SAINTS AND SYMPOSIASTS

Greek traditions of writing about food and the symposium had a

long and rich afterlife in the rst to fth centuries ce, in both Greco-
Roman and early Christian culture. This book provides an account of
the history of the table-talk tradition, derived from Platos Symposium
and other classical texts, focusing on, among other writers, Plutarch,
Athenaeus, Methodius and Macrobius. It also deals with the rep-
resentation of transgressive, degraded, eccentric types of eating and
drinking in Greco-Roman and early Christian prose narrative texts,
focusing especially on the Letters of Alciphron, the Greek and Roman
novels, especially Apuleius, the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, and
the early saints lives. It argues that writing about consumption and
conversation continued to matter: these works communicated dis-
tinctive ideas about how to talk and how to think, distinctive models
of the relationship between past and present, and distinctive and often
destabilising visions of identity and holiness.
j ason k oni g is Senior Lecturer in Greek at the University of
St Andrews. He is the author of Athletics and Literature in the Roman
Empire (Cambridge, :cc,) and Greek Literature in the Roman Empire
(:cc,). He has also edited Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire
(with Tim Whitmarsh, Cambridge, :cc;) and Greek Athletics (:c:c).
greek culture i n the roman world
Editors
susan e. alcock, Brown University
j a s elsner, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
si mon goldhi ll, University of Cambridge
The Greek culture of the Roman Empire offers a rich eld of study. Extraordinary insights can be
gained into processes of multicultural contact and exchange, political and ideological conict, and the
creativity of a changing, polyglot empire. During this period, many fundamental elements of Western
society were being set in place: from the rise of Christianity, to an inuential system of education, to
long-lived artistic canons. This series is the rst to focus on the response of Greek culture to its Roman
imperial setting as a signicant phenomenon in its own right. To this end, it will publish original and
innovative research in the art, archaeology, epigraphy, history, philosophy, religion, and literature of
the empire, with an emphasis on Greek material.
Titles in series:
Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire
Jason K onig
Describing Greece: Landscape and Literature in the Periegesis of Pausanias
William Hutton
Religious Identity in Late Antiquity: Greeks, Jews and Christians in Antioch
Isabella Sandwell
Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical
Tradition
Anthony Kaldellis
The Making of Roman India
Grant Parker
Philostratus
Edited by Ewen Bowie and Jas Elsner
The Politics of Municence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, Elites and Benefactors in Asia Minor
Arjan Zuiderhoek
Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community
Ann Marie Yasin
Galen and the World of Knowledge
Edited by Christopher Gill, Tim Whitmarsh and John Wilkins
Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World
Edited by Tim Whitmarsh
Homer Between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature
Laurence Kim
Narrative, Identity and the Ancient Greek Novel
Tim Whitmarsh
Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion
Verity Platt
Women and Visual Replication in Roman Imperial Art and Culture
Jennifer Trimble
The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium
Peter Thonemann
Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution
A. J. S. Spawforth
Rethinking the Gods: Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period
Peter Van Nuffelen
Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian
Culture
Jason K onig
SAINTS AND SYMPOSIASTS
The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman
and Early Christian Culture
JASON K

ONIG
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K onig, Jason.
Saints and symposiasts : the literature of food and the symposium in Greco-Roman and early
Christian culture / Jason K onig.
pages. cm. (Greek culture in the Roman world)
isbn ,;-c-,::-o,-; (hard back)
:. Symposium (Classical literature) :. Food in literature. ,. Greek literature History and
criticism. . Latin literature History and criticism. ,. Christian literature, Early History and
criticism. I. Title. II. Series: Greek culture in the Roman world.
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Contents
Figures page vi
Preface vii
Abbreviations x
part i conversation and community
: Locating the symposium ,
: Voice and community in sympotic literature ,c
, Plutarch oc
Athenaeus ,c
, Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :::
o Methodius :,:
; Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :;;
Macrobius :c:
part ii consumption and transgression
, Philosophers and parasites :,:
:c Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :oo
:: Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts :,c
:: Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,:,
Conclusion ,,:
Bibliography ,,o
Index ,,
Index locorum co
v
Figures
:.: Red-gured kylix showing boys serving wine, painted
by Douris; c. ,c bce. London, British Museum.
C
The Trustees of the British Museum. page ,
:.: Sepphoris, House of Orpheus, triclinium, mosaic of
banquet; probably second half of third century ce. Photo
Gabi Laron; courtesy of Professor Z. Weiss, The
Sepphoris Excavations, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. :c
.: Thysdrus, mosaic with xenia including scene of dice
players; third century ce. Tunis, Mus ee du Bardo
Inv. ,:,;. Photo: Katherine Dunbabin. ,:
.: Thysdrus, House of the Months, mosaic from triclinium
with xenia and unswept oor motif; third century ce.
Mus ee de Sousse. Deutsches Arch aologisches Institut,
Rome, d-dai-rom :,o.c,::; photo: Koppermann. ,:
;.: Mildenhall Treasure: Great Dish; fourth century ce.
London, British Museum.
C
The Trustees of the British
Museum. ::
;.: Antioch, Atrium House, triclinium, mosaic panel of the
drinking contest of Herakles and Dionysus; early second
century ce. Worcester Art Museum, :,,,.,o. :,:
,.: Baalbek, mosaic of Kalliope with Socrates and the Seven
Sages; probably third century ce. Beirut National
Museum.
C
Ministry of Culture/Directorate General of
Antiquities, Lebanon. :c
,.: Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages, view of the south and
west walls; late rst century or second century ce.
Deutsches Arch aologisches Institut, Rome; d-dai-rom
:,;o.c,oc; photo: Rossa. ::
,., Antioch, House of the Sundial, mosaic with parasite;
probably mid to late third century ce. Hatay
Archaeological Museum, Antakya. Department of Art and
Archaeology, Princeton University, neg. :c,. :o
vi
Preface
Part i of this book discusses the history of table-talk literature in the Roman
empire. Part ii deals with the representation of transgressive, degraded,
eccentric types of eating and drinking (the other side of the coin from
the ideal of the orderly philosophical symposium which lies at the heart of
Part i), focusing especially on the Greek and Roman novels, the Apocryphal
Acts of the Apostles, and the early saints lives. The earliest of the texts
I examine at length Plutarchs Sympotic Questions was composed in
the early second century ce, the starting-point for the explosion of Greek
prose literature which continued to the mid third century. The latest
Macrobius Saturnalia and the collective hagiographies of Palladius and
Theodoret were composed more than three centuries later, in the early
fth century ce, at the end of the long century following the conversion
of Constantine, which saw both the embedding of Christian culture in
the Greco-Roman elite and also the cementing of asceticism as one of the
dening features of Christian practice.
This is of course only a tiny part of the wider picture of the relationship
between classical and Christian culture. Nevertheless it is a big subject. I
have tried to deal at least briey with all of the major landmark texts in the
late history of symposium literature. I have also tried to set these works in
their wider social and religious context, by sketching out the great variety
of practices of feasting and fasting which were current within the rst ve
centuries ce. However, this book is not intended as an exhaustive survey
of either of those two areas. My main priority, instead, has been to focus
on a series of case studies. The texts I discuss are in themselves intriguing
artefacts of ancient culture, demanding explanation and contextualisation.
The conclusions which interest me most of all in what follows are con-
clusions about individual texts, about the imaginative worlds they conjure
up and the ways in which they might have challenged and engaged their
original readers.
vii
viii Preface
That said, I also use these close readings as starting points for some
overarching arguments which tie together the volume as a whole. In Part i,
I argue that the appeal of sympotic literature in the Roman imperial period
lay partly in its capacity to conjure up fantasy images of community: com-
munity between individuals in the present, united by their commitment
to shared models of argumentation, and also community with the texts
and authors of the past, who are brought into dialogue with the present
within the imaginary space of the symposium. I also chart the ways in
which sympotic models of argumentation based on ingenuity, specula-
tion, play came to be viewed increasingly as problematic within early
Christian and late antique culture. In Part ii, I aim to show how Greco-
Roman and early Christian prose narrative share an interest in the way
in which dignied sympotic behaviour always risks being contaminated
by negative connotations perhaps not a surprising conclusion in itself,
but the intensity of ancient fascination with that theme is nevertheless
remarkable. I argue, furthermore, that early Christian writing sometimes
welcomes those contaminating associations in order to advertise in posi-
tive terms the transgressive and paradoxical character of the new Christian
faith. Throughout the book, then, one of my recurring aims is to examine
the way in which Christian authors rewrite their Greco-Roman heritage,
and the tension between continuity and defamiliarisation which is central
to that process. Of course, many others have addressed those broad issues
before, but it is a story that has not been told except in passing for the
classical traditions of symposium literature.
It would not have been possible to bring this project to completion
without a considerable amount of advice and guidance. Many areas of
early Christian and late antique literature were relatively new to me when
I started work on this book, and there are still some areas which are less
familiar to me than I would like. Nevertheless I hope that the attempt
to look beyond the classical literature of the Roman empire will seem to
have been worthwhile and that my classicists perspective has helped me
to generate some fresh questions about the early Christian texts I discuss
here. My impression is that early Christian literature is still sometimes
treated in a slightly cursory fashion by classicists who work on the imperial
period (although with many important exceptions, increasingly so) and
that studies which choose not to engage with early Christian writing in
detail sometimes end up missing out on material that could enrich and
nuance their treatment of Roman imperial culture, broadly dened. That
goes, at any rate, for many of my own earlier publications. I am very
grateful to the many people who have helped me to get as far as I have.
Preface ix
I am even less able to claim any great expertise on Jewish literature. I have
discussed Jewish writing where it is relevant to the comparison between
Greco-Roman and Christian literature, but a comprehensive discussion of
Jewish representations of eating and drinking and sympotic conversation
is well beyond the scope of this book.
I am grateful to the many friends and colleagues who have read, dis-
cussed, encouraged and advised (not least by giving help with images),
especially Ewen Bowie, Kevin Butcher, Katherine Dunbabin, Jas Elsner,
Richard Finn, Simon Goldhill, Lucy Grig, Stephen Halliwell, Jill Harries,
Jon Hesk, Fiona Hobden, Joe Howley, Fergus King, Christine Kondoleon,
Alice K onig, Eugenia Lao, Jane McLarty, Katerina Oikonomopoulou,
Judith Perkins, Helene Sader, Rebecca Sweetman, TimWhitmarsh, Nicolas
Wiater, John Wilkins, Greg Woolf, Alexei Zadorojnyi; also to audiences in
AnnArbor, Athens, Birmingham, Cambridge, Geneva, Glasgow, Lampeter,
Lisbon, London, Manchester, Oxford, Paris, Rethymnon, St Andrews and
Warwick. I wish to thank the St Andrews University Library Inter-Library
Loans department. Thanks also to Michael Sharp as Classics Editor at
Cambridge University Press, to the series editors, and to Gill Cloke for all
her work on copy-editing. I am grateful in addition to the Loeb Classical
Library Foundation for the funding which made possible a full year of
research leave at an important time in the project; and to the Leverhulme
Trust for their funding of a collaborative research project in St Andrews
on Science and empire in the Roman world which helped me to think
through many of the questions addressed in Part i on the functions of
miscellanistic writing in imperial culture.
All dates are CE unless otherwise specied. I have followed standard
periodisations for Greek history and literature: archaic (roughly cc
;, bce); classical (;,,:, bce); Hellenistic (,:,,: bce); imperial
(,: bce to roughly ,cc ce); late antique (roughly ,cc ce onwards). All
translations are my own unless otherwise specied. In transcribing Greek
words into English I have generally preferred the original Greek form, but
I have used Latinate versions where these seemed to me to be so widely
accepted that the Greek version would look out of place.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations for journals follow Annee Philologique. Other abbreviations,
especially for authors and texts, where used, follow the Greek-English Lex-
icon (LSJ), the Oxford Latin Dictionary and the Greek Patristic Lexicon.
Some of these abbreviations are reproduced below for convenience, along
with one or two others which are not listed in those sources.
AAA Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles
AAMt Acts of Andrew and Matthias
AN Ancient Narrative
Anth. Pal. Anthologia Palatina
ATh Acts of Thomas
CIL T. Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
DL Diogenes Laertius
GCN Groningen Colloquia on the Novel
HM History of the Monks in Egypt
IEG M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci (:,,,:, second
edition)
IG Inscriptiones Graecae
ILS H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae
K K. G. K uhn, Opera omnia Claudii Galeni
LCL Loeb Classical Library series
LSCG F. Sokolowski, Lois Sacrees des Cites grecques
LSJ H. G. Liddell and R. Scott et al. A Greek-English Lexicon
(ninth edition, with supplement, :,,o)
PG J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca (Patrologiae cursus
completus, series Graeca)
PL J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (Patrologiae cursus completus,
series Latina)
P.Oxy. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
QC Plutarch, Sympotic Questions (Quaestiones Convivales)
x
Abbreviations xi
RE A. Pauly, G. Wissowa and W. Kroll, Real-Encyclop adie d.
klassischen Altertumswissenschaft
SC Sources Chr etiennes
SIG
,
W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (third
edition)
VS Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists
part i
Conversation and community
chapter 1
Locating the symposium
eating and drinking in ancient and modern culture
The ancient Greek and Roman obsession with representing food and feast-
ing is matched in many ways by our own. Our weekend newspapers,
bookshop shelves and television screens are overloaded with lavish offer-
ings from celebrity chefs. That interest overows into ction and lm.
:
For many, these representations appeal not just because they show us how
to cook and eat for ourselves, but also because they offer us the pleasure
of fantasising about consumption.
:
The desire to read about food, and to
fantasise about food, is a desire many ancient readers understood, and for
many of the same reasons.
,
For one thing, the pleasures of food writing
within modern western culture are related to the increasing breadth of
available culinary experience. Increasing globalisation in the present day
opens up new cuisines and ingredients for our delectation, and makes it
pleasurable to hold in our minds an imagined vision of the richness which
is accessible to us. Greek and Roman writing on food could similarly offer
images of the gastronomic richness of (for example) the Roman empire,
with its enormous regional and culinary diversity.

Food and feasting in

the modern world are also bound up with issues of social status. In that
respect too the ancient world was no different. Eating and drinking con-
tribute to our sense of who we are, all the more powerfully so for being
embodied practices, linked with the day-to-day patterns of our physical
existence, and so familiar that we rarely subject them to analysis. Culi-
nary choices and culinary knowledge act as vehicles of self-denition and
:
For an accessible anthology of modern food writing, see Levy (:,,o); for food in modern Italian
literature, see Biasin (:,,,); for food in the literature of the Romantic period, see Morton (:cc).
:
On the pleasures of food description for its own sake, see Gowers (:,,,) ,, with reference to
Barthes (:,;,).
,
E.g. Gowers (:,,,) and Davidson (:,,;) for particularly vivid illustrations, on Latin and classical
Athenian literature respectively.

See Dalby (:ccca); Wilkins (:cc,) and (:cc).

,
Saints and Symposiasts
communal identity at all levels of society. For example, indulgence in
expensive produce and exotic cuisine can be (among other things, and
whether that is acknowledged or not) a vehicle for imagining or projecting
high social status. The same goes for luxurious food in Greek and Roman
society.
,
The institutions of eating and drinking dinner party, restaurant,
pub, canteen with their own distinctive expectations about what consti-
tutes proper behaviour, are similarly vehicles for social denition and for
projecting membership of imagined communities. Here, too, the ancient
world was no different. Moreover, food habits are still sometimes linked
with religious identities, just as they were in the classical world.
o
And we
still see strong connections between particular foods or food customs and
particular regional identities and local histories.
;
In all of these ways we
might see ourselves as inheritors of a classical mentality.
A closer look, however, suggests that the differences between the ancient
and modern world may be equally signicant.

