Book 11
50
There is another kind of cup called celebe. And this description of drinking-cup is mentioned by Anacreon, where he says— Come, O boy, and bring me now A celebe, that I may drink A long deep draught, and draw no breath. It will ten measures of water hold, And five of mighty Chian wine. But it is uncertain what description of cup it is, or whether every cup is not called celebe, because one pours libations into it (ἀπὸ τοῦ χέειν λοιβὴν),or from one's pouring libations (λείβειν). And the verb λείβω is applied habitually to every sort of liquid, from which also the word λέβης is derived. But Silenus and Clitarchus say that celebe is a name given to drinking-cups by the Aeolians. But Pamphilus says that the celebe is the same cup which is also called thermopotis, a cup to drink warm water from. And Nicander the Colophonian, in his Dialects, says that the celebe is a vessel used by the shepherds in which they preserve honey. For Anti- machus the Colophonian, in the fifth book of his Thebais, says— He bade the heralds bear to them a bladder Fill'd with dark wine, and the most choice of all, The celebea in his house which lay, Fill'd with pure honey. And in a subsequent passage he says— But taking up a mighty celebeum In both his hands, well filled with richest honey, Which in great store he had most excellent. And again he says— And golden cups of wine, and then besides, A celebeum yet untouch'd by man, Full of pure honey, his most choice of treasures. And in this passage he very evidently speaks of the celebeum as some kind of vessel distinct from a drinking-cup, since he has already mentioned drinking-cups under the title of δέπαστρα. And Theocritus the Syracusan, in his Female Witches, says— And crown this celebeum with the wool, Well dyed in scarlet, of the fleecy sheep. And Euphorion says— Or whether you from any other stream Have fill'd your celebe with limpid water. And Anacreon says— And the attendant pour'd forth luscious wile, Holding a celebe of goodly size. But Dionysius, surnamed the Slender, explaining the poem of Theodoridas, which is addressed to Love, says that celebe is a name given to a kind of upstanding cup, something like the prusias and the thericleum.
