amphoreus

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ᾰ̓μφορεύς (amphoreús).

Noun

amphoreus (plural amphoreis)

1. An Ancient Greek unit of liquid measure reckoned as equivalent to about 9 gallons.
   • 1897, Cecil [Harcourt] Smith, “Panathenaic Amphorae”, in The Annual of the w:British School at Athens, number III, London: […] Macmillan & Co., Limited, page 190:

     The amphoreus of the prize-lists is a measure of capacity: in that singular “conspiracy of silence” as regards the mention of painted vases to which Greek literature almost universally adhered, the painted Panathenaic amphora is not alluded to, even in the prize-lists.

   • 1902, Charles Burton Gulick, “The Various Callings: Manufactures and Trades”, in The Life of the Ancient Greeks, with Special Reference to Athens (Twentieth Century Text-Books), New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, page 249:

     The expensive wine of Chios was worth a mina an amphoreus; but twenty drachmas an amphoreus, or forty cents a gallon, was regarded as an extravagant price to pay for ordinary wine.

   • 1927, A[rthur] W[allace] Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy, Oxford, Oxon: At the Clarendon Press, page 52:

     Whether the Schol. on Plato, Rep., p. 399 (see p. 7) refers to Athens is uncertain; it states that the second prize was an amphoreus of wine, the third a goat, which was led away smeared with wine-lees.

   • 1957, Charles Seltman, “The Trade”, in Wine in the Ancient World, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, page 137:

     Accordingly one Amphoreus Metrétés contained 12 Choes, 144 Kotyloi, 864 Kyathoi. The Amphoreus held 39·39 litres or 69·33 pints, or slightly over 8½ gallons. It may generally be assumed that the great pointed pottery jars in which wines were preserved, exported and sold were, each of them, such an amphoreus.

   • 1961, H. Warner Allen, A History of Wine: Great Vintage Wines from The Homeric Age to The Present Day, London: Faber and Faber, pages 23–24:

     For the great chiefs, Agamemnon and Menelaus, they had brought a thousand amphoreis of wine as well as more cargoes to be bartered with the troops. […] Maro, the priest of Apollo, the guardian god of Ismarus, had paid a heavy ransom for himself, his wife and child, and it included a dozen amphoreis of his very best wine.

   • 1977, Charles W. Fornara, Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War (Translated Documents of Greece and Rome; 1), Baltimore, Md., London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, pages 168 and 170:

     Amphoreis of wine [- - -] : 590, three choes¹² […] 12. I.e., 590 amphoreis (a unit of measurement probably equivalent to 12 choes) + three choes = 7,083 choes.

   • 1983, Jane C. Waldbaum, Metalwork from Sardis: The Finds through 1974 (Archaeological Exploration of Sardis; 8), Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 17, column 1:

     Figuring an amphoreus conservatively at ca. 9 gal. (34.06 l.), the silver vessel had a capacity of ca. 5,400 gal. (20,439 l.).

   • 1990, Douglas M[aurice] MacDowell, Against Meidias (Oration 21), Oxford, Oxon: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 347:

     For a public case, such as this one, the total amount of water was 11 amphoreis, of which one-third (44 khoes) was for the prosecutor, one-third for the defendant, and one-third for the speeches about the assessment of the penalty if the defendant was found guilty (Ais. 2.126, 3.197).

   • 1991, Peter Heather, John Matthews, “Themistius, Orations 8, 10: Goths and Romans in the Fourth Century”, in The Goths in the Fourth Century (Translated Texts for Historians; 11), Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, →ISBN, page 28:

     But there is no need for you to seek men to teach you with how much sweat farmers earn a hemiekton, an amphiekton and an amphoreus,⁴³ a single bronze coin or a stater of silver or – what most men dearly love to see – of gold. […] ⁴³[…] The ἀμφορεύς was a liquid measure of about 9 gallons (thus 4.5 modii), 1.5 times the size of the Roman amphora measure.

Related terms

• amphora