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The Original Greek Olympics and Ancient History’s Coolest Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 31, 2021 35 min

The ancient Greeks inaugurated the Olympic Games in 776 BC. Imagining History

The ancient Greeks liked practical jokes, as evinced by the Pythagorean cup. Useless Info Junkie

15. The Philosopher Who Couldn’t Stand Greedy Drinkers

One fun activity that Pythagoras enjoyed was to imbibe wine. For that matter, so did most of 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 booze. So he decided to do something about that, and invented a special cup that came to be named after him.

At first glance, the Pythagorean cup looks like a run-of-the-mill traditional ancient Greek goblet. Inside, however, it contains a column that sticks up the middle. You can drink from it like any other goblet, so long as you don’t try to fill it to the maximum. Pythagoras designed the cup so that if a drinker got greedy and tried to fill it to the brim, it would instead drain all the wine and spill it out the bottom. Presumably, with wine spilled all over him, and faced with the hassle of wine stain removal, the greedy friend would learn a lesson about 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.