Most striking of all is a

difference of intensity. Elaborate, often voluptuous descriptions of food,
ctional scenes of eating and drinking, ofteninvolving bizarre or gluttonous
consumption, depictions of song or conversation at drinking parties, lists
of moralising instructions for nutritional self-care and proper convivial
behaviour, metaphorical uses of the language of eating and drinking to
describe the processes of writing and reading
,
all of these things appear
in Greco-Roman literature with even greater frequency than they do in
our own.
:c
The evidence for that unquantiable claim will emerge, I hope,
,
Goody (:,:) esp. :c:, sees Roman culture as typical of European culture more broadly in having
a strong distinction between high cuisine (with a sophisticated literature) and low cuisine; see also
Garnsey (:,,,) ::,:; for more detailed discussion.
o
See Garnsey (:,,,) :,,.
;
See Purcell (:cc,) on food and the Roman past; Lawrence (:cc,) :;:; on Christian feasting and
memory in : Corinthians; MacDonald (:cc) ;c,, on food and memory in Jewish culture, with
particular reference to Deuteronomy; both Lawrence and MacDonald draw on Sutton (:cc:), who
gives an account of food and memory in modern Greek society; and for food and memory in French
culture, see Barthes (:,;,) :;c:: food permits a person . . . to partake each day of the national
past . . . ; . . . food frequently carries notions of representing the survival of an old, rural society that
is itself highly idealized . . . ; . . . food brings the memory of the soil into our very contemporary life
(:;c).

For overviews of ancient food, see Dalby (:,,o); Garnsey (:,,,); Wilkins and Hill (:cco); also
the very wide-ranging collection of essays in Longo and Scarpi (:,;). For accounts of the way
in which habits of eating and drinking have developed in distinctive ways in different cultures in
the post-classical world, see (among many others) Farb and Armelagos (:,c); Montanari (:,,);
Flandrin and Cobbi (:,,,); Bober (:,,,).
,
For that last point, see Gowers (:,,,), although she also acknowledges see esp. co, with reference
to, among others, Bevan (:,) the existence of links between food and text in modern European
literature; cf. Jeanneret (:,,:), esp. :::,, on a similar association in Renaissance table-talk texts.
:c
Cf. Wilkins and Hill (:cco) :c: for a similar claim about the importance of food for Greek and
Roman culture and literature.
Locating the symposium ,
from everything which follows. In addition, judgements about what kinds
of eating and drinking behaviour were admirable or reprehensible were, not
surprisingly, shaped by ethical and religious beliefs quite alien to modern
culture. The idealisation of extreme fasting within early Christian culture is
perhaps the most obvious example.
::
Ancient processes of food production
and distribution were also vastly different from our own, and that too
made a difference to the way in which certain types of food behaviour
were valued. For example, chronic food shortage was a constant threat,
and city dwellers in particular often relied heavily on the generosity of
wealthy benefactors.
::
Luxurious feasting and largesse could thus signal
and contribute to political inuence, especially when it involved large-
scale handouts to urban populations. At the same time, these things could
also (especially in Roman culture) lay one open to moralising attack from
rivals,
:,
and could risk transgression of sumptuary laws which outlawed
excessive expenditure, put in place ostensibly for moral reasons, but in
practice also to prevent excessive political self-promotion by the rich.
:
Perhaps most importantly of all, the institutions of eating and drinking,
and the literary forms connected with them, were only very distant ances-
tors of our own, often far removed from anything within the bounds of
present-day experience, partly through being tied to religious ritual: dinner
meetings of professional associations and funeral clubs, sacricial banquets
where whole cities would feast together in celebration of the gods, com-
munal citizen dining groups (syssitia) in the cities of archaic and classical
Greece, most famously Sparta and Crete,
:,
and the institution of the Greek
symposium (drinking-party), whose inuence on Greek elite society and
Greek literature for many centuries was so enormous. The literature of
the symposium generated some modern descendants, for example in the
Renaissance table-talk genre, much of which imitates classical precedents,
:o
but even a quick glance at ancient sympotic poetry and sympotic miscella-
nies makes it clear that these texts are so closely bound up in their (to us)
alien institutional setting that they may be difcult at rst to understand
or enjoy.
::
See further discussion in chs. :: and :: below.
::
See Garnsey (:,) and (:,,,), esp. ::o:.
:,
On political abuse, see Edwards (:,,,), esp. :;,:co.
:
On sumptuary laws as a response to Roman appropriation of Greek luxury and Greek gastronomic
knowledge, see Wallace-Hadrill (:cc,) ,:,,,.
:,
On Sparta, see Fisher (:,,); on Crete, see Willetts (:,,,) :c: and :,;.
:o
E.g. Jeanneret (:,,:); and Cox (:,,:) on Renaissance dialogue more broadly; Burke (:,,,), esp. ,
::: on early modern manuals of conversation, many of theminuenced by ancient sympotic writing;
also Boehrer (:,,;) :;, on Renaissance rewritings of ancient convivial literature (especially
Martial) in the work of Ben Jonson.
o Saints and Symposiasts
The guiding argument for much of this book is that telling stories about
eating and drinking, and about the conversation which accompanied those
activities, was a way of conjuring up idealised images of community and
identity (or in some cases images of aberrant or transgressive community).
Modern western culture is familiar with similar techniques. However, it
should also be clear, even from this brief introductory survey, that the
fantasy visions of community and commensality many ancient texts present
to us are in some ways quite alien to modern experience. It requires a certain
amount of background knowledge, and a considerable leap of imagination,
to begin to understand how they might have appealed to their original
audiences.
greek symposia and symposium literature before rome
Of all the institutions just mentioned, by far the most important for this
book is the symposium. What exactly was the symposium? The Greek
word symposion literally means drinking together. The roots of the
institution lie in the archaic period, the eighth to sixth centuries bce. In
practice it must have taken many different forms in different contexts
and locations, but there are recurring features. The symposium was a
drinking party, held most often in private homes. It was a venue for
elite, male sociability, sometimes even viewed as a politically subversive,
anti-democratic space.
:;
The only women present would standardly have
been courtesans (hetairai).
:
It had established rules and elements of ritual:
drinking usually followed a meal (deipnon), and was preceded by libations
(offerings of wine to the gods), and led by a symposiarch (leader of the
symposium), chosen by the other guests, and responsible for supervising
the mixture of wine with water and controlling the pace of drinking.
The symposium was often represented as a typically civilised, Hellenic
institution in contrast with the customs of barbarians who did not mix
their wine with water. It was also often represented as a place for education
of young men into their duties as citizens,
:,
sometimes also as a place
:;
However, see Hunter (:cc) ; for debate on the question of how elitist the classical Athenian
symposium really was, with reference to (among others) Fisher (:ccc) and Wilkins (:ccca) :c:::,
both of whom argue that the symposium was not such an exclusive space as many have assumed;
and cf. Steiner (:cc:), who discusses the democratic institution of dinners at public expense, and
shows how they have much in common with the elite culture of the symposium.
:
On hetairai at the symposia of classical Athens, see Davidson (:,,;) ,:;; for a challenge to the
traditional view of gender inequality in the symposium, see Schmitt-Pantel (:cc,); for a survey of
evidence for womens commensality in the ancient world, see Burton (:,,).
:,
See Levine (:,,) :;c for good examples from Theognis; and for Platos adaptation of that
assumption in the Laws, see Tecusan (:,,c).
Locating the symposium ;
for homosexual courtship of young men by older men.
:c
The physical
space of the Greek dining room (andr on literally room for men), as we
know from its many surviving examples, was an intimate, inward-looking
space. Standardly it consisted of either seven or eleven couches, each one
long enough to hold two people reclining, arranged around three and a
half sides of a square, leaving room for servants to enter on the fourth
side.
The symposium could be a venue for musical entertainment provided by
outside entertainers.
::
Even more important, however, was the entertain-
ment provided by the guests themselves, through singing and conversation.
Sympotic talk and sympotic song, as they are represented in the literature
of archaic and classical Greece, were thought of as shared, community-
forming activities:
It is necessary, whenever we come together to such an occasion as friends, to laugh
and play, while still displaying excellence, and to take pleasure in being together,
and to joke with each other with mockery of the kind that brings laughter. But
seriousness is necessary as well: let us listen to each other speaking in turn; for this
is the mark of excellence in a symposium. (Adesp. el. :;, lines ,, IEG)
::
Different speakers would speak in turn, showing their poetic knowledge
and poetic skills. Sometimes that might involve reference to earlier poetry,
including quotation of famous passages from epic,
:,
or reperformance
of famous passages from earlier sympotic lyric. It was also a place for
performance of new (in many cases improvised) lyric compositions.
The symposium in fact seems to have been the original performance
venue for much of the surviving lyric and elegiac verse of the archaic and
classical periods.
:
Much of this poetry is concerned with drinking or with
love and sex.
:,
Particularly common are exhortations to drink. Alcaeus
:c
However, see Bremmer (:,,c) on the waning in importance of love between older and younger men
at the symposium at the end of the archaic period.
::
See Sch afer (:,,;), with a comprehensive survey of visual evidence.
::
See Halliwell (:cc) :::, for brief discussion of this passage.
:,
Hence the important role played by martial themes in sympotic verse: when performed in the
aristocratic symposium martial exhortation poetry represents a type of heroic self-fashioning, an
attempt to claim for its singers a status within a wider community equivalent to that of epic heroes:
see Irwin (:cc,) :,o: (o: for this quotation), drawing on Bowie (:,,c).
:
For general discussion of archaic and classical sympotic poetry, see (among many others) Vetta
(:,,); Bowie (:,o) and (:,,c); Fabian, Pellizer and Tedeschi (:,,:); Stehle (:,,;) ::,o:; Ford
(:cc:) :,,; Whitmarsh (:cc) ,ooo; Carey (:cc,) ,:; see also Dupont (:,,,), esp. :::cc
for an attack on the tendency in modern scholarship to analyse sympotic lyric poems as texts to be
read, rather than as faint textual traces of sympotic performance.
:,
See (among many others) Campbell (:,,) ::; on love in Greek lyric, and :,, on wine.
Saints and Symposiasts
in particular had a reputation for returning to that theme over and over
again:
:o
Lets drink! Why do we wait for the lamps? There is only a nger of daylight
remaining. Bring down the large cups, my friend, the decorated ones; for the son
of Semele and Zeus gave wine to men to help them forget their worries. Mix one
part of water to two of wine, pour it in up to the brim, and let one cup push aside
the next . . . . (Alcaeus fr. ,o)
The exhortation to drink is addressed in part to the singers fellow symposi-
asts, but it also appeals, like so much sympotic verse, to a sense of fantasy,
inviting the listeners to imagine themselves momentarily into an idealised
moment of sympotic companionship removed from the one in which they
nd themselves.
:;
Other collections of material, like the verses ascribed
to Theognis
:
and Anacreon,
:,
combine that theme with exhortations to
moderation which anticipate the philosophical preference for sympotic
moderation in later centuries, as in the following passage from Theognis:
There are two fates, in drinking, for wretched mortals, limb-loosening
thirst and harsh drunkenness. I shall steer in the middle of these two, and
you will not persuade me either to drink nothing or to drink too much
(Theognis ,;c). That passage characteristically acts as a display of lit-
erary ingenuity, with its reference to the two fates of Achilles from Iliad
,.:c:o, uniting the singer and his audience by their shared, effortless
appreciation of a canonical body of earlier poetry.
Proper behaviour in the symposium and especially in the conver-
sational exchanges of the symposium was viewed as something which
needed careful attention. That attitude, too, reected the idea that attend-
ing the symposium was a way of enacting membership of a community,
united by shared sympotic ethics. Much of the surviving sympotic poetry
we have is highly self-reexive, not only in the sense that it describes the
act of drinking, but also in the sense that it sets out rules for proper sym-
potic behaviour and sympotic talk at considerable length, like the passage
quoted above (It is necessary, whenever we come together . . . ).
,c
That self-
reexiveness is echoed in the art of the symposium, which survives widely
:o
See Campbell (:,,) ,c.
:;
Cf. Halliwell (:cc) ::;: The ideal symposium is a dream, even a hallucination, of perfection.
:
See Campbell (:,,) :;.
:,
See Campbell (:,,) ,o,; Budelmann (:cc,).
,c
The most commonly cited example of self-reexive sympotic verse is Xenophanes :, but a better
example for our purposes here is Theognis o;,o, which gives much more detailed discussion
about what kinds of speech are appropriate. For the general theme, see also (in addition to many of
the general studies of sympotic lyric already quoted) Bielohlawek (:,c); also W. J. Slater (:,,c) on
the Odyssey as a poem concerned with sympotic ethics, with useful parallels from later poetry.
Locating the symposium ,
Figure :.: Red-gured kylix showing boys serving wine, painted by Douris;
c. , to c bce.
in classical Athenian vase paintings, and which characteristically depicts
sympotic scenes. Figure :.:, dating probably from around c bce, is a
typical example, where the user is invited to compare his own current
drinking activity with what he sees on the cup. Some scenes of this type
offer an idealised picture of sympotic pleasure. Others, however, throw a
humorously unattering light on the activities the drinkers themselves are
engaged in, for example by showing drunken or even bestial behaviour.
,:
The tradition of the literary symposiumis similarly saturated with examples
of insulting speech and drunken excess, which sail close to the boundaries
of civility, and in some cases transgress them.
,:
We should not imagine
that these kinds of behaviour were always a part of the elite symposium.
However, ancient symposiasts often seem to have been interested in irt-
ing with unacceptable, excessive behaviour, even while for the most part
showing a carefully judged ability to stay just on the right side of the line.
Often sympotic speech was marked by an atmosphere of spoudogeloion
,:
See Lissarrague (:,,c), esp. ;:co and (:,,:); also Dentzer (:,:).
,:
On the constant risk of violence in the symposium, see Collins (:cc) ;c,.
:c Saints and Symposiasts
(seriocomic),
,,
and ancient symposiasts often indulged in light-hearted
mutual criticism (mockery of the kind that brings laughter),
,
and com-
petitive capping of each others speech.
,,
Teasing was, in fact, a way of
performing and questioning elite identity. It was a standard way of acting
out a sense of community: it implied a set of shared values held in common
by all those who joined in with the laughter, including even, potentially,
the object of mockery, who might seek to maintain face by directing teasing
in turn against his original tormentor. It could also presumably be used
more cruelly and coercively in order to direct scrutiny against those who
fell short of the unwritten rules of elite belonging, all the more effectively
so for its supercial light-heartedness.
,o
The nal scenes of Aristophanes Wasps offer a wonderful example
of sympotic behaviour which tests the boundaries of propriety.
,;
There
Philokleon, an old man obsessed with serving as a jury member, is per-
suaded by his son Bdelykleon to attend a symposium, as a way of taking his
mind away from the law-courts. In :::::o,, Philokleon initially expresses
his reluctance to get involved in drinking and to wear fashionable cloth-
ing, but he eventually submits to Bdelykleons attempts to teach him the
basics of smart sympotic manners: for example, how to recline stretch
out your knees and throw yourself down athletically and languidly on the
covers (:::::,) and how to deal with the skolion game (::::,), a
common feature of the symposium, where every symposiast would sing
in turn, each one trying to cap the previous contribution.
,
In the nal
scene (::,:,,;), after the party has broken up, Philokleons slave Xan-
thias describes his misbehaviour: in this way he insulted each of them in
turn, mocking them boorishly and also telling stories, in the most ignorant
fashion, which were not appropriate to the occasion (:,:,::). Philokleon
himself then comes on stage in a state of extreme drunkenness and accom-
panied by a ute-girl. On one level Philokleons behaviour clearly goes
too far, as Xanthias account implies. However, there are also hints for
example in his instant mastery of the insulting potential of the skolion
,,
See Collins (:cc), esp. o,,; Hunter (:cc) ,::; and Hermogenes, On Method ,o (Rabe (:,:,)
,) for ancient theorisation of the importance of this characteristic for sympotic writing in the
tradition of Xenophon and Plato.
,
Adesp. el. :;, IEG, quoted at more length above.
,,
Good recent discussions include Collins (:cc) o,:o, and Hesk (:cc;).
,o
See Pellizer (:,,c); Whitmarsh (:cc) ,,; and cf. Plutarch, Sympotic Questions :.: for debate on
what kinds of teasing are appropriate to the symposium, discussed further in ch. ,, below; see also
Halliwell (:,,:) :,: on the way in which laughter is expected and sanctioned within the symposium,
and viewed therefore as inconsequential, but also with the constant danger that it will transgress
acceptable norms; and on laughter in the symposium generally see Halliwell (:cc), esp. :cc,.
,;
See esp. P utz (:cc;) ,:c, for wide-ranging discussion of this scene.
,
On this scene as evidence for the skolion game, see Collins (:cc) ,,::c and Hesk (:cc;) :,c:.
Locating the symposium ::
game, which is acknowledged grudgingly by Bdelykleon before they set off
to the symposium (::,), or in the detail that one of his insults is greeted
with applause by his fellow guests (:,:) that Philokleon has taken to the
symposium like a natural, transgressing the norms of sympotic propriety in
ways which are viewed, at least until he takes them to excess, as appropriate
and entertaining.
The symposium both literary representation and presumably in real
life, so far as we can disentangle the two had thus always been associated
in some form with the display of knowledge: knowledge of how to behave
as a member of the elite, with all the virtues of ingenuity and intellect and
good judgement that the symposium required, and which were viewed as
emblematic of the skills of political and social self-presentation necessary in
other contexts; and also knowledge of literary tradition. It was only in the
early fourth century bce, however, that the link between knowledge and the
literary symposium gained the specically philosophical inections which
were so central to the prestige of sympotic literature in later Greek and
Latin culture.
,,
Most inuentially, Plato, in his Symposium depicts Socrates
and his interlocutors reshaping traditional sympotic norms for their own
purposes.
c
They send away the musicians, and decide to drink moderately
(although partly because many are hungover from the night before). They
speak in turn in praise of the god of Love (Eros), a traditional sympotic
subject, but imbued as the dialogue goes on with increasingly philosophical
overtones: Socrates, speaking last, deals with the ascent of the soul and the
love of beauty which inspires it. He is famously interrupted, however, by
the arrival of the drunken Alcibiades, who berates Socrates for refusing
to return his love and disturbs the atmosphere of moderate drinking and
philosophical reection (albeit in a way which invites us to reassess the
claims of Socrates speech).
:
Here, as so often in the later sympotic tradi-
tion, the symposium is a space where disruption is an ever-present threat,
where opinions and certainties are always open to challenge. Xenophons
Symposium, probably written in reaction to Platos, similarly shows Socrates
enjoying playful intellectual discussion in a sympotic setting.
:
Between
them these two works indelibly mark the literary symposium tradition.
,,
However, see also Bowie (:,,a) for some of the poetic predecessors of Platonic table talk.
c
See Hunter (:cc) on Platos Symposium, and further bibliography there, esp. ,:, on sympotic
norms, and ::,,, on the enormous later inuence of this text; and on Platos repeated discussion
of the institution of the symposium in other works, including the Laws, which she takes in part as
a sign of the symposiums centrality to Athenian society, see Tecusan (:,,c).
:
On Socrates speech and Alcibiades contribution, and the relation between the two, see Hunter
(:cc) ;:::.
:
For recent discussion, see (among many others) Gray (:,,:); Hobden (:cc) and (:cc,); Halliwell
(:cc) :,,,; and for commentary, Huss (:,,,); on the relationship of Xenophons Symposium
with Platos, especially their respective dating, see Danzig (:cc,).
:: Saints and Symposiasts
Throughout its long history, singing and writing about the symposium
was always partly an act of fantasy, prompted by the desire to recreate the
eeting pleasures of wine and sympotic talk. These two founding texts of
the philosophical symposium tradition are no exception, inviting us, as
they do, to imagine ourselves eavesdropping on Socrates and his friends.
As we shall see, the idea of looking back and entering into dialogue with
the past continues to be a key feature of the fascination of the literary
symposium for later centuries.
The development of sympotic writing in the centuries which followed,
both in verse and in prose, is difcult to track condently, for many relevant
texts have not survived. Nevertheless we have enough surviving fragments
and testimonia to know that there was a very widespread and varied body
of material produced.
,
The symposiums erotic connotations continued
to be important in the literature of the Hellenistic age. Many Hellenistic
erotic epigrams seem to imagine a sympotic setting, whether or not they
were actually performed in such a setting.

