James Davidson - Courtesans and Fishcakes - The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens

A bizarre story told by Timaeus of Taormina illustrates graphically the sense of separation between the world within and the world without the drinking-party:

In Agrigentum there is a house called ‘the trireme’ for the following reason. Some young men were getting drunk in it, and became feverish with intoxication, off their heads to such an extent that they supposed they were in a trireme, sailing through a dangerous tempest; they became so befuddled as to throw all the furniture and fittings out of the house as though at sea, thinking that the pilot had told them to lighten the ship because of the storm. A great many people, meanwhile, were gathering at the scene and started to carry off the discarded property, but even then the youths did not pause from their lunacy. On the following day the generals turned up at the house, and charges were brought against them. Still sea-sick, they answered to the officials’ questioning that in their anxiety over the storm they had been compelled to jettison their superfluous cargo by throwing it into the sea.

The story belongs to a rich Greek tradition of marine metaphors for the sympotic community. 11 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. The high sea represents the boundlessness of wine, the obliteration of points of reference. The metaphor is captured with characteristic economy inside a cup of the archaic painter Exekias. He shows Dionysus, relaxed and triumphant on a boat decked out with bunches of grapes and the irrepressible branches of a vine, having turned the tables on his pirate abductors who swim around the vessel transformed into fishes. Normally the interior decoration of a kylix is reserved for a small central tondo, but here the red-painted sea has burst the banks of its confinement and laps the edges of the cup in vine-like exuberance, just as the drinking-party washes against the walls of the andrōn . On the boundless sea of wine the company floats free from the boundaries of reality and off into the deep. It is not surprising that in another context, among the Etruscans of Italy, the symposium was associated with the rituals of death.

The solid section of the dinner was concluded by the removal of tables. The floor was swept of the shells and bones that had accumulated during the feast and water was passed around for the guests to wash their hands. The guests were sometimes garlanded with flowers at this point and anointed with perfumed oils. The symposium itself began with a libation of unmixed wine for the Agathos Daimōn , the ‘Good divinity’, accompanied by paeans sung to the god. This was the only occasion on which a taste of undiluted wine was permitted and reflects the atmosphere of danger that permeated the evening’s carousal. The banqueters were embarking on a dangerous voyage. According to the historian Philochorus, the ritual toast of unmixed wine was instituted along with the other drinking customs by Amphictyon, a legendary king of Athens, as a ‘demonstration of the power of the good god. Moreover, they had to repeat over this cup the name of Zeus the Saviour as a warning and reminder to drinkers that only when they drank in this way [i.e. mixing the wine with water] would they be safe and sound.’ The libation was made out of a special cup called a metaniptron , which was passed around among the guests. By election, or by some other means, a symposiarch was selected to preside over the mixing and the toasts. 12 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

It was a peculiar custom of the Greeks, not shared by other ancient wine-drinking cultures, to add water to their wine. The two were blended in a large mixing-bowl known as the krater. The water could be cold or warm, and snow was sometimes used to chill the unmixed wine in a psykter (wine-cooler), or even allowed to melt directly into the bowl. According to Theophrastus, in his own time it was fashionable to pour the wine in first and then dilute it, a procedure he considers more dangerous than adding wine to water to bring it up to strength, imagining, I suppose, that the idea of ‘watering down the wine’ was conducive to a stronger blend than ‘flavouring or strengthening the water’. 13 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. The swirling motion of the liquids as they were blended together is reflected in the name for one kind of mixing-bowl, the dinos or whirlpool.

There was much dispute about the correct mixture. Athenaeus records a number of characters in Attic comedies arguing over the proportions. The majority of fragments refer to a mixture of half and half, but where the context is clear it seems this is supposed to designate a particularly excessive and greedy kind of drinking. A character in Sophilus’ play The Dagger , for instance, describes wine so blended as unmixed, akratos . Even a mixture of one-third wine could be considered to go against custom, while a quarter was too weak. The dilution which seems most acceptable from the comic fragments lies somewhere in between at two-sevenths, that is five parts water to two of wine. The resulting liquid could have been as potent as modern beers and consumed in similar quantities. The wine and water are considered to be somehow competing with each other, a poison and its antidote. Even a notoriously heavy drinker, like Proteas the Macedonian, described in the account of Caranus’ lavish banquet, ‘sprinkles a little water’ superstitiously before downing six pints of Thasian in one go. 14 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.