Sympotic praise
Ewen Bowie Corpus Christi College, Oxford
In Greece from the seventh to the fifth centuries B.C. the symposium was an important institution both for the social and political life of men from prosperous households and for the creation of songs that constitute a significant portion of our surviving archaic poetry. Between seven and seventeen men, mostly in their early or later teens - παίδες "boys" or μειράκια, "youths" - and in their twenties (or sometimes even their thirties) - νέοι, "young men" - would recline on couches to engage in the ritualised consumption of wine and to enjoy entertainment - entertainment provided either by their own conversation, singing and sympotic games like κότταβος, or by the musical, gymnastic and sexual diversions offered by εταίραι, female entertainers. Although light food was on offer, drinking was the central and defining mode of communal consumption, and the symposium was clearly distinguishable from a banquet.1 Much light is thrown on sympotic entertainments by painted vases, and their evidence has been brilliantly interpreted by Francois Lissarrague in his book Un flot d'images} Only from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. do we find texts that set out to report the subjects of sympotic conversation (above all Aristophanes' Wasps, and the Symposia of Plato and Xenophon) but comparison of these with the texts of poetry that was composed for sympotic performance, chiefly sung performance, suggests that these poetic texts are a fair guide to the topics that figured in archaic conversation too.3
1 . See O.Murray, "The Greek symposium in history" in E.Gabba (éd.), Tria corda : scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano, Como, 1983, p. 257-272 ; idem "The symposion as social organisation", in R.Hagg (éd.), The Greek renaissance of the eight century B.C. : tradition and innovation, Stockholm, 1983, p. 195-199 ; idem, (ed.j Sympotica. A symposium on the symposium, Oxford, 1990 ; M.Vetta (éd.), Poesia e simposio nella Grecia antica : guida storica e critica, Rome and Bari, 1983. For the place of elegy in the symposium see E.L.Bowie, "Early Greek elegy, symposium and public festival", JHS 106, 1986, p. 13-35 and "Miles ludens ? The problem of martial exhortation in early Greek elegy" in Murray, Sympotica, p. 221-9.
2. F. Lissarrague, The Aesthetics of the Greek banquet, Princeton, 1990 (the English translation by A.Szegedy-Maszak of Un Flot d'Images : une esthétique du banquet grec, Paris, 1987) and "Around the Krater : an aspect of banquet imagery" in Murray, Sympotica, p. 196-209. Note also B.Fehr, "Entertainers at the Symposion : the Akletoi in the archaic period" in Murray, Sympotica, p. 185-195.
3. E.L. Bowie, "Greek table-talk before Plato", Rhetorica 11, 1993, p. 355-373.
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