At the same time, the links

between symposium conversation and philosophy or display of wisdom
also gained momentum. One of Callimachus poems (fr. :; (=, M))
represents learned discussion in a symposium setting;
,
and some scholars
have argued that the symposium was a forum for playful scholarly debate in
the Mouseion of Hellenistic Alexandria.
o
When Plutarch, writing in the
early second century ce in the rst preface to his Sympotic Questions (o::d),
lists his philosophical predecessors in the enterprise of recording sympotic
conversation Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Speusippos, Epicurus, Prytanis,
Hieronymos and Dio of the Academy it is a tantalising reminder of how
little we know of the early development of the symposium as a knowledge-
ordering form. Of the texts Plutarch lists, all seem to have been written
well before the end of the third century bce, with the exception of Dio
who was writing in the rst century bce; only Plato and Xenophons works
survive in more than fragments.
;
In addition we know of a large number of works dealing not with
conversation, but instead with food and cookery. For example, elaborate
,
For surveys, see RE a ::;,:; Ullrich (:,c,); Martin (:,,:); Dupont (:,;;) :,,; Relihan
(:,,:).

See also below pp. ::, for brief further discussion of sympotic epigram, with bibliography.
,
E.g. Fantuzzi and Hunter (:cc) ;o,.
o
See Cameron (:,,,) ,,;, with reference to Slater (:,:) ,o,; also Murray (:,,o) on Hellenistic
royal symposia.
;
On this passage, see Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. i, ,,o and (:cc,) ,; and for more general discus-
sion of the sympotic precedents for Plutarchs text see most recently Klotz and Oikonomopoulou
(:c::) :,:.
Locating the symposium :,
food description was a recurring obsession in the Athenian comedy of the
fourth century bce.

We also know of many works of deipnon or dinner

literature, dedicated to describing specic dinner occasions not by their
conversation but by their food;
,
and a number of other texts of gastro-
nomical classication and culinary instruction. Archestratos Life of Luxury,
from the fourth century bce, was one particularly famous example of the
latter.
,c
The Deipnosophists (or Dinner-Sophists) of Athenaeus, probably
written in the early third century ce, which is one of my main case studies
in the chapters following, lists large numbers of predecessors:
,:
Other writers have written descriptions of banquets (otitvcv): for example
Timachidas of Rhodes in eleven or perhaps more books of epic verse, and Nume-
nios of Herakleia, the pupil of the physician Dieuches, and Matreas of Pitane the
parodist, and Hegemon of Thasos whose nickname was Lentil Soup whom
some categorise among the writers of Old Comedy. Artemidoros, falsely called
an Aristophanean, collected words connected with cookery. Plato the comic poet
mentions a book called The Banquet by Philoxenos of Leukas. (Deipnosophists
,a-b)
,:
That list is striking not least for the generic variety of the works it refers
to: the appetite for food writing spread across a very wide range of Greek
literature in the late classical and Hellenistic periods, from which most of
these works seem to date.
symposium literature in the roman empire
The symposium became if anything even more prevalent in the literature
of the Roman empire. The late history of the literary symposium in that
period and after is, however, an oddly neglected topic.
,,
Recent decades

See Wilkins (:ccca).

