Symposium Findings

Dr. Sexson asked us to explore The Symposium online and see what we could come up with because of our lack of a syllabus. This is what I found.


From Answers.com : symposium (‘drinking-party’, ‘banquet’), the male drinking-party, an important social institution in the life of aristocratic Greek men. It was held in the andrōn, ‘men's apartment’; the (male) guests, their heads garlanded with flowers, reclined on couches (an Eastern practice introduced into Greece before the sixth century BC), usually two, sometimes more, to a couch (klinē), propped on their left arm; low tables to hold food and wine cups were placed in front of the couches. Wine was served from a large mixing-bowl (krātēr) where it was blended with water to make it fairly mild, and poured by young slaves of both sexes, often chosen for their good looks. At least as important as the drinking was the entertainment, sometimes provided by slaves specially hired to sing and dance, but often by the guests themselves and of a rather regularized kind; there were riddles and games, and lyric poems and scolia were sung. Much of the lyric of Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Archilochus, and some of the short elegiac poems of Theognis, for example, were written for this kind of setting. Sometimes guests delivered short speeches on agreed topics (see Plato's SYMPOSIUM below). Homosexuality derived much of its vitality as an institution from the circumstances of the symposium, where freeborn respectable women were absent and male beauty, charm, and wit were highly regarded. In a comic scene in Aristophanes' Wasps, an ‘aristocratic’ son tries to teach acceptable symposiastic behaviour to his embarrassingly boorish father. See also SYMPOSIUM (2) below. Today, a symposium means no more than a discussion-group.

A restaurant in Pennsylvania that sounds very delicious (check out the menu): http://www.symposiumrestaurant.com/ I wonder if they know where their name comes from much like Bacchus pub?

And finally I looked up the reference to Alcestis that comes from page 7 in Symposium from Wikipedia:

Alcestis (Ἄλκηστις) is a princess in Greek mythology, known for her love of her husband. Her story was popularised in Euripides's tragedy Alcestis. She was the daughter of Pelias, king of Iolcus, and either Anaxibia or Phylomache.

In the story, many suitors appeared before King Pelias, her father, when she became of age to marry. It was declared she would marry the first man to yoke a lion and a boar (or a bear in some cases) to a chariot. The man who would do this, King Admetus, was helped by Apollo, who had been banished from Olympus for 9 years to serve as a shepherd to Admetus. With Apollo's help, Admetus completed the king's task, and was allowed to marry Alcestis. After the wedding, Admetus forgot to make the required sacrifice to Artemis, and found his bed full of snakes. Apollo again helped the newly wed king, this time by making the Fates drunk, extracting from them a promise that if anyone would want to die instead of Admetus, they would allow it. Since no one volunteered, not even his elderly parents, Alcestis stepped forth. Shortly after, Heracles rescued Alcestis from Hades, as a token of appreciation for the hospitality of Admetus. Admetus and Alcestis had a son, Eumelus, a participant in the siege of Troy, and a daughter, Perimele.

Milton's famous sonnet, "Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint," references the myth, with the speaker of the poem dreaming of his dead wife being brought to him "like Alcestis." Thornton Wilder wrote A Life in The Sun (1955) based on Euripides' play, later producing an operatic version called The Alcestiad (1962). The American choreographer Martha Graham created a ballet entitled Alcestis in 1960.