Ancient Greece

Lesson 5: Athenian Society

The Symposium

In classical Athens, a symposium did not refer to an academic meeting filled with a lot of boring speeches.

Instead, it was essentially a banquet in which a group of friends met to have something to eat, drank some wine and spent the evening indulging in various forms of entertainment.

Often, the quantities of wine drunk could be quite large, and the image of a group of sopisticated gentlemen discussing philosophical issues that we get from Plato's "Symposium" is not necessarily representative of what went on in most of these gatherings.

Only men were invited as guests to these symposia.

(If you are beginning to feel that the Ancient Greeks were very sexist, then you are starting to get the picture!!)

Wives and girlfriends were not allowed to attend them. In fact, even the Greek name for the room in which these gatherings were held was 'andron', which referred to the men's living quarters.

Although wives were not present, courtesans and prostitutes were often brought along to these events.

Essentially, many of these symposia would in all probability have degenerated into wild, drunken orgies.

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