,
See Martin (:,,:) :,ooo.
,c
See Olson and Sens (:ccc), esp. xxxixxliii for discussion of other gastronomic writing from the
same period.
,:
Or at any rate his epitomator does: see below, p. ,,, n. :c.
,:
On these gures see the notes in Canfora (:cc:) :o. For discussion of other important lost pre-
decessors to Athenaeus, see Zecchini (:,,) :,, naming the medical Symposium of Heraklides of
Tarentum (rst century bce), the Symposium of Aelius Herodian (second century ce), the Conversa-
tions of Heraklides Ponticus the younger (rst century ce), the Sympotic Miscellany of Aristoxenos of
Tarentum (fourth century bce) and the Sympotic Miscellany of Didymos Chalkenteros (rst century
bce); and see Martin (:,,:) for longer discussion of all of these gures, and others. Pamphiles lost
miscellany (rst century ce) is also relevant: Photius, Bibliotheca :;,, ::,
b
::; suggests that she
claims in her preface that the work included facts overheard from guests entertained by her husband
(although Photius does not specify a convivial context for those conversations); on this passage see
Vardi (:cc,) :c.
,,
One important exception is Martin (:,,:), a comprehensive and still very useful attempt to catalogue
and subdivide the many different occurrences of writing connected with the symposium in Greek
: Saints and Symposiasts
have seen an expansion of scholarship on the symposiumboth as institution
and literary form,
,
but there has been a tendency to concentrate on
the sympotic literature of the archaic and classical periods, and to view
the work of imperial-period authors as minor footnotes in the afterlife
of the Platonic symposium tradition. That has recently started to change,
not least through an expansion of interest in the work of Athenaeus
,,
and
Plutarch.
,o
But there is still a great deal of work to be done on these
difcult texts. My aim in this book is to make some further progress in that
direction, with reference not only to the philosophical table-talk tradition,
the main subject of Part i, but also to the novelistic and satirical prose
literature of the Roman empire, which is my main focus in Part ii.
The lack is particularly glaring in the eld of early Christian studies, as
we shall see further in chapter , and following. There has been almost no
attention given to Christianitys use (or, more often, its peculiar neglect) of
the philosophical symposium.
,;
Admittedly, there has beensome important
work on the role of eating and drinking and fasting in early Christian
narrative: for example there is now a rich body of material on the meal
scenes in the gospel of Luke, and on the representation of food and fasting
in early Christian hagiography. Even here, however, there are signicant
absences. Many in this eld have been interested primarily (and quite
legitimately) in the realia of Christian commensality, and in changing
attitudes to feasting and fasting in early Christian culture.
,
In the process
they have often given only quite brief attention to the way in which
these texts function as narratives, presenting their readers with ideals and
and Roman literature. See also Amato (:cc,) for a good survey of sympotic material in sophistic
writing.
,
E.g. Murray (:,,c), including comprehensive bibliographies in major areas of symposium schol-
arship, with updated bibliographical addenda for the later (:,,,) paperback edition; also Murray
(:,,) and (:cc,); Lissarrague (:,,c); Slater (:,,:); several of the essays in Aurell, Dumoulin and
Thelamon (:,,:); Murray and Tecusan (:,,,); Orfanos and Carri` ere (:cc,); and for vivid intro-
ductory sketches of characteristic features of the symposium, see Davidson (:,,;) ,,:; Scarcella
(:,,) :;;; Whitmarsh (:cc) ,:o;; Hunter (:cc) ,:,. I am also grateful to Fiona Hobden
for the opportunity to see a draft of her forthcoming book, from which I have learned a great deal:
Hobden (forthcoming).
,,
See among others Braund and Wilkins (:ccc); Jacob (:cc:); Romeri (:cc:).
,o
See among others Romeri (:cc:); K onig (:cc;a); Ribeiro Ferreira, Le ao, Tr oster and Barata Dias
(:cc,); Klotz and Oikonomopoulou (:c::), esp. Titchener (:c::) for a survey of past scholarship
on the text; I have been grateful also for the opportunity to see an early draft of sections of Katerina
Oikonomopoulous forthcoming book on the miscellanies of the Roman empire.
,;
See Martin (:,,:) and Relihan (:,,:) for surveys of the sympotic genre which go further than many
in acknowledging the importance of Christian and late antique sympotica, but which nevertheless
still seem content with a relatively cursory reading, and reluctant to view these texts as anything
other than late survivals of a genre whose heyday was many centuries earlier.
,
E.g. Grimm (:,,o); McGowan (:,,,); Smith (:cc,).
Locating the symposium :,
provocations they could use in reecting upon their own experiences. I
hope that this book will go some way towards lling that gap.
What form does engagement with the literary symposium take in the
Roman period? The sympotic tradition is an important reference-point not
just in those works which offer extended imitations of Platos Symposium, or
in the large number of surviving epigrams probably performed (or written
as if to be performed) ina sympotic context,
,,
but also as a recurring motif in
texts which are not so straightforwardly sympotic
oc
and so do not imagine
the symposium as their primary subject or setting.
o:
For example the Greek
and Latin novels have many symposium scenes embedded within them,
as we shall see in chapter :c. Their readers (including the Latin readers of
Petronius and Apuleius) are clearly expected to recognise the conventions
of the literary symposium, and in some cases to be alert to the way in which
they are being misused or distorted.
Especially common is the assumption that the symposium should be
accompanied by particular types of speech, usually examination of schol-
arly questions and problems which would often derive from the circum-
stances of the meal itself.
o:
That assumption resurfaces repeatedly within
philosophical, rhetorical and biographical writing. Dio Chrysostom, in his
Oration :;, a short work designed to emphasise the rarity of philosophical
qualities and interests, notes the wide range of possibilities for sympotic
misbehaviour before suggesting that the virtuous man, by contrast, intro-
duces suitable topics of conversation, inuencing those who are present,
by his cleverness and persuasion, so that they interact with each other in
a more harmonious and friendly fashion (:;.). We nd a more eccentric
version of that assumption in Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, :.:c, ,,o.
,,
See esp. Greek Anthology ::.:o for epigrams explicitly categorised by the ancient editor as sympotic,
some of which date from the imperial period; Nisbet (:cc,), esp. :,, argues that the symposium
was the primary performance context also for the Greek skoptic (i.e. joking or mocking) epigrams
of the Romanempire whichare collected inthe second half of Book ::; see also brief further discussion
of the appeal of sympotic epigrams below, pp. ::,.
oc
Martin (:,,:) ,,: expends a great deal of energy in categorising different kinds of sympotic
writing; he is right, of course, to point out that there are certain recurring markers by which a
text might signal its afliation to, for example, the traditions of Platonic symposium discussion;
nevertheless to my mind he underestimates the way in which writing about the symposium and
about feasting, perhaps more so even than other ancient forms, tended to cross-fertilise with, and
inltrate itself into, other forms of writing; for that reason I prefer in what follows to talk about the
Platonic symposium tradition, rather than the symposium genre.
o:
The same had been true for many texts in the classical and Hellenistic periods, of course; Xenophons
Cyropaedia is an obvious example: see Gera (:,,,) :,:,:.
o:
That assumption seems to have some parallels in the material evidence for real-life conviviality. For
example, Roller (:cco) ,oc has recently made the tentative suggestion that pictures in Roman
dining-rooms depicting mythical and historical scenes may sometimes have been made deliberately
difcult to interpret in order to leave space for the guests to test their own erudition.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
There Philostratus describes a sympotic group known as the Klepsydrion
(the water-clock group), a selection of ten star pupils who would gather
together to listen to Herodes Atticus offering his interpretations of :cc lines
of poetry during a period limited by a water-clock. These interpretations
seem to have taken place in a sympotic setting;
o,
at any rate Philostratus
tells us that they were in line with Herodes principle that they should not
relax even at the time of drinking, but even there should conduct some
serious study over their wine (ttiotcuotiv : cv).
o
Some writers take the links between sympotic dialogue and learned
conversation to extremes, describing prodigious displays of memory and
erudition. The most imposing, and in some ways the most puzzling texts in
this category are the two compilations already mentioned above. Plutarchs
(early second-century ce) Sympotic Questions (QC) is an account (accu-
rate, so Plutarch claims) of erudite conversations from a lifetimes worth of
symposia, on subjects of many different types: literary, musical, mytholog-
ical, scientic, philosophical, antiquarian and sympotic. Plutarch recounts
ninety-ve conversations in total, spread across nine books, each book pre-
ceded by a brief preface containing moralising recommendations for philo-
sophically admirable sympotic behaviour and sympotic speech. Despite the
large number of precedents for works of sympotic conversation mentioned
above, it may well be the case that Plutarchs work made a decisive con-
tribution in reviving the genre of the Socratic symposium dialogue after a
long gap: certainly we know of few examples after the early Hellenistic texts
listed above.
o,
Plutarch may also have been quite original in the way he
grafted miscellanistic compilation on to the philosophical symposium. At
any rate two later miscellanistic writers, Gellius and Macrobius, imitated
the Sympotic Questions closely.
oo
Athenaeus Deipnosophists was written some time afterwards, perhaps in
the late second or early third century ce. Athenaeus claim to be even partly
realistic is less convincing. His work is an enormously long narrative of
conversations between intellectuals who dedicate their energy to quoting
o,
However, see Civiletti (:cc:) ,;,c, n. for debate about that interpretation.
o
Cf. VS :.:,, ,, for another mention of the same group; and Civiletti (:cc:) ,,;, n. , for similar
debate over whether Philostratus sympotic imagery applied to the group in this passage is meant
literally.
o,
See Teodorsson (:cc,).
oo
See esp. Gellius, Attic Nights ,.,, ,.o, .:: and :;.:: for essays which take their material from the
QC (some of them discussed further in the nal section of this chapter); also :.:, where Gellius
honours Plutarch by making his name the rst word of his rst chapter; and discussion by Beall
(:,,,) ,,; Holford-Strevens (:cc,) :,,; Keulen (:cc,) ::,o; on Macrobius, see below, ch. ;
and for general discussion of the inuence of the QC, see now Klotz and Oikonomopoulou (:c::)
:,,;.
Locating the symposium :;
and analysing obscure passages from classical and Hellenistic literature,
most of it on the subject of food, drink and sex, luxurious living and
extravagance (some of it surviving only in epitomised form).
o;
Both of those are works of prose, although both also contain vast
amounts of quoted verse, especially Athenaeus, who is one of our major
sources for the sympotic verse of earlier centuries.
o
In that sense it would
be misleading to see the sympotic writing of the Roman empire as entirely
dominated by prose. Sympotic miscellanies like those of Plutarch and
Athenaeus are to some extent dened by their capacity to accommodate
many different voices and genres and traditions. They are the inheritors
of sympotic verse, drawn from Attic comedy or from traditions of archaic
and classical lyric, as well as the inheritors of the prose legacy of Plato
and Xenophon. Verse does not die out within imperial sympotic writing:
not only does it live on in the form of a rich strand of epigrammatic
composition, it also becomes integrated into a wider fabric whose primary
framework is in prose.
mocking the symposium
It is by now well established that the Greek culture of the Roman world
was a culture fascinated by its own past and by the challenge of reactivating
the glorious traditions of the pre-Roman world in the present, albeit in a
creative fashion.
o,
Plutarch and Athenaeus are representative of a tendency
to idealise the symposium as a place for celebrating the Greek cultural
heritage and acting out a vision of intellectual community. We should
be cautious, however, about buying into their visions too readily and so
assuming that the symposium as an institution and a literary motif was
universally revered. Comic, mocking portrayals of the Greek symposium
are everywhere in imperial literature.
The satirical work of Lucian, from the mid-second century ce, is a good
example. Lucian exemplies as well as any other author the high visibility
for literary symposium traditions in this period. His work is packed with
references to philosophical conversation at the symposium, sometimes
included briey and in passing, sometimes as the main focus for a single
work. But the primary aim of those references is to debunk and mock,
exposing the hypocrisy and pretension of sympotic speech, and ridiculing
the idea of the sympotic community as a privileged and cohesive group. It
o;
See below, p. ,,, n. :c for bibliography on the epitome.
o
See Bowie (:ccc).
o,
See esp. Bowie (:,;); Whitmarsh (:cc:).
: Saints and Symposiasts
is important to stress that there is not a clear dividing line between Lucian
and Plutarch or Athenaeus in this respect: both of those latter two authors
themselves include absurd and pretentious characters, and have an element
of self-parody. But Lucian goes much further,
;c
probably inuenced in
part by the work of the Hellenistic Cynic satirist Menippus.
;:
Lucians
treatment of the symposium is entirely in line with his love of debunking
the inherited traditions and cherished institutions of Greek culture, often in
ways which expose his own speaking voice and even our own assumptions
as readers if we are not careful to ridicule.
;:
Lucians On Salaried Posts,
for example, describes the indignity of a Greek intellectual attached to the
house of a wealthy Roman, going through the motions of philosophical
behaviour at his patrons banquets in a way which falls brutally short of
the mans idealised expectation, as he nds himself subjected to repeated
humiliation.
;,
Lucians Lexiphanes features a speaker who is obsessed with
using obscure and archaising literary language, dredged up from the depths
of the Greek archive, in a way which satirises contemporary atticising the
taste for pedantic reproduction of the Attic Greek of classical Athens and
which is not so far removed from the lexicographical mania of Athenaeus
pedantic heroes. Lexiphanes tells the story of a banquet, in imitation of
Platos Symposium, using language whose difculty and absurdity makes
his interlocutor, so he claims (Lexiphanes :o), drunk with listening. The
dialogue ends with Lexiphanes vomiting up the archaising words which
have lled his mind to bursting.
;
Lucians Symposium paints a similarly funny picture of hypocritical
philosophers misbehaving at a wedding feast which descends into drunken
brawling, with generous helpings of food-ghting and beard-pulling.
;,
The
philosophers hypocrisy is signalled in part by their absurd misuse of the
traditions of sympotic debate.
;o
For example, one of the topics discussed in
Plutarchs Sympotic Questions (:.:) is the question of how seating arrange-
ments should be handled in the symposium. Lucians philosophers replay
that debate in an absurdly over-competitive fashion:
;;
;c
For discussion of Lucian on the symposium, see Amato (:cc,) ,o.
;:
See p. ,, below, for more detailed discussion of Menippean satire; and Athenaeus, Deipnosophists
o:,e for the evidence that Menippus himself wrote a symposium; also Martin (:,,:) :::,c on
Lucians likely relationship with a Menippean tradition of sympotic writing.
;:
See Branham (:,,).
;,
See Whitmarsh (:cc:) :;,,,.
;
See Romeri (:ccc) :,oc; Swain (:,,o) o;.
;,
For further discussion and bibliography, see below, pp. :,:.
;o
Cf. Lucian, Dream or the Cock ,:: for another philosopher whose dinner conversation is represented
as tiresome in a different way, through being excessively dry and philosophical.
;;
See Martin (:,,:) :c,, and ::, for fuller discussion of Lucians engagement with the motif of
discussing and arguing over seating arrangements in earlier sympotic literature.
Locating the symposium :,
Then there was some doubt about whether Zenothemis the Stoic should have
precedence as an old man, or Hermon the Epicurean, as a priest of the Twin
Brethren and a member of one of the citys leading families. But Zenothemis
solved the problem: For, Aristainetos, if you put me second to this man an
Epicurean, to say nothing worse of him I will go away and leave your symposium
entirely. (Lucian, Symposium ,)
Hermon is persuaded to yield, and the drinking party is able to start. Here
the phrase used to describe Zenothemis response solved the problem
(tuot :nv tcpicv) is a phrase one might use to describe responses to the
sympotic questions posed by guests to each other in conversation in learned
symposia like Plutarchs. Zenothemis version of a solution is absurd
through having no intellectual content whatever; it exposes the hypocrisy
and posturing which Lucian seems to feel always lie behind sympotic
interaction. This passage is typical of the ubiquitous use of sympotic jargon
by Lucian and many of his contemporaries, and gives us a glimpse of how
familiar sympotic customs and sympotic language were to contemporary
readers.
Others write about the symposium in similarly negative terms. The
medical writer Galen, in characteristically uncompromising fashion, com-
plains in On the Therapeutic Method :., about the fact that the symposia
of the present day no longer contain serious philosophical discussion.
;
Dio Chrysostom (who was a near contemporary of Plutarch, from Asia
Minor, an orator and philosopher), like Lucian seems to have absorbed
many aspects of the scorn for banqueting which were traditional within
Cynic philosophy. On several occasions, for example, he lists at length, and
disapprovingly, common kinds of sympotic misbehaviour, as if his feelings
about drinking-parties of any kind are overwhelmingly negative. He seems
to be particularly concerned in these passages about the misuse of sympotic
speech, although he also admits the possibility of a more positive version
of this, as in the passage already quoted from Oration :;.
;,
However, he
;
Other examples of denunciation of drinking culture in Galens work include On Prognosis :, where
he criticises modern doctors for spending their time entertaining the rich in drinking-parties (the
word he uses is cuccyttoci, which refers to coarse joking and disorderly behaviour, and so
paints these degenerate doctors as the equivalent of parasites or sympotic entertainers (see ch. ,,
below), and so the opposite of sober, Plutarchan conversationalists); and Method of Healing ,:,
where he describes a rich man barely able to reach home because of drunkenness after a party.
;,
See :;.: for the full passage, most of it critical; cf. also ,c.:,; ,:.,,. For similar sentiments,
see Maximus of Tyre, Oration ::, on proper entertainment (English translation and brief discussion
in Trapp (:,,;) :o,): Maximus worries about the dangers of succumbing to luxury or to the
wrong kind of speech at banquets in similar terms, although he seems even more pessimistic than
Dio about the possibility of discovering a solution; and see Lauwers (:cc,) for further discussion
of Maximus negative attitude towards the symposium.
:c Saints and Symposiasts
Figure :.: Sepphoris, House of Orpheus, triclinium, mosaic of banquet; probably second
half of third century ce.
is different from Lucian in being much more inclined simply to ignore
the symposium:
c
Dio rarely uses the Greek word symposion, nor does he
ever describe his own participation in such an event. For both Dio and
Galen, then, in contrast with Plutarch, the symposium is very far from
being an integral ingredient for their own visions of philosophical lifestyle
and philosophical community.
sympotic literature and real life
What relation did all of these works have with day-to-day convivial practice
in the Roman empire? Did anyone really conduct philosophical conversa-
tion in the symposium in this period? Were the sympotic rituals we can
infer from archaic and classical texts really still adhered to?
Clearly there was a considerable amount of continuity between classical
and imperial feasting procedures, for all the differences (and for all the
difculty of generalising about a vastly varied set of practices). Looking
at the visual evidence gives a useful impression of the balance between
continuity and newness in the feasting of the Roman period. For exam-
ple, gure :.:, which dates probably from the second half of the third
c
For additional discussion of Dio on feasting, along similar lines, see Amato (:cc,) ,o,.
Locating the symposium ::
century ce, is clearly very different in some respects from the representa-
tion of a classical Athenian symposium in gure :.:. The scene is presented
to us within a very different medium entirely alien to the art of classical
Greece. It represents a modern, semicircular, sigma-shaped dining arrange-
ment (the dining-room in which the mosaic was located uses a different,
pi-shaped arrangement, with couches on three sides of a square room,
a more traditional Roman layout than the sigma-shaped, but one which
would have been equally unfamiliar to the users of gure :.:).
:
And it
depicts on the right hand side a large hot-water heater, a luxury item which
begins to appear in dining images only in the republican period, and which
is associated with the particularly Roman custom of mixing wine with hot
water.
:
At the same time, however, some basic similarities should also
be immediately clear: the all-male guest list, the reclining posture, and the
distinction between reclining diners and standing servants and entertainers
of lower status.
,
Those similarities should not surprise us. Many scholars have recently
begun to think in terms of a basic core of shared practices spreading across
Mediterranean dining, covering many different institutions and traditions
of commensality over many centuries.

On top of that basic core could

be built a vast range of different variations, archaising variations included.
Even if many of the old Greek symposium practices were widely ignored in
the banquets of the imperial period (for example because of the inuence of
Roman dining traditions on which more below), they would presumably
still have been available for those who chose to give their drinking parties
a particularly traditional or archaising feel.
There are other reasons too why it would be wrong to see the hyper-
erudite, archaising symposia of Plutarch and Athenaeus and others as purely
literary games, unconnected with the way in which people conducted and
fantasised about their ownsympotic activities. As we shall see, bothPlutarch
and Athenaeus write in part with didactic intentions, offering their readers
paradigms for their own behaviour.
,
Of course we are not expected to
imitate precisely the implausibly learned characters who are presented to
us. The extravagantly erudite community they portray is a very exclusive
:
See Dunbabin (:cc,a) ,o,c on the distinction between Greek and Roman layout.
:
See Dunbabin (:,,,).
,
See Dunbabin (:cc,a) for the dining images of the Roman empire in general, and :oo, on this
image specically.

See Smith (:cc,), esp. :, for summary of that model.

,
Cf. extensive further discussion of that point in chs. :; also Nadeau (:c:c), esp. ,:,, for an
attempt to use Plutarch, Lucian and Athenaeus to shed light on the experience of imperial dining
culture.
:: Saints and Symposiasts
one, inaccessible to the majority. It may well be the case that texts like those
of Plutarch and Athenaeus would have been read in detail by only small
numbers of people. The idealising, philosophical vision of the symposium
presented by Plutarch probably had a tenuous relationship with his own
real-life experience, let alone that of his readers, eventhoughPlutarchclaims
to be recording real dinner parties. Nevertheless, the widespread familiarity
of the idea of philosophical table-talk (visible in the satirical representations
already discussed above) must surely have made a difference to the way
in which individuals envisaged their own socialising, simply because it
offered them images against which to measure up their own convivial
activity.
In fact that must have been, for some, one of the attractions of sym-
posium attendance. Some symposiasts might have enjoyed indulging in
drunken pleasures which found ready precedents in archaic lyric. Others
must have enjoyed the thrill of seeing themselves and their fellow guests as
followers of more philosophical models, imitators of Socrates, or even imi-
tators of Plutarch and his fellow guests, even if they were also aware of the
disjunction between their own behaviour and those idealised precedents.
In a sense, that is precisely the point of Lucians On Salaried Posts: the
unnamed intellectual imagines himself playing a Socratic role, but the real-
ity turns out to be different. In much the same way, the power of sympotic
fantasy surely goes a long way towards explaining the attractions of epigram
in the Hellenistic and Roman world. Sympotic epigrams allow those who
read them (or perform them) to imagine themselves for a eeting moment
in an idealised world of conviviality, which may have been more or less
closely connected with the readers or performers actual experience. That
world is a very old world: the practice of erotic and sympotic epigram seems
to date back to the early Hellenistic period, and the Hellenistic epigrams
themselves draw very closely on earlier poetry, picking up on the erotic
themes of archaic lyric poets like Theognis, Alcaeus and Anacreon.
o
The
reader or performer of epigramfantasises about his own continuity with the
Greek past in the moment of reading or reciting, and about his own ability
to recapture, albeit in highly precarious and eeting ways, past sympotic
experience.
;
The literature of the symposium, in other words, provided a
o
On the creative allusiveness of Hellenistic sympotic and erotic epigram, see Giangrande (:,o;),
stressing that Hellenistic poets have a preference for some of the slightly less common motifs of
earlier sympotic poetry; Gutzwiller (:,,) ::,:; Fantuzzi and Hunter (:cc) ,,,; and Bowie
(:cc;); all are cautious about assuming the actual recitation of these texts in real sympotic contexts,
in contrast with Cameron (:,,,) ;::c,.
;
Cf. Dupont (:,;;) : on the way in which sympotic writing is always engaged in an impossible
quest to recapture the real experience of sympotic performance.
Locating the symposium :,
resource for fantasising about (or in some cases mocking) the connection
between Greek past and Greek present, between idealised behaviour and
lived experience.
festive commensality
In chapter :, following on from that outline survey of symposium practice
and symposium literature, I want to begin to focus in on the sympotic
miscellanies of the Roman empire in a little more depth, addressing some
general questions about what their attractions for contemporary readers
might have been. In chapters , and I then narrow that focus even
further, offering a detailed analysis of Plutarch and Athenaeus in turn.
Before I do that, however, I want to turn now to look at some of the
other ancient practices of commensality, many of which cross-fertilised
with the symposium, both in its literary manifestations and in day-to-day
life. I look rst at sacricial banqueting in its various manifestations, and
then at the institution of the convivium, the Roman equivalent of the
symposium.
First, the sacricial banquet. Ritual sacrice and the feasting that accom-
panied it lay at the heart of the communal life of the Greek city from the
archaic period onwards.

