Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

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But the ancients did also at times use very cold water in their draughts before dinner. But I will not tell you, unless you first teach me, whether the ancients were in the habit of drinking warm water at their banquets. For if their cups got their name¹ from what took place in reference to them, and if they were set before the guests full of mixed liquors, then they certainly did not contain warm drink, ad were not put on the fire like kettles. For that they were in the habit of drinking warm water Eupolis proves, in his Demi—

Warm for us now the brazen ewer quick,
And bid the slaves prepare the victims new,
That we may feast upon the entrails.

And Antiphanes says, in his Omphale—

May I ne'er see a man
'Boiling me water in a bubbling pail;
For I have no disease, and wish for none.
But if I feel a pain within my stomach,
Or round about my navel, why I have
A ring I lately gave a drachma for
To a most skilful doctor.

And, in his Anointing Woman, (but this play is attributed to Alexis also,) he says—

But if you make our shop notorious,
I swear by Ceres, best of goddesses,
That I will empt the biggest ladle o'er you,
Filling it with hot water from the kettle;
And if I fail, may I ne'er drink free water more.

And Plato, in the fourth book of his Polity, says—“Desire in the mind must be much the same as thirst is in the body. Now, a man feels thirst for hot water or for cold; or for much water or for a little; or perhaps, in a word, for some particular drink. And if there be any heat combined with the thirst, then that will give a desire for cold water; but if a sensation of cold be united with it, that will engender a wish for warm water. And if by reason of the violence of the cause the thirst be great, that will give a desire for an abundant draught; but if the thirst be small, then the man will wish for but a small draught. But the thirst itself is not a desire of anything except of the thing itself, namely, drinking. And hunger, again, is not a desire of anything else except food.”

And Semus the Delian, in the second book of is Nesias. or treatise on Islands, says that in the island of Cimolus, cold [p. 204] places are prepared by being dug out against the summer, where people may put down vessels full of warm water, and then draw them up again in no respect different from snow. But warm water is called by the Athenians metaceras, a word used by Sophilus, in his Androcles. And Alexis says, in his Locrians—

But the maid-servants pour'd forth water,
One pouring boiling water, and the other warm.

And Philemon, in his Corinthian Women, uses the same word. And Amphis says, in his Bath—

One called out to the slaves to bring hot water,
Another shouted for metaceras.