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Pythagoras’ Greed Cup and Other Lesser-Known Ancient World Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 31, 2020 34 min

Roman Empire - Roman emperor — The assassination of Caligula. Quora

39. Detesting Wine Hogs

One fun activity that Pythagoras enjoyed was drinking wine. For that matter, so did most ancient Greeks. However, Pythagoras had a pet peeve when it came to drinking: he did not like wine hogs. Specifically, he did not like it when greedy friends filled their cups to the brim, and took more than their fair share of the wine. He decided to do something about that, and invented a special cup that came to be named after him.

Superficially, the Pythagorean Cup looks like a traditional ancient Greek goblet. Inside, however, it contains a column sticking up in the middle. One can drink from it like any other goblet, provided one does not try to fill it to the maximum. Pythagoras designed the cup so that if an unsuspecting drinking companion became a wine hog and tried to fill it, it would instead drain all the wine and spill it out the bottom. Presumably, getting wine spilled all over him – and the hassle of figuring out how to remove wine stains – would teach the greedy friend a lesson about the moderation.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.