It was subject to considerable regional variation,

and even variation within individual cities: each city would have its own
distinctive festival calendar, and each festival in the years calendar would
have its own distinguishing features. Funding sacricial banquets was one
of the key ways in which wealthy benefactors could win honour within
their home cities.
Pauline Schmitt-Pantel has charted these practices in her important
work La cite au banquet, drawing her evidence from the enormous number
of surviving inscriptions recording Greek sacricial banqueting.
,
Reading
through those inscriptions in turn brings home the extraordinary richness
and variety of feasting practices as they were practised for many centuries
across the eastern Mediterranean. Despite that variety, however, there were
nevertheless many recurring features shared in common across the Greek
world. Usually the animals for sacrice would be led in procession through
the streets of the city. The precise make-up of the procession would vary

Once again, the bibliography on this topic is extensive, but see esp. Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:); Bowie
(:,,,) on the enormous range of sacricial practice in the Greek world; van Nijf (:,,;) ::,:c
on the place of professional guilds in festive banqueting and processions; see also further discussion
below, pp. ,:; on food and religion more generally, see Wilkins and Hill (:cco) ::c,.
,
Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:), esp. ,:; for inscriptions, listed by region and date.
: Saints and Symposiasts
from festival to festival, but it might often contain representatives from a
wide range of groups within the citys population.
,c
There were a number
of different ways in which the sacricial meat could be consumed and
distributed. Often on these occasions the food would be distributed to
citizens, and presumably taken home for consumption. At other times,
however, the sharing of meat took place within public feasting, in a range
of different possible venues: for example in the agora (market-place), in
temple sanctuaries, in gymnasia, or sometimes even in the private homes
of benefactors. In some cases we hear of benefactors not only funding
banquets but also paying for construction of new banqueting areas for the
city, adding to the variety of the citys dining venues. Sacricial feasting
could also take place in areas of temporary seating provided in the open
spaces of Greek cities, sometimes with specic blocks of seats reserved for
particular groups: in these cases the city would quite literally dine together.
For many these occasions would have been a relatively rare opportunity
to eat meat. The sacricial banquet was thus a time for the city to put
itself on show, celebrating its local identity in all its different subdivi-
sions, as well as its membership of a wider Greek community.
,:
Through
sacrice the citys inhabitants also acted out their human position in the
order of creation, between animals (sacriced) and gods (recipients of
sacrice).
,:
Earlier in this chapter I characterised the symposium as a self-contained
and exclusive occasion, with a small number of elite guests. In practice,
however, it would be wrong to draw any sharp dividing line between sym-
posium and sacricial banquet. The architectural space of the symposium
was in fact much more varied than my initial summary of it above sug-
gested: there are, for instance, many surviving examples of dining rooms
designed to seat much larger numbers, and many examples in sanctuaries
rather than private homes, which would have been used for symposium-
style entertainment in connection with sacricial feasting.
,,
In some ways
the symposium and the sacricial banquet stand at opposite poles, one
,c
E.g., in the festival of the Demostheneia of Oenoanda, founded in Lycia in Asia Minor in the second
century ce, we have an inscription giving lengthy instructions about how the procession is to be
made up and how many animals each grouping is to contribute; many of the citys public ofcials
take their places, together with representatives of the citys outlying village communities: see W orrle
(:,); English translation by Mitchell (:,,c).
,:
However, see Mitchell (:,,,) ::c for one example from Galatia where the Greek elements of public
feasting are overlaid with distinctive Celtic traditions.
,:
See D etienne and Vernant (:,,).
,,
See esp. Bergquist (:,,c) for systematic discussion of exceptions to the seven- and eleven-couch
norms; also Dunbabin (:cc,) ,o;: on the range of different types of banqueting architecture in
use in both the east and west of the Mediterranean.
Locating the symposium :,
elitist and exclusive, the other democratic, but in practice they also had
many overlaps and common features.
,
Many features of the sacricial banquet were reproduced on a smaller
scale in the private banquets of specic bodies within the city. For example
we have extensive evidence for professional guilds or unions open to
members of a particular occupation meeting regularly to dine together.
We also hear of other kinds of clubs with regular dinners, and often with
elaborate rules for keeping order.
,,
One distinctive variation on this pattern
was the funerary club. Dining was often associated with death: funerary
art often depicted the deceased feasting in the afterlife, and it was common
to dine outside the tombs of deceased relatives; some tombs had elaborate
dining areas purpose-built outside them.
,o
In funerary clubs members
would pay a regular subscription which would ensure a decent burial after
death and would meet regularly to dine in honour of their benefactors and
patron deities.
,;
One of the striking common features of all these different kinds of ritual
feasting is their function as expressions of communal identity. Eating and
drinking in the ancient world, in its more public and institutionalised
forms, was very frequently tied up with the self-promotion of particular
groups or communities, in much the same way as I have suggested for
the symposium. That should not come as a surprise. Anthropologists have
often stressed the interweaving of consumption and identity in the modern
world, and the way in which a cultures customs of consumption reect and
enact underlying structures of thought and social hierarchy.
,
But that link
does nevertheless seem to have been particularly pronounced within Greek
and Roman culture, simply through being so heavily institutionalised.
,
See Schmitt-Pantel (:,,c) for some reections on their interconnection in the archaic period.
,,
Smith (:cc,) ;:,: includes lengthy discussion of several different documents, including the laws
of the Iobakchoi, a second- or third-century ce drinking society from Athens (LSCG ,:=SIG
3
::c,;
translated by Smith (:cc,) ::,,:); the rules of the College of Diana and Antinous at Lanuvium (see
n. ,;, below) from :,o ce (CIL :.::::=ILS ;:::; translated by Lewis and Reinhold (:,oo) :.:;,,
and by Smith (:cc,) ::o); and the rules of the Guild of Zeus Hypsistos in Egypt, preserved in
a rst-century bce papyrus copy (for text, translation and comment, see Skeat, Roberts and Nock
(:,,o); and for translation, see Smith (:cc,) :co). See also van Nijf (:,,;), esp. :c;:c on banquets
held by professional associations in the Roman east; Harland (:cc,); Donahue (:cc) , and
(:cc,) :co on Roman club rules, with mention of a number of other key inscriptions, esp. the
laws of the College of Aesculapius and Hygeia from ce :,, (CIL o.:c:,=ILS ;::,). For further
brief discussion of club dining rules, see below, p. :,:.
,o
See Dunbabin (:cc,a) :c,c.
,;
On the burial society of Diana and Antinous at Lanuvium in Italy, see Hopkins (:,,) ::,:, and
Smith (:cc,) ,;:c:.
,
E.g. Douglas (:,;,), (:,;), (:,) and (:,;); Walens (:,:), esp. o;,o, for a vivid study of food
customs in the nineteenth-century Kwakiutl culture of northwest Canada; Counihan (:,,,) on
food practices and gender; Scholliers (:cc:); Wilson (:cc,).
:o Saints and Symposiasts
feasting in the west
The model of underlying continuity across different types of ancient dining
is also useful, nally, for understanding the interrelation between Greek
and Roman styles of commensality. All of the institutions of feasting men-
tioned above had equivalents in the west of the empire.
,,
In some cases
it is very hard to see a sharp dividing line between eastern and western
customs. Generalisations about Greek or Roman practice anyway risk
vastly underestimating the complexity and variety of ancient conviviality
in different places and different contexts. I should stress again, too, that a
full discussion of such issues of social history is not the main purpose of
this book.
That said, it may be helpful to lay out some of the differences between
Greek and Roman conviviality which, if nothing else, continued to have
rhetorical force within imperial culture. For now I conne myself to a com-
parison of the symposium and its Roman equivalent the convivium (which
was just as ancient in its origins),
:cc
leaving aside other forms of commen-
sality and hospitality.
:c:
The two institutions seem to have blended with
each other increasingly as the imperial period went on.
:c:
However, there
were also stereotypical differences, differences which were partly due to the
fact that the two institutions had evolved from different traditions and dif-
ferent social structures. The Roman dining-room(triclinium) was similar to
the Greek andr on, but nevertheless had its own distinctive architecture.
:c,
The convivium tended to be more often associated with an assumption of
inequality between guests, because of its status as a vehicle for Roman struc-
tures of patronage.
:c
The presence of high-status women was also more
,,
For discussion of the range of dining customs in Rome and the west, see Scheid (:cc,) ;,::c;
Donahue (:cc), esp. o, where he stresses both the inuence of Greek feasting on Roman
practice and the fact that Roman feasting had developed its own distinctive stamp by the late
republic, and (:cc,); Habinek (:cc,) ,,;, who argues for the importance of ritualised speech
in the Roman convivium as a key feature of its capacity to form community and to act out
hierarchy; Dunbabin (:cc,a) ;::c:; Stein-H olkeskamp (:cc,); also Garnsey (:,,,) :,o for a
good summary; and V ossing (:cc) for a wide-ranging collection of essays.
:cc
On which see Roller (:cco), who pays particular attention to dining posture.
:c:
On religious, sacricial feasting, see Donahue (:cc), who points out that sacricial feasting in
Rome was on the whole more hierarchical, and occasions when the whole city would be entertained
were much less frequent; the other obvious difference is simply that it was often tied to distinctively
Roman political and religious institutions, for example in the dinners of the priestly colleges of the
city, on which see Scheid (:,,c).
:c:
Cf. Nadeau (:c:c) ,,,c.
:c,
See Dunbabin (:,,) and (:cc,a) ,o;:.
:c
E.g. dArms (:,) and (:,,c); and Bradley (:,,) on the way in which this sense of hierarchy
extended even to family meal times; see also Garnsey (:,,,) :,o for convenient summary of the
convivium and its relationship with the symposium along similar lines.
Locating the symposium :;
readily tolerated in the Roman tradition.
:c,
In practice that willingness to
accept women at dinners seems to have inuenced Greek custom, at least
by the imperial period, but no doubt there were still plenty of occasions in
the Greek east where the stereotypical Roman custom of allowing women
to attend would have been resisted.
:co
Similarly, the rhetoric of frugality
had a slightly different function in Latin writing by comparison with its
Greek equivalents. Claiming that one culture was more frugal or more
luxurious than the other in reality would be an absurd generalisation, but
what we can say securely is that culinary frugality was, if anything, even
more likely to attract praise in Roman culture than it was in Greek; in
fact it was associated by some with stereotypical Roman virtue, dened in
opposition with Greek luxury.
:c;
We see a similar kind of (partial) cross-fertilisation between Greek and
Latin tradition within convivial literature. Many Latin writers imitated
Greek sympotic forms. The great republican scholar Varro seems also
to have written at least two satirical banquet works in the Menippean
tradition.
:c
Granius Licinianus wrote a miscellanistic work entitled Dinner
Party (Cena) in the second century ce. Apuleius, also in the second century,
wrote his own Sympotic Questions (Quaestiones Convivales). Neither of
those works survives.
:c,
We also know of banquet works by Maecenas (rst
century bce) and by Asconius Pedianus (rst century ce).
::c
Latin literature
is also very close to Greek in its concern with recommending particular
types of convivial conversation.
:::
However, the Romanness of Roman
convivial literature was rarely lost from view entirely. Horace, in his many
poems of invitation and descriptions of drinking, adapts the genre of Greek
sympotic lyric, but also overlays it with a strong sense of Romanness.
:::
In his Satires :., for instance, he gives an account of a pretentious dinner
party, including parody of erudite table talk, which functions in part as
a satirical comment on Roman piggy-backing on the Greek intellectual
culture of Platos Symposium
::,
(and which anticipates the account of the
dinner of Trimalchio in Petronius Satyrica, discussed in chapter :c, below).
:c,
See Roller (:cc,) and (:cco) ,o:,o for discussion of extensive evidence for womens dining
posture in Roman banquets.
:co
See Dunbabin (:cc,a) ::,, :, for cautious discussion of the difcult evidence.
:c;
See Stein-H olkeskamp (:cc:).
:c
See Gellius, Attic Nights :.::, o.:o and :,.::; Relihan (:,,,) ,,.
:c,
See Holford-Strevens (:cc,) :,, n. :o; on Apuleius, see also Martin (:,,:) :o;,.
::c
See Martin (:,,:) :c;.
:::
See Slater (:cc).
:::
E.g. Murray (:,,). For other work on Horaces adaptation of Greek sympotic writing, and his
treatment of food and drink, see (among others) Rudd (:,oo) :c::,; Johnson (:cc); Davis
(:cc;).
::,
See Gowers (:,,,) :o:.
: Saints and Symposiasts
One other important gure is Aulus Gellius, who in his second-century
ce Latin miscellany Attic Nights, includes several accounts of puzzle-solving
scholarly conversations held at sympotic gatherings,
::
in the style of
Plutarchs Sympotic Questions, a text that is referred to by Gellius sev-
eral times.
::,
Gellius describes learned men from the east and west of the
empire mixing easily, in a way which parallels the cosmopolitan quality of
his own learning, which mingles Greek and Roman inuences. In :.:, we
see Gellius himself, during his student days in Athens, dining at the villa of
the great Athenian orator Herodes Atticus, and watching Herodes deliver
a humiliating put-down to an arrogant young Stoic philosopher who was
showing off too much. The presence of famous Greek intellectuals like
Herodes and Favorinus in the work is just the most prominent sign of Gel-
lius commitment to a social circle and a sympotic culture which bridges
easily between east and west.
::o
Nevertheless the Romanness of his work
is strongly, assertively marked throughout,
::;
and he frequently imagines
distinctively Roman ways of performing sympotic conversation. Gellius
aim, like Horaces, is thus not only to show his respect for Greek culture,
but also, at least in places, to appropriate the Greek symposium and make it
compatible with distinctively Roman subject matter. In ,.:,, for example,
Gellius describes dining with Favorinus:
At the dinners of the philosopher Favorinus when the guests had reclined and the
serving of the food had begun, a slave standing by Favorinus table would begin to
read something either from Greek literature or from our own. For instance, one
day when I was present myself, a passage was read from a work by the learned
Gavius Bassus, On the Origins of Words and Names. (,.:,.:)
Favorinus is then described as interrupting the reading to comment on a
point of Latin vocabulary. It is striking here that the work under discussion
is a Latin work. Gellius seems keen to stress the cultural adaptability of the
symposium. Favorinus is an important gure for Gellius in that respect,
as a westerner who was renowned for his command of Greek rhetoric, a
gure who, like Gellius, can move between Greek and Latin culture at
::
Other examples of sympotic display of knowledge in Gellius not dealt with below include ;.:,,
:;., :.:, :,.;; see also :;.:c for a reading of Platos Symposium at the house of the philosopher
Taurus. For good discussion of Gellius sympotic scenes see Amato (:cc,) ,,,:; and Keulen
(:cc,a), esp. :,oc, :,, :co;, ::;:c, dealing with the wider context of Antonine taste for
playful forms of intellectual interaction, and their role as vehicles for self-fashioning and struggles
for authority,
::,
Cf. above, n. oo.
::o
On this passage, see Gunderson (:cc,) ::,,c and Keulen (:cc,a) ::;.
::;
See Keulen (:cc,a), esp. ,::; also Holford-Strevens (:cc,) o on his use and knowledge of
Latin language, a major feature of the work.
Locating the symposium :,
will.
::
He was also a friend of Plutarchs, and participant in the Sympotic
Questions, a sign of his acceptance within Greek intellectual culture.
::,
It
is also striking that the conversation in ,.:, takes place during the eating,
rather than in the symposium itself, as is generally the rule in Greek
sympotic tradition. Gellius perhaps signals by that detail the fact that this
banquet and its accompanying conversation is being conducted within a
Roman idiom, rather than following Greek sympotic tradition slavishly.
Conversely, Plutarch, as we shall see in chapter ,, regularly depicts Roman
and Greek guests together, but for him Romans are always in a minority,
and are always shown expressing their commitment to the philosophically
improving effects of Greek culture. For both Gellius and Plutarch, then,
the harmonious blending of Greek and Roman conviviality, or Greek and
Roman learning, is presented as a commonplace occurrence; but in neither
case are the differences between the two cultures elided entirely.
conclusion
In summary: what emerges most strikingly from this brief survey of ancient
conviviality is the resilience and adaptability of the symposium, both
as institution and, especially, as literary form. In neither case was there
unthinking continuity with the past: new kinds of social interaction and
new ways of writing were constantly being projected on to old frame-
works. Nevertheless the basic function of the symposium and its relatives
as spaces for imagining and enacting community continued to fascinate:
civic community, in the festive banquets of the cities in the east and west
of the empire; more exclusive elite community in symposia and convivia
in private homes over many centuries; and most importantly for chapters
: of this book, imagined scholarly and philosophical community, in the
sympotic miscellanies which followed in the wake of Platos Symposium.
In the chapters which follow we will see more closely how that fascination
could be adapted and channelled for new contexts and new audiences.
::
See K onig (:cc:); and cf. Attic Nights :.:: where we see Favorinus at one of his own dinner parties
giving an account of the names and quarters of the different winds, showing intricate knowledge
of the relevant vocabulary in both Greek and Latin.
::,
See Holford-Strevens (:cc,) ::c; Favorinus appearance in Plutarchs QC is at .:c.
chapter 2
Voice and community in sympotic literature
prefaces in plutarch and athenaeus
What do Plutarch (in the Sympotic Questions) and Athenaeus (in the Deip-
nosophists) tell us about the aims and attractions of their respective texts?
:
In
the rst section of this chapter I give some initial answers to that question,
with particular reference to their prefaces. I then offer some more gen-
eral reections on the appeal of sympotic miscellanies for ancient readers,
before returning to detailed discussion of Plutarch and Athenaeus in turn
in chapters , and .
Plutarchs programmatic statements in the Sympotic Questions are spread
out over nine different prefaces, one for each book. All of them have a
strikingly didactic character. In that sense they draw on long-standing
traditions, central to sympotic verse but also embodied in prose texts like
Platos Laws, of setting out rules for proper behaviour in the symposium.
:
Philosophical identity, for Plutarch, was something which should be acted
out in the smallest details of everyday life, embodied in discriminating
choices about how to speak and how to interact with others. The Sympotic
Questions claims to be able to teach its readers those skills.
The work is addressed to Plutarchs friend, Sosius Senecio, an important
Roman politician who seems to have come from the west of the empire,
and who appears as a speaker in a number of chapters in the work.
,
Sosius
:
For text of Plutarchs Sympotic Questions, see the three volumes in the Bud e series (Fuhrmann (:,;:)
and (:,;); Frazier and Sirinelli (:,,o)); English translation in the Loeb Classical Library series
(Plutarch, Moralia, volumes viii and ix); commentary in Teodorsson (:,,,o); also Scarcella (:,,)
on Book : and (:cc:) on Book ; Chirico (:cc:) on Book ,; Caiazza (:cc:) on Book :. For text and
commentary (also Italian translation) of Athenaeus Deipnosophists, see Canfora (:cc:), whose text
I follow here; and for text and translation, see Olson (:cco::), replacing Gulick (:,:;:) in the
Loeb Classical Library series.
:
See p. , n. ,c above.
,
See Swain (:,,o) :o; on Senecios western identity; even if Senecio did not come from the west
of the empire, as Swain claims, he nevertheless presented himself consistently as a Roman, and held
high positions in Trajans administration, as Stadter (:cc:) :,, n. :; points out.
,c
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,:
is addressed by name at the very beginning of the work, in the preface to
Book :. There Plutarch makes it clear that he and Sosius agree on the prin-
ciple that it is valuable to keep alive the memory of sympotic conversation
a view shared also by Plato and Xenophon and others, as Plutarch reminds
us. He also explains (o::e) that he is writing because Sosius has asked him
to. This rst preface is fairly vague about the specic reasons for viewing
this kind of record as valuable, but the address to Sosius Senecio hints at
the way in which it can both bring pleasure and at the same time have an
improving effect on individual lives (both for Sosius

