Entertainment / Literature / Kottabos: A rowdy Greek drinking game. After draining the wine in a kylix, the drinker would stick a finger through one of the handles and rapidly spin the kylix around. He would then suddenly stop its motion, and the dregs of the wine would shoot forth from the bottom of the kylix. We aren't exactly sure what the rules were for the game, but apparently the competitors tried to aim the dregs so they would land in a large flattish bowl or else hit a specific target in the room. Amongst the competitors who successfully hit the target, the one with the best spatter of rays in the splash pattern would be declared the winner, with six-pointed stars being worth more than five-pointed stars, and so on, (i.e., the messier the impact, the more points it was worth). We can imagine the contest was a fairly wet one, and that often the ceiling, the walls, and furniture (or even other competitors) would end up spattered with the lees. In late-night dinners as depicted in Plato's Symposium, kottabos would have been one of the primary entertainments.
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