prevent the dissolution of the drinkers through drink and bring the right
social qualities of relaxed friendship—‘‘if people engage in it properly,’’¼í
ôØò KììåºHò –ðôÅôÆØ(IV proem [660c]). You must get your sympotic
conversation right. So Plato’s combination of seriousness and play is
explicitly aparadeigmabequeathed by tradition to be followed still (VI
proem [686d])—Book VIII is, suitably enough, conversations from a
celebration of Plato’s birthday—and conversations no less than friends
need to be of proven quality and worth (äåäïŒØìÆóìÝíïıò) before they can
be admitted to a symposium (VII proem [697d]). The proems (except the
last) each talk about the suitability of particular topics for the symposium,
just as the dialogues demonstrate how to go about engaging in such topics.
Plutarch’sSympotic Questionsoffers a normative version of sympotic
behavior for thepepaideumenoi: it is a guide and handbook to social
discourse, which can be used and reused by selective performance.
Plutarch’s famous comment in theLivesthat you can see the character
of a great man by his casual remarks or in a small action as much as by his
world-changing deeds offers something of a theoretical underpinning for
the turn toward anecdotal biographical narrative in theSympotic Ques-
tions. (This, too, is something he learned from Xenophon.) His sympo-
sium brings together Greeks and Romans at the same table, just as his
Livesspecifically juxtapose and compare Greek and Roman heroes (and
are the source of so many anecdotes). Whereas Athenaeus’s dinner party
of sophists creates one idealized image of Greek culture at work, a world
where everyone fully embodies literate Greek culture, Plutarch’s didac-
ticism sits on the boundary of Greek and Roman culture. He addresses
Sossius Senecio in each book; they are entertained at Mestrius Florus’s
house; Romans take part in the conversation. The text represents the sort
of elite occasion in Empire society for which reading Plutarch’sSympotic
Questionsis a suitable preparation.^28
We may read Philostratus’sErotic Lettersor even the letters of Aelian
and Alciphron in the same light. Each of these collections produces
discrete moments of narrative—an anecdote captured through the lens
of a letter—and no more. Even when more than one letter seems to be
connected in theme, as with the first five of Alciphron’sErotic Letters, each
letter takes a well-known anecdote from the fourth-century city and turns
it into a letter from one of the participants in the story. As I have discussed
elsewhere, Philostratus’sErotic Lettersare best seen as ‘‘a manual for self-
expression as a Greek lover within the tropology of classical eros’’—a
handbook in how to present oneself as a lover.
29
Handbooks are the
archetypal way of packaging a culture under threat, circulating knowledge
in restricted units as a gesture toward tradition, as that tradition feels
- I wish to record how much I have learnt on this from conversations with Jason Konig,
whose forthcoming book on late sympotic literature is eagerly awaited. - Goldhill (forthcoming).
110 Situating Literacies