He gladly shared the Sybaritic feasts,
And drank the Chian wine from out the cups
Called the lacænæ, with a cheerful look.
70. Then there is the lepaste. Some mark this word λεπαστη with an acute accent on the last syllable, like καλή; but some mark the penultima with an acute, as μεγάλη. And this kind of cup derived its name from those who spend a great deal of money on their drinking and intemperance, whom men call λάφυκται. Aristophanes, in his Peace, says—
What will you do, then, when you've drunk
One single lepaste full of new wine?
And it is from this word λεπαστὴ that the verb λάπτω comes, which means to swallow all at once, having a meaning just opposite to the bombylium; for the same author says, somewhere or other,—
You've drunk up all my blood, O king, my master!
which is as much as to say, you have utterly drained me. And in his Gerytades he says—
But there was then a festival: a slave
Went round, and brought us all a lepaste,
And pour'd in wine dark as the deep-blue sea;
but the poet means here to indicate the depth of the cup. And Antiphanes, in his Æsculapius, says—
He took an agèd woman, who had been
A long time ill, sick of a ling'ring fever,
And bruising some small root, and putting it
Into a noble-sized lepaste there,
He made her drink it all, to cure her sickness.
Philyllius, in his Auge, says—