Acetabulum
Acetabulum,
Greek
(ὀξίς, ὀξύβαφον, ὀξυβάφιον, ἐμβάφιον). A small shallow vessel, used originally, as the name denotes, for holding vinegar or sauces, to dip the food into (Poll. 6.85; Ath. 11.494 b; Suidas, s. v. ὀξὶς and ὀξύβαφον). It was afterwards employed for a variety of other purposes, e. g. for holding salad (Ath. 2.64 a), wine (Ath. 11.494 c-f), or honey (Alex. Com. Frag. 3, 462), or for playing one form of the game of cottabos (Ath. 15.667 e; Poll. 10.86). [COTTABOS]
2. Roman
Originally a vessel for holding vinegar (acetum, Isidor. 20.4, 12); then any similar vessel (Quintil. Inst. Or. 8.6.35). It was sometimes made of silver (Dig. 34, 2, 19.9). The word is used of the socket of the hip-bone (Plin. Nat. 28.179); the suckers in the arms of polypi (id. 9.86); and the cup of a flower (id. 18.245), from which we get the general idea of a small vessel of bell shape with a wide mouth. The first cut represents an acetabulum, given in Dennis's Etruria, vol. i. p. cxii.; the second, from Cassini's Pitture antiche, Rome, 1783 (ap. Daremberg and Saglio, s. v.), shows two such vessels, probably containing condiments, placed on either side of a sucking pig that has been served up in a lanx. Similar vessels were used by conjurers in their tricks (Sen. Ep. 45, 7, with Lipsius's note); and the name was also applied to a kind of cymbal (Isid. 3.21, 11).
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.