THE PLEASURES OF THE SYMPOSIUM
Daniel B. Levine (University of Arkansas)
at the
2005 Annual Conference
of the
Arkansas Recreation and
Parks Association
Raddison Hotel, Fayetteville, Arkansas
March 4, 2005
Introduction
Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am honored to address
you at the end of the 2005 Arkansas Recreation and Parks Association Annual
Conference — and after a fine lunch. I am particularly grateful to Professor
Steve Langsner, who invited me to speak today, and who gave me his lecture
notes on Leisure in Ancient Greece. He has taught me. I have learned that
the Greeks loved religious festivals, and that even at their sacred athletic
festivals they included music, poetry, and theater. Children as well as
grownups strove to have a balance of excellence in mind, body, and spirit,
and leisure and recreation were an integral part of that combination. “Leisure,
according to Aristotle, provides the opportunity for intellectual development,
provides a way of relaxing the soul, and enhances the enjoyment of life.”
I say, Amen. Thank you, Professor Langsner. And this is where my speech
should end, but I feel obliged to offer some more entertainment and edification,
in the hopes that I can relax your souls and enhance the enjoyment of your
lives through intellectual development. Or maybe I’ll just lull you into
a post-prandial nap with some stories from ancient Greece.
Schmoozing Greeks
Ancient Greeks loved to gather together to socialize. Publicly,
they did it in the market place, where men gathered daily as much to talk
as to do business. In fact, the word we usually translate as ‘marketplace’,
Agora, is basically the city’s forum, or civic center, and generally means
any assembly of people. It comes from the verb ageiro, which means to gather
together. The fifth-century comedian Aristophanes informs us that Athenians
of his time liked so much to hang out together in the Agora, that many of
them had to be forced to leave there to attend meetings of the Ecclesia
(Athens’ democratic assembly) by slaves who carried a stretched rope covered
with paint through the Agora in the direction of the assembly. Any Agora
slacker who preferred to chat rather than to do his civic duty would then
be caught with paint on his person or clothing and would have to pay a fine,
a penalty for inveterate schmoozing.
The Symposium
For private conversational pleasure, the quintessential
Hellenic institution was the Symposium. Literally, a “drinking together,”
this was a party which took place after the evening meal, and was dedicated
to wine and entertainment. It began with a libation to the gods, a sung
hymn, and continued with conversation and merriment. Participants would
choose a “Symposiarch” (symposium-leader), who would determine
the extent to which the wine would be diluted with water, and who would
decide the topic of conversation and procedures. Those present would wear
garlands in their hair, and many wore perfume. Sometimes the guests would
tell riddles and fables, or recite lines from recent plays. They played
a game called kottabos, which involved throwing the wine dregs from their
cylikes at a target. They sang drinking songs called scolia, which often
involved one person singing a verse, and passing the song to the next person,
who had to sing a continuation. Even at Athenian public dinners in the Prytaneum,
the practice existed: a singer would hold a myrtle branch while singing
his part, and when he had finished his song, would pass the branch to the
next man, indicating that it was his turn to sing (see Aristophanes Wasps
1216ff.).
Symposium Literature
The symposium was such a basic part of Greek life that
it gave birth to a whole literary genre called “Symposium Literature,”
consisting of made-up texts of conversations at symposia. Probably growing
out of descriptions of banquets in Homeric epic, this literary form is best
known from Plato’s Symposium, with its “series of contrasting speeches
on a single philosophical topic diversified by exchanges of dialogue and
the arrival of an uninvited guest” (Michael Coffey, OCD 2). Plato’s
contemporary Xenophon also wrote a Symposium, as did Aristotle, a generation
later. His was entitled Peri Methes (“On Strong Drink, or Drunkenness”).
Aristotle’s younger contemporary was Epicurus, the father of the Epicurean
philosophy, which promoted pleasure and friendship as virtues in themselves.
It is not surprising, then, that he too wrote a Symposium. A later writer
(Athenaeus) criticized it as lacking artistry. We cannot judge its merits,
for this work does not survive.
Others used the sympotic dialogues to expound particular
ideas or to explore special themes. Aristotle’s pupil Aristoxenus wrote
a Symposium on musical problems, and in the first century BCE, “the
most important empirical physician of antiquity” (William David Ross,
OCD 2) Heraclides of Tarentum, wrote a Symposium, whose participants discussed
“the medical effects of food and drink (Athenaeus 64a)” (Michael
Coffey, OCD 2). Even the great first- century BCE Roman patron Maecenas
wrote a Latin Symposium, in which he had Virgil, Horace, and others of their
generation discuss the art of poetry (Servius on Aeneid 8.310). In the second
century CE, Plutarch wrote the Banquet of the Seven Sages, a symposium at
which the traditional wise men of Archaic Greece discuss one another’s well-known
clever sayings. Sometime around the year 200, Athenaeus of Naucratis in
Egypt wrote a mammoth work in Greek entitled Deipnosophistae, or The Learned
Banqueters, in which 24 characters discuss a wide range of topics, cite
1,250 authors, and quote more than 10,000 lines of poetry. This dialogue
now consists of 15 books, but perhaps was twice as long in its original
form. Two hundred years later, around 400, a man named Ambrosius Theodosius
Macrobius wrote a Latin work in 7 books called Saturnalia, as an educational
text for his son. Set as an academic symposium, it contains important criticism
of Vergil’s poetry, with parallels from Homer, Ennius, Lucilius, and Lucretius.
