In modern usage, the word
symposium has come to mean “a conference organized for the discussion of some
particular subject,” “a collection of opinions, especially a published group of
essays,” or “any meeting or social gathering at which ideas are freely
exchanged.” The ancient Greek roots of
the word have misled many into imagining that ancient symposiums resembled
modern symposiums and were also primarily intellectual events.
Little could be farther from the
truth. Ancient symposiums resembled drunken stag parties more than a modern
symposium. As a rule, large quantities
of wine were consumed, maybe a few poems were recited (more likely dirty little
ditties making fun of one’s elders, opponents or rivals), politics might be
discussed (not necessarily at a niveau above that of a modern pub) and then
there was a lot of drunken singing, or the participants competed in such
“elevated” activities as seeing who could throw their wine farthest, while
being entertained and/or serviced by prostitutes and the ancient equivalent of
strip-tease dancers, before staggering home too drunk to see straight and
requiring (sober) slaves to ensure a safe arrival.
It was not uncommon for drunken bands of
youth from rival symposiums to end up brawling in the streets, and the even a
leading statesman such as Alcibiades could be accused of committing large-scale
sacrilege with his friends after a symposium.
In short, ideas and politics might have been discussed occasionally at
some of symposiums, but a symposium was primarily about male indulgence in
excessive drink and sex -- not intellectual exchange.
Anyone familiar with Spartan society will understand why the Spartans disdained such activities and why Spartan authorities instituted laws (like not being allowed to light a torch at night) to prevent their young men from being seduced into such activities. But there is another feature of Athenian symposiums which was equally un-Spartan: the exploitation of women.
As James Davidson makes
clear in his seminal work on Athenian society Courtesans and Fishcakes, a good Athenian host boasted about the “beautiful
girls” and “babes” he would offer his guests. Since no respectable woman (wife,
mother or daughter) was allowed to show her face or set foot in a symposium,
all the women present were sexual objects, and almost all were slaves. Yes,
there were the occasional so-called “hetaere” that like Japanese geishas were
trained to cater to a more sophisticated clientele by having a smattering of
education and skills such as playing instruments or singing, but very
few of these women were free. They too had
to surrender all or some of their earnings to their owner (pimp). And hetaere were the “privileged”
prostitutes, the “admired” prostitutes – what we might call “call girls” today
or “courtesans” in the 17th and 18th century. But it only
went downhill from here – to flute girl, household slave and “sex-worker” in a
brothel.
As Anton Powell notes in Athens
and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 BC
(London: 1988), prostitution was widespread, taxed, and consorting with
prostitutes was considered perfectly normal and in no way reprehensible, even
for youth of the upper-classes -- in Athens. The only
social restriction on male intercourse with prostitutes was that it was
considered bad taste for a married man to bring a prostitute into the house
where his wife lived, or to spend the money he received from his wife’s dowry
on expensive prostitutes. Powell also
notes, however, that it was common for men to maintain concubines under the
same roof as their legal wives, and that sex with slave girls did not even
count as infidelity in the Athenian courts. Clearly, Athens was a paradise for
the sexually active male.
The “pleasures” of Athenian
society, and especially of symposiums, were restricted – as was democracy,
intellectual achievement, and artistic creativity – to that half of Athens’
population that was male. Respectable women were excluded from the symposium,
just as they were excluded from drinking wine, eating fish or meat, exercise,
education and political rights. As for
the women allowed to participate in symposium, with very few exceptions, they
were slaves with no choice in where they went, who they serviced, or what they
were asked to do. They did not even
receive compensation for their services, since the high prices paid by the
customers went to their male owners, enriching him, not them. For the women of
ancient Athens, symposiums were torture chambers.
It is to Sparta's credit that no such abuse -- much less the glorification of the abuse of women and children as these symposiums represented -- was sanctioned or recorded in Spartan society.