Before flip cup and beer pong, a game called kottabos was the way ancient Greeks entertained themselves at symposia, according to Live Science. The elite drank wine in the men's quarters, called andron, while dancers, musicians and courtesans kept the air lively.
As drinks made the men drunker, the games began and prizes ranged from pastries to sex.
Sharpe told Live Science that the shape of a kylix seemed to make a Frisbee-type toss the most effective, but many of her students employed a successful overhand throw.
"It took a fair amount of control to actually direct the wine dregs, and interestingly enough, some of the women were the first to get it," Sharpe told Live Science. "In some respects, they relied a little bit more on finesse, whereas some of the guys were trying to throw it too hard."
"Another thing we quickly realized is, it must have gotten pretty messy," Sharpe told Live Science. "By the end of our experiment we had diluted grape juice all over the floor. In a typical symposium setting, in an andron, you would have had couches arranged on almost all four sides of the room, and if you missed the target, you were likely to splatter your fellow symposiast across the way. You'd imagine that, by the end of the symposium, you'd be drenched in wine, and your fellow symposiasts would be drenched in wine, too."
Sharpe told Live Science it would be interesting to see how technique would unravel should real wine be used."It would be fun to actually experiment with wine drinking," said Sharpe. "Of course, this was a university event, so we couldn't exactly do it on campus. But really, to get the full experiment, it would be interesting to try it after having a kylix of wine, or after having two kylixes of wine."
