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

Once the wine had been mixed it was distributed by a slave, first ladling the wine into an oinochoē or jug and then pouring it into each cup in turn. The symposiarch would decide not only the measures of water and wine, but also the number of kraters to be mixed. A good decent symposium would be confined to three. Dionysus on stage in a play of Eubulus announces: ‘Three kraters only do I propose for sensible men, one for health, the second for love and pleasure and the third for sleep; when this has been drunk up, wise guests make for home.’ 15 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 number of kraters could be set beforehand or decided as the symposium evolved. Plato’s Symposium begins with the guests’ deliberations about how they are going to drink. Since they are still suffering from the previous night’s carousing, moderation is in order. The discussion implies that they will all be drinking the same and need to agree beforehand how much. Apart from the number of kraters and the strength of the mixture, they could vary the number and size of toasts, the size of drinking cups and the frequency of rounds. With such means at his disposal the symposiarch could effectively dictate the pace of drinking, leaving some to complain of forced or ‘compulsory’ drinking. At public gatherings, officials called oinoptai , or ‘wine-watchers’, were appointed to make sure all drank the same. 16 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 picture of the classic moderate drinking-party which emerges from all these passages must not be seen as a mirror on Greek dinnerparties, held up to themselves by the Greeks for the benefit of posterity, but as a symptom of anxiety about how to drink properly. This anxiety was well founded. Disturbances of the proper rhythm of drinking can be observed at all levels of the ritual. For a start, the drinkers may not finish with the third krater, and the well-ordered symposium, even with its rituals intact, could spiral out of control, its machinery functioning no longer to check excess, but to gather drunken momentum. Dionysus in Eubulus’ play goes on to describe what happens if the drinking continues beyond the three kraters he considers advisable: ‘The fourth krater is mine no longer, but belongs to hybris; the fifth to shouting; the sixth to revel; the seventh to blackeyes; the eighth to summonses; the ninth to bile; and the tenth to madness and people tossing the furniture about.’ Hurtling furniture seems to have been a common manifestation of the symposium’s final stage of madness. Disruption could also come from the wrong mixture: ‘If you exceed the measure’, says the speaker in a comic fragment, ‘wine brings hybris. If you drink in the proportion of half and half, it makes for madness. If you drink it unmixed, physical paralysis.’ 17 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.

Despite the risk, akratos , neat wine or strong wine, was sometimes consumed. This could be achieved only if the structures of orderly drinking were dispensed with, if the sympotic machinery of dilution and circulation that took the wine from the jars and psykters where it was kept and cooled into the neutralizing krater and then out into the ladle, the oinochoe or jug, and finally the cup, was interrupted. One comic character indicates his resolve to get drunk by calling for all the sympotic paraphernalia to be removed, except what he needs to reach his goal. Another refers to men drinking directly from the ladle. More straightforwardly, a determined drinker could simply reach out for the psykter of wine before it had been mixed with water. A character in Menander’s Chalkeia thought it was a modern habit: ‘As is the custom nowadays, they were calling out “ akratos , the big cup!” And someone would wreak havoc on the poor sods by proposing a psykter for a toast.’ 18 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 most famous example of this ‘modern’ practice comes from Plato’s Symposium . The drinking-party in Agathon’s house has thus far been exemplary. The drinking has been moderate, the symposiarch has not been forcing people to drink toasts, and the speeches have been moving around the room in turns. At this point glorious Alcibiades arrives in a state of high intoxication. He refuses, at first, to join in the rules of the symposium and elects himself symposiarch in order to force them to catch up quickly with his own level of inebriation. Leading from the front he proceeds to drink akratos out of the psykter and then gets Socrates to do the same. Before long, however, Eryximachus, the legitimate symposiarch, reasserts his authority and Alcibiades is socialized, brought into the group and into the conversation. Towards the end of the dialogue, however, there is a second disruption of komastic revellers who invade the gathering and force the guests to drink large quantities ‘in no kind of order’ en kosmōi oudeni . With the end of drinking order the symposium itself dissolves. 19 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.