of another banquet; though sometimes this was deferred till the tenth.[[386]] The reason is supplied by Aristotle.[[387]] They delayed the naming thus long, he says, because most children that perish in extreme infancy die before the seventh day, which being passed they considered their lives more secure. The eighth day was chosen by other persons for bestowing the name, and, this considered the natal day, was solemnized annually as the anniversary of its birth, on which occasion it was customary for the friends of the family to assemble together, and present gifts to the child, consisting sometimes of the polypi and cuttle-fish[[388]] to be eaten at the feast. However the tenth day[[389]] appears to have been very commonly observed. Thus Euripides:[[390]]
“Say, who delighting in a mother’s claim
Mid tenth-day feasts bestowed the ancestral name?”
Aristophanes, too, on the occasion of naming his Bird-city, which a hungry poet pretends to have long ago celebrated, introduces Peisthetæros saying,
“What! have I not but now the sacrifice
Of the tenth day completed and bestowed
A name as on a child?”[[391]]
Connected with this custom, there is a very good anecdote in Polyænos, from which Meursius[[392]] infers that there existed among the Greeks something like the office of sponsor. Jason, tyrant of Pheræ, most of whose stratagems were played off against members of his own family, had a brother named Meriones, extremely opulent, but to the last degree close-fisted, particularly towards him. When at length a son was born to Jason, he invited to the Nominalia many principal nobles of Thessaly, and among others his brother Meriones, who was to preside over the ceremonies. In these he was probably occupied the whole day, during which, under pretence, apparently, of providing some choice game for his guests, the tyrant went out for a few hours with his dogs and usual followers. His real object, however, soon appeared. Making direct for Pagasæ, where his brother’s castle stood, he stormed the place, and seizing on Meriones’ treasures, to the amount of twenty talents, returned in all speed to the banquet. Here, by way of showing his fraternal consideration, he delegated to his brother the honour of pouring forth the libations, and bestowing the name, which was the father’s prerogative. But Meriones receiving from one of the tyrant’s attendants a hint of what had taken place, called the boy “Porthaon,” or the “Plunderer.”[[393]] At Athens the feast and sacrifice took place at night, with much pomp, and all the glee which such an occasion was calculated to inspire.[[394]]