battlefield. This reclining posture limited the number of couches, and hence the number of symposiasts,
that could be accommodated in the normally small rooms of ancient Greek houses, and generally a
symposium was attended by no more than one or two dozen men. It was restricted to a select group of men
from the upper stratum of Greek society who used the symposium as a means of solidifying and
perpetuating their own outlook on the world. Some of the features of the symposium echoed the more
polis-oriented practice of public sacrifice, but its exclusive character gave it the appearance, surely
intentionally cultivated, of constituting an alternative polis or even the real polis at the heart of the polis.
The communal sacrifice featured libations and was normally accompanied by music of the aulos; the
participants wore wreaths and were given equal shares of the sacrificial meat. The aulos also featured
prominently in the symposium as an accompaniment to the songs sung by the symposiasts, who were
subject to elaborate rules that ensured equal distribution of the food and wine (figure 28).
The symposium took place in a room called the andron or “the gentlemen’s quarters.” The women of the
household were excluded; they ate and drank separately, with the children, sitting on chairs rather than
reclining. The couches in the andron were arranged along the walls of the generally square room, so that
there was no hierarchy of position and so that all the guests could participate equally in the conversation
and other entertainment. The evening began with a dinner, followed by the drinking of wine, which was
mixed with water in a krater or mixing bowl. The entertainment that accompanied the drinking was often
provided by the symposiasts themselves, in the form of reciting poetry or singing songs that they knew by
heart, or improvising songs or speeches, or playing a variety of games that required them to demonstrate
their physical coordination and clear-headedness despite the influence of the wine. Alternatively, the
entertainment could be provided by professionals hired by the host. “Professionals” should be understood
in this context to mean people of lower social standing than the symposiasts themselves, who would have
regarded it as demeaning in the extreme to be in the employ of another person, as that would constitute
allowing someone else to exercise authority over them. The symposiasts were, rather, landowning
gentlemen, and the entertainers will have included female slaves, whom the symposiasts referred to
euphemistically as “companions,” who were accomplished in the arts of dance and music and who were
also available to fulfill the symposiasts’ sexual needs. The ceramic vases and cups used for the
consumption of the wine were often decorated with scenes from the symposium, occasionally including
scenes of immoderate, and sometimes violent, group sex.
We are led to believe, however, that part of the point of the symposium was to demonstrate one’s strength
of character by exercising restraint and displaying one’s mental acuity in the face of challenges posed both
by large quantities of wine and by the availability of attractive young sexual partners of both genders. For
the symposiasts generally included both younger and older men, distinguished on the vases by the absence
or presence of a beard. The symposium, like the boys’ choruses mentioned in the previous chapter, will
have served to educate and socialize young citizens, with the choruses forging bonds that united boys
under the age of about 18 to one another and the symposium encouraging associations between mature men
and those boys who had recently reached their majority. One of the marks of reaching one’s majority was
the opportunity to be invited to join the symposium, where the young man would be provided with
examples of restraint and proper behavior, but at the same time his character would be put to the test by
being subjected to attempts at seduction by older men. Thus the symposium, like the boys’ choruses,
served to a certain degree an initiatory function and may have originated in institutions, like those attested
for a number of other societies, in which the initiation of young men was overseen by mature men with
whom they were expected to have some form of sexual engagement. It is very difficult to say to what
degree these sexual encounters in the symposium, whether between men or between men and women,
were expected actually to occur or were rather an instrument of scrutiny. That is to say, we do not know
whether the graphic sexual scenes painted on the vases illustrated normal symposium behavior or were