1908 The World's Drinks and How to Miw Them by Hon Wm Boothby (1st edition)

''Eat, drink and be merry.' '-ECCLESIASTES, viii, 15; and LUKE xii, 19.

At all manner of outdoor festivals, roof-garden entertainments or summer

indoor parties Cups a re always in fashion and all first-class caterers and

mixologists are supposed to know the art of brewing them ..

The words ''cup'' and ''bumper,' ' and many of our social terms, can

be traced to the convi vial usages of the ancients. The custom .of dedicating

a cup to a favorite deity led by an easy transition to that of pledging each

other-the origin of modern toasts. According to Casaubon the ancients took

three cups at their banquets-one to allay thirst, another for pleasure, and a

third as a libation to Jupi ter Servator.

Ho! boy, t here, a cup! Brim full to the new moon.

Ho! boy, there, a cup! Brim full for the midnight.

boy, there, a cup!

full to the health

Of him we would honor, Murena the

Augur.-Horace.

'rhe duty of serving the wine among the ancient Romans was given to boys

-slaves, who were well dressed-the wine being kept in large earthen vases,

into which the

cyantlws,

or goblet, was aclroitly clipped when it r equired

replenishing. The

cyantlms

contained about as much as our modern wine

glass, or else bow could they say:-

Let our bumpers, while jovial we give out the toast

In gay compotations, be ten at the most;

The ninth to the Muses in order must follow,

The tenth a libation be made to Apollo.

was a'lso of sufficient capacity to give rise to the phrase, ''To get into

one's cups,'' which originated with the Romans. Pisander mentions that

Hercules crossed the ocean in bis cup, which may have ha nded clown the

phrase '' half seas over,' ' in this sense.

How you lotter, good feet

Have a care of my bon es !

you

fail

me, I pass all night on these stones.

The "Cup of H ercules".-which was drnnk otr and caused the death of

Alexander the Grcat-contaiu ed iiearly fo ur English quarts. "Here," says

Seneca, " is this hero, unconquered by :

the toils of prodigious ma rches.

by the dangers of sieges and combats, by the most violent extremes of heat

aPd cold-here he lies, st1bclued by intemperance, and struck to the earth.' '