It also contains discussions of fishes, indigestion, dancing, and drunkenness.
Luxury in Book 12 of Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae
I choose today to share some observations on Book 12 of
Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae, both because it is not well studied, and because
it preserves many interesting anecdotes and ancient sources. In addition,
its theme is most relevant to this gathering: it is a sympotic discussion
of pleasure and luxury. We can learn much about what the ancients considered
exempla of these things by perusing its pages.
Book 12 discusses people who were famous for living in
luxury (tryphe) and sensual pleasures (hedupatheia). The work quotes a work
called “On Pleasure” (Peri Hedones) by Heracleides of Pontus,
who says that tyrants and kings put pleasure in the first rank of all the
good things in life, “for indeed all those who honor Pleasure and who
choose to live luxuriously are great-souled and of great majesty” (megalopsychoi
kai megaloprepeis, 512b). The poets Simonides and Pindar both praise pleasure
(512 c-d), and the greatest of poets, Homer, expresses through the words
of his Odysseus what the wise diners consider the definitive description
of pleasure (Odyssey 9.5-11):
“For I say that there is nothing more full of grace
than when good cheer holds sway over all the people, and the banqueters
throughout the house listen in order to a singer, and the tales beside them
are full of food and meats, and a wine-pourer drawing off strong wine from
a mixing bowl presents it and pours it out into the cups. This I consider
in my heart to be the most lovely thing that exists.” (Translation
by D. B. Levine)
The text then singles out many peoples who were notorious
for pleasure, including the Persians, whose kings live in different places,
according to the seasons, wear crowns made of fragrant-smelling materials,
have golden stools, and sleep all day so they might party all night. These
kings walk upon carpets only, and take their concubines with them everywhere,
even when they go hunting. The Lydians, says Athenaeus were so addicted
to luxury that they actually made female eunuchs to use in the place of
male eunuchs. In addition, they created gardens with shade all around, in
order never to have to be in the sun. They became so effeminate in their
souls that they actually got a woman tyrant for themselves, Omphale, who
was herself a woman of unbridled passions, and actually punished the Lydians
by making the mistresses sleep with their slaves. The Lydians were the first
ones to invent special foods, such as the spiced gravy called Karyke, and
the special dish called Kandaulos, which came in three varieties, “so
exquisitely equipped were they for luxurious indulgence”. This was
a kind of pilaf that contained boiled meat, grated bread, Phrygian cheese,
anise (anethos), and fatty broth (zomou pionos).
But the Etruscans, too were known for their luxurious ways.
Their slave girls strip bare to wait on men at table, and “When they
get together for companionship or in family parties they do as follows:
first of al, after they have stopped drinking and are ready to go to bed,
the servants bring in to them, the lamps being still lighted, sometimes
female prostitutes, sometimes very beautiful boys, sometimes also their
wives; and when they have enjoyed these, the servants then introduce lusty
young men, who in their turn consort with them. They indulge in love affairs
and carry on with these unions sometimes in full view of one another, but
in most cases with screens set up round the beds; the screens are made of
latticed wands, over which cloths are thrown. Now they consort very eagerly,
to be sure, with women; much more, however, do they enjoy consorting with
boys and striplings. For in their country these latter are very good-looking,
because they live in luxury and keep their bodies smooth” (517f-518a;
All translations from Athenaeus are by C. B. Gulick, in the Loeb edition
of Athenaeus: 1933).
The Sybarites were the eponymous heroes of pleasure, whose
name now means voluptuary. Legend is that they loved their daytime sleep
so much that they forbade roosters, and all the noise-producing crafts within
their borders. Once a Sybarite watched a farmer work in his field. He told
his friend that he got a rupture just seeing that labor. His friend told
him that simply hearing the story gave him a pain in his side. The Sybarites
wore only clothes of Milesian wool, covered their roads so that they could
travel out of the sun, and had wine cellars on the coast, to which they
sent wine in pipelines from their estates. They invented hot steam baths
and chamber pots.
