Various modifications of the original principle of the game were gradually introduced, but for practical purposes we may reckon two varieties. (I) In the Κοτταβος & 6~vl36.4we shallow saucers (6~i,~3a4ia) were floated in a basin or mixing-bowl filled with water; the object was to sink the saucers by throwing the wine into them, and the competitor who sank the greatest number was considered victorious, and received the prize, which consisted of cakes or sweetmeats. (2) KbTTLI3OI xaraKrbs,i is not so easy to understand, although there is little doubt as to the apparatus. This consisted of a or bronze rod; a irXitcnyE, a small disk or basin, resembling a scale-pan; a larger disk (X~avLs); and (in most cases) a small bronze figure called u&νης. The discovery (by Professor Helbig In 1886) 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 Mitiheilungen des deutschen archaologischen Insliluts (Rmische 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 irXiurrcy~ 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 KTTa/3o1; 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 treatise on the subject is C. Sartoris Das Kottabos-Spiel der alten Griechen (1893), in which a full bibliography of ancient and modern authorities is given. English readers may be referred to an article by A. Higgins on Recent Discoveries of the Apparatus used in playing the Game of Kottabos (Archaeologia, li. 1888); see also Kottabos in Daremberg and Saglios Dictionnaire des antiquits, and L. Becq de Fouquibres, Les Jeux des anciens (1873).
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