Where we put up a target to shoot at with drops
From our wine-cup whenever we drink it.
And Dicæarchus the Messenian, the pupil of Aristotle, in his treatise on Alcæus, says that the word λατάγη is also a Sicilian noun. But λατάγη means the drops which are left in the bottom after the cup is drained, and which the players used to throw with inverted hand into the κοτταβεῖον. But Clitarchus, in his treatise on Words, says that the Thessalians and Rhodians both call the κότταβος itself, or splash made by the cups, λατάγη.
3. The prize also which was proposed for those who gained the victory in drinking was called κότταβος, as Euripides shows us in his Œneus, where he says—
And then with many a dart of Bacchus' juice,
They struck the old man's head. And I was set
To crown the victor with deserved reward,
And give the cottabus to such.
The vessel, too, into which they threw the drops was also called κότταβος, as Cratinus shows in his Nemesis. But Plato the comic poet, in his Jupiter Ill-treated, makes out that the cottabus was a sort of drunken game, in which those who were defeated yielded up their tools[112] to the victor. And these are his words—
A. I wish you all to play at cottabus