and by implication
for other readers).
,
In later prefaces, Plutarch goes into more detail on what precisely the
Sympotic Questions has to offer. In preface , for example, he picks up
on the language of friendship which lies in the background to preface :,
suggesting that the friend-making character of the sympotic conversation
should be particularly prized.
o
He suggests that one should not break up
a symposium before one has gained the friendship and goodwill of one of
the other guests and fellow-recliners (ooca). Later in the same preface he
argues that sympotic conversation (sympotikos logos) . . . restrains those who
drink, and produces happiness and kindness and pleasantness, mixed in
with a sense of relaxation, if one engages in it harmoniously, since through
the action of wine they become as it were softened and susceptible to the
seal of friendship (oocc).
In preface , he takes a rather different approach, emphasising the power
of sympotic conversation to bring spiritual pleasure and spiritual nourish-
ment:
during drinking parties people of renement and good taste, in rushing on to
conversation after dinner as if to dessert, and in giving pleasure to each other
through talk which has little or nothing to do with the body, bear witness to
the fact that there is a private storehouse of luxuries for the soul, and that these
pleasures are of the kind which belong to the soul only, and that all other pleasures
are alien to it, being derived from the body. (o;:ef )
In preface o he then returns to the subject of memory, making explicit what
was hinted at in the initial address to Sosius, i.e. the principle that recalling

Cf. p. ;c, n. ,, on the repeated motif of Romans exposed to the improving values of Greek education
in this work and others by Plutarch.
,
See K onig (:cc,c) on the motif of writing for friends as a conventional way of helping readers to
visualise the usefulness of technical and miscellanistic texts.
o
For good discussion of this aspect of the work, see Frazier and Sirinelli (:,,o) :c,:; many of the
articles in Montes Cala, Sanchez Ortiz de Landaluce and Gall e Cejudo (:,,,), esp. Stadter (:,,,),
who deals with Plutarchs approval of moderate consumption of wine for its capacity to encourage
friendly interaction; Gonz` alez Juli` a (:cc,).
,: Saints and Symposiasts
sympotic conversation allows those who were not present to partake of that
nourishment for themselves, and those who were to relive the experience.
In the process he draws a characteristic contrast with less admirable kinds
of feasting:
The pleasures derived fromthings eaten or drunk bring with themmemories which
are servile and, besides that, evanescent like a stale smell or a lingering odour of
cooking, whereas the topics of problem-solving and philosophical conversation
(tpcnu:cv sci c,cv qicocqcv) give pleasure to those who remember
them, remaining always fresh and present, and also allow them no less to entertain
with the same material those who were not present themselves, but who partake of
the original occasion through hearing about it. That is why even today it is open
to erudite people to participate in and enjoy the Socratic symposia, just as it was
for those who were present as guests at the time. (ooc)
Here the spiritual pleasures of sympotic talk are described, as so often in this
text, through the language of eating and drinking. Through that imagery
Plutarchs text incorporates the material concerns of feasting in the form
of metaphor, replacing food and drink with words, and so elevating them
to a higher, philosophical plane.
Plutarchs work is thus in some ways a deeply serious one, which claims
to offer us an inspiring model for our own lives; it celebrates the friend-
making and philosophically pleasurable character of the best type of sym-
potic conversation both the experience of participating in it and also
the experience of reading about it after the event. The picture we gain
from Athenaeus Deipnosophists is very different. The Plutarchan idea that
sympotic miscellanism, as a genre, has an inspiring, didactic function is at
rst sight much harder to apply to Athenaeus. The conversation Athenaeus
reports is so blatantly unrealistic not least through its excessive length
and through the implausible, almost pathological erudition of its charac-
ters that it seems to be deliberately frustrating any attempt to take it as a
morally valuable model for day-to-day practice. There is an impression of
indiscriminacy in the vast accumulation of quotations the text presents us
with. Moreover the apparent triviality of the gastronomical topics under
discussion seems entirely at odds with Plutarchs idealisation of philosoph-
ical conversation and his denunciation of those whose memory is devoted
mainly to matters of food and drink. One of the recurring features of
Athenaeus work is the conict between two of the main speakers, Ulpian,
the symposiarch, who is often interested in talk at the expense of eating,
and the Cynic philosopher Kynoulkos, who is repeatedly criticised for his
gluttony (and in turn repeatedly criticises Ulpians metaphorical greed
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,,
for culinary knowledge).
;
By the criteria Plutarch sets out in his Sympotic
Questions and elsewhere, both of these varieties of gluttony, literal and
metaphorical, are to be avoided.

Luciana Romeri has recently offered a

more positive reading of these phenomena, drawing attention to the way
in which Athenaeus resists the Platonic, Plutarchan separation of food and
words, conversation and consumption, body and soul.
,
Nevertheless it is
hard to deny the difculty of taking the deipnosophists as role models,
and the difculty of extracting that message from the unwieldy bulk of the
text.
Athenaeus himself offers us little assistance in understanding what the
point of his work might be. As far as we can tell, the work opened with
a Platonic-style framing dialogue between Athenaeus and his interlocu-
tor Timokrates (the passage which survives as Deipnosophists :a-b), before
launching into Athenaeus account of the dinner conversation of the deip-
nosophists; there is no sign that it had a formal preface. However, the
works epitomator
:c
has composed a prefatory introduction to precede his
version of Athenaeus work in which he give us some hints about what he
himself nds attractive in the work (in a passage which has understandably
been much quoted in Athenaeus scholarship):
Athenaeus is the father of the work. He addresses it to Timokrates. Its name is
Deipnosophistes [i.e. Dinner-sophist]. The subject of the work is this: the Roman
Larensios, a man of distinguished position, has invited as guests the men most
learned of all his contemporaries in every branch of knowledge. Athenaeus has not
omitted any of their nest contributions to discussion. He has included sh in the
book, and the various ways of preparing them and the derivations of their names;
all kinds of vegetables and animals; authors of historical works and poets and wise
men; and musical instruments and many different types of jokes and different
types of drinking cup, and the wealth of kings and the size of ships and so many
other things that I could not easily mention them all, or else the day would come
to an end while I was still going through them category by category. And the order
of the work is an imitation of the richness of the banquet, and the structure of
the book reects the organisation of the dinner.
::
That is the kind of pleasurable
feast of words (logodeipnon) that the steward of the text, Athenaeus, introduces,
and outdoing even himself, like the orators of Athens, he leaps by steps through
the successive parts of his book, driven on by the ardour of his speech. (:a-c)
;
See Wilkins (:cccb) :,,c.

