Kottabos and Kylix

Some 2,500 years before Beer Pong, there was Kottabos (κότταβος). Ancient Greek aristocrats gathered in their version of a man cave—the Andron (ἀνδρών, literally “the men’s room,” though not the kind you’re thinking of)—for a drinking party known as a Symposium (συμπόσιον, “a gathering of drinkers”). Reclining on couches around the room’s perimeter, they drank from wide, shallow cups called kylikes (κύλικες) and competed in a game that tested both skill and sobriety: flinging the last drops of wine from their cups toward a central target.

As the night went on, and accuracy waned, the results could be hilariously messy. Many kylikes even added to the fun—painted with large, staring eyes so that when a drinker raised the cup, it looked as if a pig or other beast were staring back at his friends. The comic playwright Epicharmus summed up the spirit of the game best: “Drinking leads to wandering the streets drunk, and wandering the streets drunk leads to acting like a pig, and acting like a pig leads to a lawsuit (and a lawsuit leads to being found guilty), and being found guilty leads to shackles, stocks, and a fine.”

Learn more about the Art Institute of Chicago’s kylix above and get the full rules on how to play Kottabos from Encyclopedia Britannica.