Sympotica: A Symposium on the SymposionOswyn Murray Rituals of commensality are fundamental to the understanding of human societies; the symposion or male drinking group of archaic and classical Greece was an institution whose effects can be detected in the painted pottery and the poetry created for its use, and in many areas of ancient Greek social life, from politics and warfare to sexual attitudes and conceptions of pleasure; Greek sympotic customs spread to other cultures throughout the Mediterranean, with important consequences for their development. Sympotica is the first book to be published on the symposion as a whole. It is the record of a symposium held in Oxford in 1984; the contributions discuss the importance of Greek drinking customs for anthropology, archaeology, art history, literary studies, history, and philosophy, and demonstrate the need for an inter-disciplinary approach. The editor provides a historical introduction to the field of sympotic studies, and a general bibliography. Twenty-four plates illustrate the art of the symposion, and three concluding chapters consider the influence of Greek commensality on the Roman world. The work opens up a new field of research into the cultures of the ancient world. |
Contents
Sympotic History | 3 |
Two Models of Civic Institutions in | 14 |
SYMPOTIC SPACE | 37 |
Copyright | |
22 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
Agora akletoi Alcaeus Alkibiades ancient Archaic aristocratic ARV2 Asklepieion Athenaeus Athenian Athens Attic red-figure cup banquet behaviour Berlin black-figure Bookidis boys building carmina convivalia century Classical commensality context convivial Corinthian couches culture dancing Deipnosophistae Demeter Dentzer dining dining-rooms dinner Dionysos drinking earlier literature elegy evidence example feast Fehr festival function gestures gods Grèce Greece Greek Greek symposion guests Hellenistic Herakles Hesperia hestiatorion hetaireia Homer Hyakinthia klinai kline Kommos komos krater Labraunda Lissarrague literary London Louvre meal meat Murray Odysseus Oxford panspermia Paris pederasty Perachora Plate Plato Plut poems poetry pottery prytaneion reclining red-figure references ritual Roman Rome rooms sacrifice sanctuary scenes Schmitt-Pantel seems skolion social Sokrates song Spartan Stoa symposia symposiasts symposion Temple Thasos tholos tradition Troezen Tyrtaeus vases wall-length wine wine-pourer Xenophanes δὲ ἐν καὶ οἱ περὶ τὰ τε τὴν τῆς τὸ τοῖς τοῦ τῶν