Cf. below, p. ,, on Plutarchs criticism of excessive garrulity.
,
See Romeri (:cc:) :,,,c (esp. ,:,,c, for conclusion).
:c
For discussion of the role of the epitomator in creating the text we have today, see Rodrguez-Noriega
Guill en (:ccc) and Arnott (:ccc).
::
Reading otitv rather than c,: for that reading, see Olson (:cco::), vol. :, ,; and for the
opposite view, Canfora (:cc:), vol. :, ,.
, Saints and Symposiasts
The epitomator celebrates here the enormous richness of the text, its accu-
mulatory ambitions, its determination to leave nothing out, and also its
commitment to miscellaneousness and variety (poikilia)
::
in other words
precisely the things which to modern taste often make it difcult to stom-
ach. The text parallels a feast in a very different way from Plutarchs:
the imagery of philosophical nourishment Plutarch uses so often is here
decisively rejected as the epitomator glories in a very different kind of
intellectual appetite, based on a greedy fascination with the literature of
food and drink.
:,
He playfully imitates the claim common in ancient ency-
clopaedic writing, that the encyclopaedia contains all of the world, along
with a condensation of vast amounts of previous literature, within itself.
:
Nor is the epitomator apologetic about his own task: the claim that the
day would run out before he could complete his catalogue is a comically
self-aggrandising echo of Odysseus claim in Odyssey ::.,,c that the night
would come to an end before he was able to tell his Phaeacian listeners
the full catalogue of the women he saw in the underworld.
:,
Athenaeus
deipnosophists themselves value highly the techniques of excerption and
abbreviation, as did others within the learned culture of the Roman empire;
in that context, the epitomators adoption of a self-aggrandising Odyssean
image for his own task is less absurd than we might initially think. Never-
theless, it is hard to avoid the impression of triviality by comparison with
Plutarchs prefaces.
knowledge in action
Plutarch and Athenaeus are thus in some ways very different from each
other. Can we nevertheless generalise about the appeal of sympotic miscel-
lanism in the Roman world from these two texts?
::
On poikilia in Athenaeus, see Lukinovich (:,,c) :o;; Wilkins (:cccb) ,: on :.,,a and o.:::a;
Whitmarsh (:cc;) o.
:,
For further discussion of this passage, with special reference to the relation between text and feast as
a guiding metaphor for the work, see Lukinovich (:,,c) and Romeri (:cc:) :,,o;; however, see
also Hansen (:cc,), who argues that many modern commentators have overstressed the degree to
which Athenaeus presents this as the account of a single banquet.
:
Wilkins (:cc;a) shows, through a comparison with Galens writing on food, how Athenaeus
continually borrows from but also sometimes comically subverts common techniques of technical
and compilatory writing; for the image of totality in Plinys Natural History, see among others Carey
(:cc,), esp. :;c.
:,
Cf. also Demosthenes, On the Crown :,o, for a closer parallel to the epitomators exact wording
here, along with other similar passages elsewhere in classical Athenian oratory: e.g. Lysias, Against
Eratosthenes : and Isocrates, To Demonicus ::; the epitomators comparison of Athenaeus with the
orators of Athens later in this quoted passage is another reason to think that he may have images
of oratorical abundance particularly in mind here.
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,,
The rst thing to stress is that the difference between them begins to
dissolve a little as soon as one looks beyond Plutarchs prefaces. Plutarch,
like Athenaeus, turns out to be obsessed with the accumulation of miscel-
laneous knowledge and quotation. The Sympotic Questions goes very much
further in that respect than the Socratic symposium tradition represented
in surviving classical literature by Plato and Xenophon which Plutarch
claims as his model. The abstruse literary and scientic discussions Plutarch
records often seem, to modern eyes, to fall short of his idealising claims in
the prefaces about nourishment and pleasure for the soul. A quick pr ecis
of Book : should make that clear. The ten questions discussed (all of them,
according to Plutarch, from different symposia) are as follows: Whether
one should philosophise at dinner, Whether the host should choose the
places for his guests to recline or leave it to them, Why the place at table
known as the consuls place came to be particularly honoured, What
sort of person the symposiarch should be, Why it is said that love teaches
the poet, Concerning Alexanders excessive drinking, Why old men take
more pleasure in strong wine, Why old men read writing better from a
distance, Why clothes are washed better in drinking water than in sea
water, Why in Athens they never used to judge the chorus of the tribe
Aiantis last. The concerns of the opening questions are close to the sub-
ject matter of Plutarchs prefaces, but the later questions of the book drift
away from a focus on proper conduct in the symposium or even on the
symposium at all into discussion of complex and abstruse questions of
science, literary interpretation and local history. All of the other nine books
are similarly miscellaneous. Occasionally we nd clusters of related topics
in successive chapters,
:o
but there is no overarching thematic structure.
Occasionally, too, Plutarch records an ongoing conversation from a single
party, divided between several successive chapters, but he almost never
uses that technique in an extended way. The only exception is Book ,,
which has fteen chapters (in contrast with the other books, which have
ten) all of which are taken from a single symposium, hosted by Plutarchs
teacher, the philosopher Ammonius; but even in this case the conversation
jumps around between a wide range of topics, leaving a strong impres-
sion of incoherence. Plutarch thus shares with Athenaeus, if nothing else,
a hunger for displays of obscure erudition, which at rst glance seem to
have little to do with the pleasures of the soul idealised in his prefaces.
Some modern readers may even experience a sense of disappointment and
dismay in confronting the text for the rst time, confused by the fact that
:o
See further discussion below, pp. ;:,.
,o Saints and Symposiasts
Plutarchs fantasy images of sympotic conversation are so recondite and
so alien to what we might expect from modern table-talk and even from
Plutarchs own prefatory statements of intent.
Histories of the ancient worlds sympotic literature have, perhaps for that
reason, often taken an unattering view of both of these sympotic accu-
mulations of erudition, seeing them as tedious and pedestrian imitators
of their more life-like classical predecessors, especially Platos Symposium
and Xenophons Symposium, which seem to give a more vivid and realistic
glimpse of real-life Greeks at leisure. That trend is in line with a tendency
to denigrate the Greek literature of the imperial period more generally for
its derivativeness.
:;
It is only recently that we have begun to appreciate
more clearly some of the attractions these later symposium texts must have
held.
:
I have discussed elsewhere the way in which encyclopaedic, compi-
latory composition played a prestigious part in the literary culture of the
Roman empire, much more so than in the modern world.
:,
Accumulation
of knowledge on paper was a recurring aim for imperial writers in a wide
range of genres. Common techniques and motifs of knowledge-ordering
are shared between many different authors and genres which seem at rst
sight to have little in common: historical and geographical composition,
miscellanistic writing, mythography and paradoxography, lexicography,
philosophy, scientic writing of many different types, technical and didac-
tic writing, and, in addition, an enormous range of texts which are barely
categorisable within any of those modern groupings; for example Plinys
vast and encyclopaedic Natural History. The authorial skills needed for
this kind of enterprise often seem to have been viewed not as deriva-
tive, functional, low-status skills as modern readers might at rst glance
imagine but instead as highly prestigious. What we nd in the impe-
rial period, in other words (anticipated to some extent in the Hellenistic
world) is a move towards the idea that rearranging and reactivating the
accumulated knowledge of the past may in itself be a major act of authorial
:;
On that tendency, see Whitmarsh (:cc:), esp. :,.
:
E.g. Romeri (:cc:) (drawing on a number of her earlier articles on the same subject, for which
see her bibliography, p. ,): she offers an excellent, close reading of Plutarch and Athenaeus and
Lucians Lexiphanes, although to my mind is a little reticent about the broader question of why these
texts might have mattered to any of their readers. See also p. :, notes ,, and ,o for a fuller list of
important recent publications.
:,
See K onig and Whitmarsh (:cc;b), and esp. the introduction (K onig and Whitmarsh (:cc;a)),
which includes bibliography covering important landmarks within other scholarship along similar
lines; also K onig (:cc;a) in that volume, for a reading of the Sympotic Questions, extended in
ch. ,, below; also K onig (:cc,a) oo;o and (:cc,c); and cf. Morgan (:c::) for the importance of
the miscellany as a major genre of the imperial period: the miscellany is a perhaps the dominant
genre, the heart and pinnacle of the literature of the Roman empire (,).
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,;
creativity.
:c
Many of the most prominent literary and political gures of
the imperial period wrote works of miscellanism or technical treatises in
prose. This was also, of course, a culture where techniques of memorisa-
tion, based on intimate knowledge of the writings of the past, played a
key role in education at all levels, and where the ability to manipulate the
resources of memory in rhetorical and even in conversational contexts was
highly prized. Both Plutarch and Athenaeus are representatives of those
wider knowledge-ordering trends. With that context in mind, the admira-
tion the epitomator expresses for Athenaeus gluttonous accumulation of
erudition becomes much less surprising.
There is more to say, however. Sympotic miscellanism does not simply
drawon that widespread compilatory obsession, it also makes a very distinc-
tive contribution to it. The symposium is a very special place for scholarly
accumulation. For one thing, sympotic literature seems to have been widely
viewed as a suitable context for presenting difcult, often technical material
in relatively accessible terms,
::
not surprisingly perhaps, given the preva-
lence of that idea in the early stages of the sympotic tradition: entertaining
and engaging treatment of philosophical themes had been a prominent
feature in the sympotic works of Plato and Xenophon. In addition, the
pleasures of consumption offered a powerful metaphor as we have seen
already from the preface passages quoted above for the pleasures of erudi-
tion and compilation. The heaping up of quotations came to be imagined
as equivalent to, or even intertwined with, the visual and bodily enjoyment
of feasting. Most importantly, situating encyclopaedic and miscellanistic
compilation within the context of sympotic conversation allowed authors
like Plutarch and Athenaeus to show knowledge in action, in other words
to show arguments and quotations deployed ingeniously within dynamic
processes of social exchange.
::
It has been increasingly recognised that mis-
cellanism in general is often very far from being a passive genre; it does not
necessarily aim simply at entertainment or backward-looking antiquari-
anism; it can function instead or as well as a vehicle for authors and
:c
See K onig and Whitmarsh (:cc;), esp. :;,c; also Lloyd (:,,:) ,,,; van der Eijk (:,,,) :,; Long
(:cc:) :,,.
::
E.g. Wilkins (:cc,) and (:cc;a) on the way in which Athenaeus wrestles with problems of technical
terminology surprisingly similar to those we nd in the medical works of Galen. For another example
of compilatory writing with a symposium setting not discussed further, see pseudo-Plutarch, On
Music (available in volume xiv of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Plutarchs works), and brief
discussion of the intertwining of sympotic form with scientic content by Bartol (:,,o).
::
See Goldhill (:cc,) on the importance for imperial Greek culture of what he calls anecdotes: small,
carefully packaged chunks of knowledge or narrative ideally suited for oral circulation and for the
kind of quotation and performance which displays cultural literacy (:::; and :c,:c on Plutarchs
Sympotic Questions).
, Saints and Symposiasts
readers to act out educational and moral principles and argumentative skills
which have striking relevance to their own cultures, actively appropriating
and reecting on the writing of the past rather than simply cutting and
pasting.
:,
That dynamic potential of miscellanism is unlocked in particular
when it is set within a sympotic frame.
:
Sympotic miscellanies were valued, moreover, not just because they
showed knowledge in action, but also because they had the potential
to draw their readers into dialogue. Both the Sympotic Questions and the
Deipnosophists are works which in different ways teach us how to talk. They
show us ingenious and learned symposiasts in action. They also prompt
us continually (especially in Plutarchs case) to form our own responses to
the questions under discussion, and to question our own understanding of
how to act out our relationship with the Greek heritage. Plutarchs fellow
guests are continually under pressure to contribute actively and ingeniously
to conversation, learning in the process to conform with the unwritten and
always debated rules of sympotic behaviour. Those lessons are applicable
also to us as readers, as we shall see further in chapter ,.
The idioms of conversation and argumentation with which these texts
confront us admittedly look very peculiar to modern eyes. In order to make
sense of them we need to understand that this was a culture which valued
highly the ability to reactivate the glorious Greek literary heritage, imitating
and quoting from earlier authors in ways which made their words inge-
niously appropriate for present-day contexts. Those skills like the skills
of rhetorical argumentation were badges of high status, based on years of
painstaking education. Many of the learned texts of the Roman empire, in
both Greek and Latin, were vehicles for the creation of a sense of commu-
nity between erudite members of the elite, based on their shared mastery
of the literature of the past,
:,
and expressed through competitive styles of
speech which were ideally suited to the symposium, with its traditionally
agonistic character.
:o
With that context in mind, Plutarchs high opinion
:,
I have learnt a great deal on that topic from Joe Howleys not yet published PhD thesis on Aulus
Gellius.
:
Jeanneret (:,,:) :oo; characterises the symposia of Plutarch and Athenaeus as indiscriminate
accumulations of knowledge (oddly, given that he elsewhere insists that the attraction of the
symposium form lies in its capacity to link literary imitation and erudition to real experience, e.g. in
his thought-provoking conclusion: :,,,). For a sympathetic attempt to show that Athenaeus is an
author to be read, rather than just a compiler of information, see Hansen (:ccc), although he tends
to stress the contrast between Athenaeus and other knowledge-ordering authors contemporary with
him, rather than the similarities.
:,
E.g. Johnson (:cc,), with special reference to Aulus Gellius.
:o
E.g. Schmitz (:,,;), esp. ::;,, on competition in wisdom at the symposium; and Lim (:,,,)
: on the representation of the debate in Plutarchs On the Intelligence of Animals, prompted by a
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,,
of the value of sympotic conversation begins to seem more compatible with
the actual detail of the discussions he records. Admittedly, we should not
ignore the fact that both Plutarch and Athenaeus are presenting us with
fantasy versions of elite sympotic conversation and sympotic community
(the same must have been true, of course, for Plato and Xenophon before
them). These are not realistic models for literal imitation. Nevertheless,
what Plutarch and Athenaeus offer us is a set of deliberately extravagant
and exaggerated images against which we are invited to measure up our own
activity. As we talk in the symposium, we may imagine ourselves in dia-
logue with Plutarch and his companions, or with the implausibly learned
deipnosophists, even as we are aware of the impossibility of matching their
erudition.
:;
In all of this, nally, it is important to stress that Athenaeus and (espe-
cially) Plutarch are not interested solely in information management, in
the question of how best to quote from and analyse earlier texts. The kinds
of knowledge they enact for us are as much as anything social knowledge,
the difcult, unwritten, always provisional and to some extent impro-
visatory rules about the right way to behave in the symposium, which as
we have already seen had always been viewed as an intimidating testing
ground for elite belonging. Crucial, for example, is good judgement about
how to avoid speech which is excessive, both in the sense of being too
lengthy, and so violating the shared character of sympotic conversation
a subject Plutarch gives explicit instruction on in another work, his On
Garrulity
:
and also in the sense of being insulting or inappropriate: the
question of how to tease ones fellow symposiasts without stepping across
the line into insulting mockery is the subject of Sympotic Questions :.:.
:,
In that light the ideas of friendship already referred to become much more
fraught and risky. How do we tell real friendship from its counterparts
in the arena of the symposium? How does sympotic friendship function
between individuals who might in other contexts be implicated in relation-
ships of hierarchy? Plutarchs treatise How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend,
which deals with precisely these issues, is deeply aware of those traditional
problems of sympotic ethics.
,c
sympotic dicussion the night before, and on the wider signicance of ludic disputation in imperial
Greek culture.
:;
Cf. Schmitz (:,,;) o,o on sophists as gures who were symbolic of elite superiority, and whose
command over prestigious rhetorical skills could be shared vicariously by members of the elite who
could never come close to matching them in practice.
:
For passages referring explicitly to sympotic garrulousness, see On Garrulity ,, ,c:f,c,a, , ,c,de
and ::, ,:c; and K onig (:c::b).
:,
See Van der Stockt (:ccc), esp. ,,.
,c
See Whitmarsh (:cco).
c Saints and Symposiasts
community with the past
The idea of community was thus crucial to the symposium, not just in the
sense that sympotic interaction could lead to the formation of community,
but also in the sense that the reader of a sympotic account could participate
in a sympotic community vicariously. The virtual community held out
to us by these texts is a community of present-day intellectuals, who
display, albeit in playfully exaggerated form, contemporary intellectual
accomplishments and anxieties. However, there is another crucial aspect
of sympotic community which we have not yet dealt with, and that is
the way in which participating in and reading about sympotic activity
allowed one to enter into community also with the past, through the act
of quotation from authors from the past, and through the invitation to
imagine connections between past and present practice.
,:
Plutarch implies
as much in the preface to Book o, already quoted:
the topics of problem-solving and philosophical conversation give pleasure to
those who remember them, remaining always fresh and present, and also
allow them no less to entertain with the same material those who were not
present themselves, but who partake of the original occasion through hearing
about it. That is why even today it is open to erudite people to participate in and
enjoy the Socratic symposia, just as it was for those who were present as guests at
the time. (ooc)
It is open to us, in other words, not just to imagine ourselves in conversa-
tion with Plutarch and his fellow-guests, but also even with Socrates, ve
centuries before, if we read Plato and Xenophon.
The appeal of the symposium both as cultural institution and literary
form must, in other words, have owed much to its antiquity. As I have
suggested already in chapter :, there must have been a certain thrill, for
anyone with a basic literary education, in acting out centuries-old sympotic
customs, drinking in the way that the texts of the archaic and classical
periods describe.
,:
That must have been the case even if we accept that the
symposiumwas not often practised in its old-fashioned formin the imperial
,:
My approach has some overlaps with Wiater (:c::) (which I had access to only in the nal stages
of revision), esp. :;,,,: on the way in which Dionysius of Halicarnassus conjures up an image
of exclusive intellectual community in his works of criticism, implicitly inviting or challenging his
readers to become a part of it, and on the way in which he imagines the authors of the past entering
into dialogue with those of the present.
,:
See above, pp. ::,. Cf. K onig (:cc,) :,:c for similar discussion of the way in which athletic
participation and victory commemoration allowed the athletes of the imperial period to act out
continuities between past and present.
Voice and community in sympotic literature :
period: there is no reason why guests might not have felt the resonance of
earlier sympotic texts even during a party which reproduced the form of
archaic and classical practice only very imperfectly. Indeed there must have
been, even within a symposium at the more archaising, traditional end of
the vast spectrum of convivial practices in the Roman empire, a sense of
the sympotic past as an alien and exotic world, and all the more tantalising
for that. Plutarch and Athenaeus both write for readers familiar with that
fascination. Both of them often show their guests discussing the origins and
development of certain sympotic practices, or the range of different literary
models available for handling a particular challenge of sympotic behaviour.
In doing so both of them give particular attention to information about
the classical and archaic past, and especially to information which goes
beyond what is commonplace, which can shed a new and unexpected
light on the variety and richness of the Greek sympotic heritage. That
insight is important in particular for Athenaeus, who repeatedly returns
to the consumption and conviviality of earlier times for example in
his long account of the banqueting customs of the Homeric poems in
Deipnosophists Book : as if he is attempting to set out a catalogue of all
the possible permutations of sympotic behaviour and sympotic etiquette.
Within that process of cataloguing, he gives a special focus to cases which
are odd, extreme, sensationalistic, ancient. Once again, there is an implicit
invitation in all of this to measure up our own day-to-day convivial practice
against these extravagant precedents, to see glimpses of connection as well
as vast gulfs of difference.
voices of the dead
Most importantly of all, perhaps, the symposium is a space which allows
the authors of the past as it were to enter into conversation with the
symposium guests and the readers of the present. The rest of this chapter
is devoted to setting that phenomenon within the wider context of ancient
culture and modern theory. That involves straying away at rst from the
subject of the symposium. I hope nevertheless that these pages will give a
suggestive rst indication of why the idea of dialogue with the dead was
such an important factor in the appeal of sympotic miscellanies to their
ancient readers.
Modern literature and modern scholarship of course know something
of the fantasy of hearing again the voices of the past, the fantasy that the
writer or reader in the present may be brought into conversation with
long-dead predecessors as if the time gaps between them can be abolished.
: Saints and Symposiasts
J urgen Pieters, in his recent book Speaking with the Dead,
,,
has examined
the rich history of this fantasy of communicating with the past, covering
authors as diverse as Petrarch, Machiavelli, Flaubert, Dante and Roland
Barthes. Conversation with the dead is also an image which has increasingly
been central to modern theories of reception: the processes of reading and
understanding, and the formation of self-understanding which is part of
those processes, require one to enter into dialogue actively with the texts
of the past.
,
For the ancient Greek and Roman world, that fantasy of speaking with
the dead through reading was, I would suggest, an even more prevalent and
potent one than it is for us. One reason for it may be simply the prevalence
of reading aloud in ancient Greek and Roman culture, which meant that
reading automatically involved ventriloquising the author and characters of
the work in question.
,,
It was also supported by ancient philosophical ideas
about reading. Platonic approaches to reading practice, from the classical
period onwards, had assumed intense psychological identication between
reader and represented characters.
,o
In addition, however, these ancient approaches to reading were linked
to a much wider fascination with the idea of communication beyond
the grave, running right through Greco-Roman literature and culture.
We can see something of that fascination in looking at ancient funerary
ritual and funerary customs.
,;
For example, Roman aristocratic funeral
processions would include actors wearing wax masks of the ancestors of
the deceased (although the function of these masks was primarily politi-
cal, to advertise the history and inuence of a particular family, and not
linked with individual cult of the deceased).
,
Feasting was often viewed
,,
Pieters (:cc,); Pieters takes his title from Stephen Greenblatts inuential New Historicist reading
of English literature and culture in the Renaissance, where he claims to be motivated by his desire
to speak with the dead: Greenblatt (:,) :; Greenblatt has also re-used that image in a number of
other contexts: e.g. Greenblatt (:cc) :,::; and cf. Pieters (:cc,) :, on Greenblatts interest in
Shakespeares powers of conjuration.
,
E.g. Jauss (:,,) :,;:,:; and on reception theory within Classics, Martindale (:,,,) :,,; and cf.
Pieters (:cc,) ::; on Greenblatts view of history as dialogical. Those theoretical approaches have
often drawn on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, which I discuss further below.
,,
See Slater (:cc;) ,;.
,o
See Halliwell (:cc:) ,:, and ;,: on the concept of self-likening or assimilation to the gures of
poetry (,:) in Platos Republic (although Halliwell also stresses repeatedly the difculty of extracting
any consistent view on mimesis from Platos work); and cf. Pieters (:cc,) , on Aristotelian ideas
about the power of language to make present before the eye of the beholder that which is presented
in words.
,;
Cf. Johnston (:,,,) for an account of interaction between living and dead in Greek culture, blending
discussion of ritual and literature.
,
See Flower (:,,o).
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,
as a time where one might act out a special link with deceased relatives.
Sarcophagi often portray the deceased drinking, and it was common to
hold banquets regularly outside the tomb of a deceased family member.
Many Roman tombs even have inbuilt banqueting tables at the entrance
to the tomb.
,,
The sense that feasting was a time for remembrance of dead
ancestors seems to have been common especially in Roman culture, in line
with the fact that family ancestry played such a key role in Roman elite
self-representation.
c
The fantasy of communication with the dead and access to the world of
the dead was also, of course, a staple of Greek and Latin literature. There
is space here to set out only a few landmarks in this rich history. The
classic example is the epic motif of descent to the underworld in Homer
and Virgil.
:
In Odyssey ::, Odysseus summons up the ghosts from Hades,
and speaks to his former companions at Troy, Agamemnon and Achilles and
others, before questioning the prophet Teiresias about his future.
:
Aeneas
similarly learns of the future history of Rome in a visit to the underworld
in Aeneid Book o. That motif has a vast and complex afterlife.
,
There is,
moreover, a long philosophical tradition of envisaging the afterlife of the
dead, stretching from Plato

