Symposium

This article is about the social custom in ancient Greece. For other uses, see Symposium (disambiguation).
A symposium scene on a fresco in the Tomb of the Diver from the Greek colony of Paestum, in Italy, 480–470 BC
A female aulos-player entertains men at a symposium on this Attic red-figure bell-krater, c. 420 BC.

In Ancient Greece, the symposium (‹See Tfd›Greek: συμπόσιον, sympósion or symposio, from συμπίνειν, sympínein, 'to drink together') was the part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation.[1] Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems, such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara. Symposia are depicted in Greek and Etruscan art, that shows similar scenes.[1]

In modern usage, it has come to mean an academic conference or meeting, such as a scientific conference. The equivalent of a Greek symposium in Roman society is the Latin convivium.[1]

  1. ^ a b c Peter Garnsey, Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 136 online; Sara Elise Phang, Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 263–264.