of two sets of
actual apparatus near Perugia and various representations on vases help
to elucidate the somewhat obscure accounts of the method of playing the
game contained in the scholia and certain ancient authors who, it must
not be forgotten, wrote at a time when the game itself had become
obsolete, and cannot therefore be looked to for a trustworthy
description of it.

The first specimen of the apparatus found at Perugia resembles a
candelabrum on a base, tapering towards the top, with a blunt end, on
which the small disk (found near the rod), which has a hole near the
edge and is slightly hollow in the middle, could be balanced. At about a
third of the height of the rod is a large disk with a hole in the centre
through which the rod runs; in a socket at the top is a small bronze
figure, with right arm and right leg uplifted. In the second specimen
there is no large disk, and the figure is holding up what is apparently
a rhyton or drinking-horn.

According to Prof. Helbig in _Mittheilungen des deutschen
archaologischen Instituts_ (Romische Abtheilung i., 1886) three games
were played with this apparatus. In the first the smaller disk was
placed on the top of the rod, and the object of the player was to
dislodge it with a cast of the wine, so that it would fall with a
clatter on the larger disk below. In the second (as in the third) the
bronze figure was used; the smaller disk was placed above the figure,
upon which it fell when hit, and thence on to the larger disk below. In
the third, there was no smaller disk; the wine was thrown at the figure,
and fell on to the larger disk underneath. Another supposed variety, in
which two scales were balanced in such a manner that the weight of the
liquid cast into either scale caused it to dip down and touch the top of
an image placed under each, probably had no real existence, but is due
to a confusion of the [Greek: plastinx] with a scale-pan by reason of
its shape. The game appears to have been of Sicilian origin, but it
spread through Greece from Thessaly to Rhodes, and was especially
fashionable at Athens. Dionysius, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Pindar,
Bacchylides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Antiphanes,
make frequent and familiar allusion to the [Greek: kottabos]; but in the
writers of the Roman and Alexandrian period such reference as occurs
shows that the fashion had died out. In Latin literature it is almost
entirely unknown.

The most complete treat