privileged Greek males in the Archaic Period. In this chapter, we will look at some of the ways in which
the symposium reflects the literary, political, and social concerns of the Archaic Period. It must be
understood, however, that these reflections are cast by a distorting mirror, as it is really only the concerns
of privileged Greek males that are reflected.

SYMPOSIUM   Literally   a   “drinking   together,”  a   ritualized  gathering   of  privileged  males   who,    after

dining  together,   drank   wine    mixed   with    water   and entertained themselves  with    poetry, music,  games,

and sexual  activity    (figure 28).

Figure 28 Exterior of red-figure cup, attributed to the Brygos Painter, showing wreathed symposiasts
accompanied by female entertainers, one playing the aulos and one holding a wine cup similar in shape to
the one on which the scene is painted; diameter of cup 32 cm, ca. 490–480 BC. London, British Museum,
GR 1848.6–19.7 (Vases E 68).

Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

The Symposium

The word “symposium” simply names the practice of “drinking together” that was its characteristic
feature, although it was by no means merely an unstructured drinking party. The symposium had developed
during the Archaic Period into a more or less ritualized institution, beginning with the adoption,
apparently from western Asia in the eighth or seventh century, of the practice of reclining on couches
while eating and drinking. Symposiasts reclined on their left elbow so that they could take their food and
drink with their right hand, right-handedness being as much a requirement in the symposium as on the