The Sybarites trained horses to dance at feasts when they
heard the pipe. Their enemies used this against them, for when the Sybarite
cavalry came out against the men of Croton, the latter simply played flute
music, and the Sybarite horses got up on their back legs and danced, throwing
their riders. So advanced in luxury were the Sybarites that they actually
were the first to allow cooks to patent unique recipes. Furthermore, they
gave tax-exempt status to people in the luxury trades, such as those who
import and work with purple dye, and those who fish and sell the most exquisite
of foods: eels.
Fat Men of Antiquity
Finally, Athenaeus discusses the luxury of famous individuals,
including the famous barbarian king Sardanapalos, who stayed indoors all
the time, and thus became effeminate and spent all of his time with women,
doing womanly tasks. Sagaris the Maryandinian “in his luxurious indulgence
was fed until he was an old man at the lips of his nurse, not wishing to
take the trouble to chew, and .. he never carried his hand down lower than
his navel (ou popote de ten kheira katotero tou omphalou proenegkasthai).
After a long list of other luxurious livers, the books turns to famous fat
people, whose over-indulgence in foods made them grotesque in appearance.
Dionysios the Tyrant of Heracleia was so fat… he was so fat that he put
a box in front of his body when he talked to people, so they could only
see his face. Ptolemy VII Euergetes was so fat… he was so fat that his
belly was too big to measure with one’s arms, and so he covered it with
a tunic which reached to his feet and which had sleeves reaching to his
wrists, and never went out without a staff to support him. His son Alexander
was so fat… he was so fat that “he could not even go out to ease
himself unless he had two men to lean upon as he walked.” Magas, the
king of Cyrene was so fat… he was so fat that he “was weighted down
with monstrous masses of flesh in his last days; in fact he choked himself
to death because he was so fat, never taking any exercise and always eating
quantities of food.” Python, the orator of Byzantium was so fat…
he was so fat that he made a fat joke with a political point. When civil
strife threatened the stability of Byzantium, he exhorted his fellow citizens
to reconcile by saying, “You, fellow-citizens, can see what my body
is like; but I have a wife who is much fatter even than I. When, then, we
are of one mind, even an ordinary narrow bed can hold us; but if we quarrel,
the whole house isn’t big enough” to hold us (550f).
Thin Men of Antiquity
Indeed, the text then turns to the most famous thin people
of antiquity. Sannyrion was so thin… he was so thin that he wore a leather
reinforcement under his clothes to make him appear to have some meat on
his bones. Cinesias was so thin… he was so thin that he “got a board
of linden-wood and fastened it by straps around himself in order not to
be bent in two by his height and leanness” (551d). Philitas, the poet
of Cos, was so thin… he was so thin that “he had to wear on his feet
balls made of lead to keep him from being upset by the wind” (552b).
Philippides was so thin… he was so thin, that the expression “to
be philippidized” became common to mean “to be very thin.”
There follows a section devoted to the luxuriousness of anointing feet with
perfumes (Athen. 12. 553a-e), preserving several quotations from 4th century
comedians which and revealing the erotic pleasure which men attain from
young women rubbing their feet with scented unguents.
Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks
In conclusion, Athenaeus tells us, “The people of
those days were so attached to their sensual pleasures that they even went
so far as to dedicate a temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos: Aphrodite of the
Beautiful Buttocks, for the following reason. One upon a time a farmer had
two beautiful daughters. One day these girls, getting into a dispute as
to which one had a more beautiful backside (was more beautiful-buttocked
[kallipygotera]), and went onto the public street. And by chance a young
man was passing by, the son of a rich old man. They showed themselves to
him, and when he saw them he voted in favor of the older girl. And in fact,
falling in love with her (eis erota empeson), when he got back to town,
he took to his bed and told his younger brother everything that had happened.
And the younger brother also went to the country and saw the girls, and
he fell in love with the other daughter. And so when the boys’ father tried
to get them to marry someone of the upper classes, he couldn’t persuade
his sons, and so he brought the girls in from the country, with their father’s
permission, and married them to his sons. And so these girls were called
Callipygoi (Fair-Rumped) by the citizens, as Cercidas says in his Iambic
Verses: “There was a pair of beautiful-buttocked girls (kallipygon
zeugos) in Syracuse.” And so these girls, when they got wealthy and
famous, founded a temple which they called the Temple of Aphrodite the Fair-buttocked
goddess (Kallippygon ten theon), as Archelaos tells us in his Iambic Verses.”
(Translation by D. B. Levine)
Conclusion
I conclude with two Greek words: Meden Agan “nothing
in excess”. Enjoy our parks, recreation opportunities, and leisure
activities to the max, but always in moderation. Don’t schmooze too much,
don’t eat too much or too little, don’t become enervated from your pleasures,
and always root for those Hogs.
Thank you.
Bibliography:
Oxford Classical Dictionary,
Second Edition
Athenaeus The Deipnosophists (Loeb
Classical Library, translated by Charles Burton Gulick, London/New York,
1933).
www.uark.edu/campus-resources/dlevine/Vita.html
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