Greek 398: Symposiasts

In Fall 2023, the advanced Greek course focused on texts relating to the symposion, the drinking party that was the cultural and social context for so much Greek poetry, philosophy, and art (on painted vases), through a wide variety of original sources. The class read verses by Alcaeus, Sappho, and other archaic poets, inscriptions on drinking cups, selections from dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, excerpts from historical and dramatic sources, and parts of Athenaeus’s Deipnosophists, the early 3rd-century CE narrative that quoted many of these sources and thereby preserved them to the present day. As in the Latin 398 course, students prepared translations and commentaries for other students to use in Classics courses taught in translation, and we enjoyed a mock symposion at the end of the semester.