How did men have fun at "parties" in ancient Greece

Symposia, stormy fun parties, were an important component of male pastime in ancient Greece. Actors performed at them, sang songs, held various contests and games. Cottab was the favorite and most popular game for men. Various variants of the cottab can be seen on Greek vessels, and references to this game are found in many works of ancient literature.

Whatever version of the cottab is used, it always has the same meaning - to hit the target by spilling out of the bowl, kilikas, unfinished wine. For convenience, the kilik had two loop-shaped handles, in one of which a finger was poked. With a clear and quick movement, the wine from the bowl was sent to the cooked target.

The simplest version of the game is when the wine had to get into a large metal bowl, cottabi. Not a drop of the drink should have been spilled during the flight. A more complicated variation was the presence in the large vessel of small cups, or simply nutshells and caps of acorns. The winner was the one who, with a splash of wine, managed to drown more bowls. Well, the most skilled cottab players used long wooden or bronze poles, taller than human height. A saucer was placed on their top, and a bronze figure was placed on it. Men had to knock down the object on top with wine from their bowls.

Also, the ancient Greeks used the cottab for amorous fortune-telling, which, although they took place in a comic form, were very common. Before waving a hand with a wine bowl, a person had to give the name of the object of his feelings, and if the drink reached the goal and did not spill along the way, this meant the successful development of a love relationship.

It is noteworthy that in the III century BC. e. the cottab began to lose its popularity among the Greeks until it was completely forgotten. Modern historians have tried to reproduce the ancient game and found that splashing liquid out of the bowl from the bottom up and not splashing a drop is not so simple. It took about a quarter of an hour to comprehend the basics.