Now for us the word symposium has come to mean a kind of learned gathering of people
talking about important things. The word actually means drinking together.
And this was a ritualized event for citizens, that is for free native born
adult males. And it asserts and embodies and enacts
citizen privilege. The symposium was men, invited guests,
generally reclining on couches around the edge of a room.
And in the center was a great mixing bowl called a krater in which water and wine
were mixed and served to the participants. There was a symposiarch, same word as
archon, somebody who was, so to speak, the master of the revels, usually the host of
the event. And he was in charge of keeping things
progressing and keeping things orderly et cetera.
As the great French scholar Francois[UNKNOWN] has observed, the
mixture of water and wine in the crater is a symbol of the mixture of pleasures that
the symposium is supposed to give, give its guests.
There are food and drink. So Dionysus is the presiding divinity in
this regard. There's also music.
Here you can see a reveler reclining. If you look closely, you can see that his
Hair has a garland on it and a slave is bringing him a lyre to play.
So song and music were parts of the pleasure, sometimes provided by the
guests, sometimes by hired entertainers as in this flute girl.
In addition, conversation was highlighted and not only conversation but recitation
of poetry and this had a, kind of, competitive aspect to it as well.
We have seen over and over again that the term agon, the competition, informs so
much of Greek life. And what you can see here, among other
things, is these men, who are playing a game.
Because this was another part of the pleasures, there were drinking games.
And this is one called katabas, in which you take the last few drops of wine that
are left in your cup. And you throw them at a target and try to
either make it ring, or knock it over, and, this is represented over and over
again as well. Games, drinking, singing, recitation, and,
the vase paintings are sometimes Fairly straightforward.
About the sexuality, this we have seen before, this is a Hetaira.
A woman who is a professional entertainer, so to speak.
And who is about to join one of the male revelers on his cot.
The vase paintings, likewise, don't spare us some of the realities of what happens
when you drink a lot. Here, you have a slave holding the head of
a reveler who has overindulged, and is just about to throw up.
Oh, well. But Eros, the erotics of the symposium,
were also very important. This is a wall painting in, a place called
the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum and you can see here men flirting with one
another. We've not talked about this very much so
far, but now we will for a little while. Because a certain degree of homoerotic
activity was part of at least elite male behavior.
It was highly codified. It generally involved an older male and a
younger male who were called respectively the, the lover and the beloved.
And their behavior was supposed to be strictly controlled by certain
conventions. That is to say the lover was never to use
force, the beloved was never to ask for gifts or to get bribed.
And this is not I have to be very careful about this, be very precise about this.
These men also had women friends and lovers, had wives, begat children.
There's nothing like a sort of heterosexual and homosexual divide here.
This was part of adult male behavior. We mentioned it very briefly when we
talked about Sparta long ago about the alliances there between older and younger
men in that process of upbringing. And we can also see it not only in the
illustrations on the vases, many of which feature beautiful youths.
Here a slave drawing wine from the krater. But if you look very, very carefully, you
can see the word here kalos. Kalos and there would be the name here, of
one Lycus. And what this means is that Lycus is
beautiful. These pots were engraved, or painted with
the names of young men, who were thought of as beautiful, who were objects of
desire. And you might sort of declare your
devotion to one of these by putting his name and then the epithet, is beautiful.
It's out of this milieu then, that we understand Alcibiades.
This idealized portrait bust from somewhat later makes him look a little bit like
Alexander the Great. We've already mentioned him in connection
with the intrigues in the Peloponnese and with his probable involvement in the, in
the suppression of Milos. Who was he?
He was an Alcmened. Yep, that family again.
In other words, as blue-blooded as you can get.
Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, PhDProfessor