through to Roman philosophical writing, for

example in Ciceros Dream of Scipio.
The examples I am most interested in here are those texts where access
to the underworld is used to convey ideas about engaging with the authors
of the past. Perhaps most famously of all, Aristophanes Frogs depicts the
god Dionysus journey to the underworld to bring back one of the great
tragedians from the dead to help the ailing city of Athens, and brings
Aeschylus and Euripides on stage to debate with each other. The theme of
seeking advice from poets or statesmen in the underworld also seems to
have occurred in other non-surviving comic plays from roughly the same
period.
,
It was also a common technique of ancient oratory to summon
up the dead, and in particular to imagine a long-dead gure speaking
through the mouth of the orator, or else the orator offering advice to some
gure from the past.
o
That trope is used over and over again by Latin
,,
Cf. above, p. :,.
c
For that suggestion see Habinek (:cc,) ,.
:
See Pieters (:cc,), with reference also to Dante and T. S. Eliot.
:
Similarly in Od. :.::c: we eavesdrop again on Achilles and Agamemnon and see the suitors
escorted down to Hades after their slaughter.
,
See Bompaire (:,,) for a survey of the range of models available to Lucian in his underworld dia-
logues, discussed further below; Kerkhecker (:,,,) :::; for rich discussion of the poetic background
to Callimachus, Iambi :, also discussed further below.

See esp. the Myth of Er in Plato, Republic o:bo::d.

,
See Kerkhecker (:,,,) :,:;.
o
See Dufallo (:cc;) ; for brief introduction.
Saints and Symposiasts
orators and poets.
;
It is frequently used for literary self-characterisation.
For example, in one of the founding texts of Latin literature, the epic
poet Ennius announces himself as the new Homer, explaining that Homer
has appeared to him in a dream to say that he has entered Ennius body.

Common also is the image of the speaking book, and especially the image of
books whispering to eachother, giving voice as independent and personied
embodiments of their authors words.
,
In Greek literature many of these motifs become prominent especially in
the Hellenistic world, as a way of articulating the poets relationship with
the past. Repeatedly in Hellenistic poetry that relationship is characterised
by a sense of loss and distance, but at the same time those feelings of
anxiety are often counterbalanced by the imagery of revival and intimate
access.
,c
The theme of death and communication with the dead offers a
powerful vehicle for communicating that kind of ambivalence. For exam-
ple, Hellenistic epigramoften depicts the afterlife of the poets in the Elysian
elds, where they are said to continue their singing.
,:
Epigrams inscribed
on gravestones (or composed as if inscribed on gravestones) are frequently
written in the rst person, or contain quotations of rst-person voices, as
if conjuring up the voices of the deceased from beyond the grave. We have
a number of epigrams in this category written as if for the gravestones
of poets.
,:
That motif is also sometimes transferred outside the epigram
form, in ways which have much in common with the oratorical tradition of
summoning up the dead already referred to. For example, there are several
surviving epigrams on the famously angry archaic iambic poet Hipponax,
urging the reader to tread softly as they walk past his tomb so as to avoid
waking him.
,,
The opening poem of Callimachus Iambics picks up those
themes and extends them. Callimachus imagines Hipponax returning from
the dead, speaking in the rst person: Listen to Hipponax. He seems to
blend with Callimachus own satirical persona, or even to take it over: it is
striking that he has not been invited back to the upper world, as Aeschylus
is in the Frogs, but instead seems to have come on his own initiative. Cal-
limachus himself becomes not just the instigator of the revival of a literary
;
Dufallo (:cc;) offers a rich and wide-ranging discussion of how its use in Latin literature changes
between the republic and principate.

See Dufallo (:cc;) :c, and Skutsch (:,,) :;o,.

,
See Hinds (:,,) on Ovids Tristia; Barchiesi (:cc:), esp. :o.
,c
See Bing (:,) ,c,c.
,:
See Kerkhecker (:,,,) :,:, citing, among many other examples, Anth. Pal. ;.:,, :; and ,c on
Anacreon.
,:
See Bing (:,) o:,.
,,
See Bing (:,) o,, with reference to Anth. Pal. ;.c, ;.,,o and :,.,.
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,
genre iambic but also more concretely and startlingly a vehicle for the
revival of Hipponaxs voice.
,
One other body of writing where the dead are given voice with partic-
ular frequency is Menippean satire. The precise boundaries of this genre
are debated.
,,
But for now it is enough to say that the term refers to those
ancient works in imitation of the writings of Menippus, which seem to
have consisted of fantastical, satirical narratives mingling verse and prose.
Menippus own works seem to have included a Nekuia or Descent to
Hades.
,o
Senecas Apocolocyntosis describes the emperor Claudius entry
into the underworld after his death, and his hostile welcome there.
,;
Con-
tact with the dead could also be combined with a banquet setting: Julians
Symposium or Caesars describes a balloon debate in heaven between the
former emperors of Rome, leading to the ejection of Constantine.
,
The
subgenre of the dialogue of the dead has an enormous post-classical legacy
in the Renaissance and after.
,,
Within the Greek literature of the imperial period, the most compulsive
user of this form (and the gure most inuential on its post-classical devel-
opment) is Lucian.
oc
In Lucians Menippus, for example, the philosopher
Menippus describes his descent to the underworld, made in an attempt
to further his understanding of human life. The Dialogues with the Dead,
many of them again starring Menippus, give us a similar glimpse of Hades
and similarly expose the vanity and absurdity of human life viewed from
below.
o:
In his Conversation with Hesiod, Lucians alter ego Lykinos takes
Hesiod to task for failing to full the promise he makes in his poetry
to prophesy the future. In his Fisherman, a crowd of deceased philoso-
phers rise up from the underworld to denounce Lucian for his slander of
them in his dialogues; Lucian makes peace with them and is acquitted,
on the grounds that his criticism was directed against present-day impos-
tors, rather than the great philosophers of the past. In these last works in
,
See Bing (:,) o,o; Kerkhecker (:,,) ::; Acosta-Hughes (:cc:) ::o:.
,,
See Relihan (:,,,), esp. ,,o.
,o
See Diogenes Laertius o., :c:; Relihan (:,,,) ,:, who sees the Nekuia as Menippus most
important work for the later Menippean satire tradition.
,;
See Relihan (:,,,) ;,,c.
,
See Relihan (:,,,) ::,,; and further brief discussion of this text below, pp. :,;:cc.
,,
E.g. Weinbrot (:cc,) o:, and ,:: n. ,; and on the afterlife of the Lucianic dialogue of the
dead in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe see also Bakhtin (:,a) ::o, and :,;; on
Dostoevskys use of that form in his short story Bobok, and on the possibility that he knew ancient
versions by Lucian and others.
oc
See Relihan (:,,,) :c,:.
o:
Cf. similar themes in the Charon and the Downward Journey.
o Saints and Symposiasts
particular Lucian indulges in the fantasy of having special intimacy with,
or access to, the authors of the past.
Perhaps the most famous and important example from Lucians work
comes from Book : of his True Stories, where he satirises the ideals of
conversation with the past while also simultaneously indulging in them,
as he does also in the Conversation with Hesiod. He describes an imaginary
voyage to the Isles of the Blessed, where he lives for some time in the
midst of a motley collection of mythical heroes and cultural icons from
the Greek past, among them the poet Homer.
o:
In the process he has the
opportunity to questionHomer at rst hand about some of the great puzzles
of Homeric scholarship (True Stories :.:c)
o,
questions which would not
look out of place among the erudite puzzles of the Plutarchan symposium.
For example, he quizzes Homer about his origins (Homer claims to be a
Babylonian who was taken to the Greek-speaking world as a hostage: the
word for hostage in Greek is homeros) and about why he began the Iliad
with the wrath of Achilles (Homer says that it just came into his head).
Lucians account appeals to an idealised image of open access to the Greek
heritage. At the same time he reminds us of its implausibility. Homers
absurd answers mock the whole culture of erudite pedantry and ingenious
etymologising. For example, they parody the industry of debating Homers
origins which was such a major preoccupation both in literary writing
and even in imperial Greek diplomacy, where envoys might display civic
pride and oratorical skill by inventing arguments for why Homer should be
viewed as a citizen of their own city.
o
Characteristically, Lucian suggests
that his self-important narrator may not be quite so highly thought of
among the inhabitants of the island as he claims: it is hard to avoid the
impression that the right answers which he prides himself for having
collected which will allow him to trump his less well-informed scholarly
colleagues on returning home may have been offered by the poet simply
to get rid of him.
o,
By that standard, conversation with the past may have
powerful appeal, but it also has frustration and unreliability built into it.
The image of the symposium also looms large in the work. The conver-
sations with Homer are not explicitly said to take place in the symposium,
but it is made clear elsewhere that communal feasting is one of the dening
o:
See esp. Zeitlin (:cc:) ::;; Kim (:c:c) :,o;.
o,
For commentary, see Georgiadou and Larmour (:,,) :cc,.
o
We even hear of claims that Homer was a Roman: see Heath (:,,); and see Heliodorus, Aithiopika
,.:, made in the context of post-dinner conversation, that Homer was an Egyptian.
o,
For example, we might suspect that the narrators unselfconscious persistence is being exposed in
VH :.:c, where we hear that I often used to do this at other times too, if I ever noticed that he was
at leisure, going up to him and asking him a question.
Voice and community in sympotic literature ;
activities of this community. The sound of music and conversation, as at
a symposium, is one of the rst sounds Lucian and his companions hear
on landing (:.,). He describes dining together with the inhabitants of the
Isles as a regular feature of his visit (:.::o, :.:, :.:,). At one point the
hero Ajax, son of Telamon, is brought before the judge Rhadamanthus:
Rhadamanthus rules that he should rst be cured of his madness, and only
afterwards should he be allowed to take part in the symposium (ut:tytiv
:c0 ouutcoicu) (:.;). Here the symposium stands almost as shorthand
for the island as a whole. The meadow where the symposia take place is a
magical place, surrounded by glass trees which grow cups instead of fruit,
and sprinkled constantly with ower petals, dropped by nightingales and
other song birds (:.:). The symposia are striking for their wonderful mix-
ture of participants: The songs sung most of all are the poems of Homer.
Homer himself is present and feasts with them, reclining above Odysseus.
The choruses are of boys and young girls. Eunomos of Lokris and Arion
of Lesbos and Anacreon and Stesichorus lead their singing and accompany
them (:.:,).
oo
Lucian here delights in the idea of an imagined community
of authors in the past in dialogue with each other, and where he as author
can enter into conversation with the characters he describes, just as Homer
does with Odysseus. That said, it is clear that this strange community has
its fair share of absurdity: if we indulge in the fantasy too readily we risk
looking rather ridiculous ourselves.
o;
Few other imperial authors confronted that image of conversation with
the dead in such literal-minded ways as Lucian. It is, however, a fantasy
which had many parallels within imperial Greek literature.
o
It was partic-
ularly common in sophistic rhetoric. Lucians world was a world addicted
to oratory. Sophists display orators and teachers of rhetoric were among
the great cultural superstars of the Greek east. Their prestige came in part
from the fact that they were able to give voice to the past through their
oratory, in a way which celebrated the continuing vitality and freedom of
Greek cultural tradition under Roman rule.
o,
That ability to give voice to
the past had a certain amount in common with the skill of creating enargeia
(vividness) through detailed description, which could conjure up a visual
scene (as opposed to a voice) before the eyes of a listening audience.
;c
As
oo
Cf. above, n. ,:, on the fantasy of poets continuing to sing in the underworld.
o;
See K onig (:cc,) ;,c.
o
Cf. Anderson (:,,,) o,, on the idea of communing with the classics; Swain (:,,o) ;,;; Kim
(:c:c) :,;.
o,
Cf. Whitmarsh (:,,,) :,: for that association between orality and freedom.
;c
See Frank (:ccc) :o:c for eloquent description.
Saints and Symposiasts
James Porter puts it, to read a text was to breathe life back into it and to hear
the past come alive before ones senses. Quotation was a way of parading
and especially performing the past, but it was also a form of reanima-
tion. Likewise, imitation was frequently a way of ventriloquizing classical
orators.
;:
One of the commonest forms of display oratory would see the
sophist speaking in the character of a gure from Greek history, in response
to either a real or imagined scenario. Joy Connolly has recently offered a
vivid discussion of these processes, stressing the dramatic element of this
kind of re-enactment.
;:
To take just one example, Philostratus in prais-
ing the style of the sophist Dionysius of Miletos, quotes from a speech in
which Dionysius portrays Demosthenes denouncing himself in the Coun-
cil after the battle of Chaironeia (:.::, ,::). We even hear that Dionysius
pupils became so obsessed with the pleasure of Dionysius oratory that they
learned his speeches and re-performed them. Here, remarkably, the voice
of the great sophist is treated in the same way as he himself treats the voices
of the past. This is not just a matter of rote memory, but instead (according
to some reports) involves creative refashioning, with some of them adding
one thing, some another, in places where he had been brief (:.::, ,:).
;,
The voice of Dionysius mingles with that of his students. Moreover, the
sophists, on Connollys account, were masters of a range of vocal styles:
Philostratus observations on the sophists interest in the styles of classical
models suggest that Aristides and his contemporaries marked their quo-
tations with vocal tones or gestures, which would help the audience identify
the original author at the very least, alerting them that a quotation was
being made.
;
Philostratus, in his Lives of the Sophists accordingly shows a
fascination with the voice of each of the subjects of his biography, in much
the same way as any other biographer might show an interest in his sub-
jects physical appearance. In addition he repeatedly returns to the image of
oracular speech to characterise their utterances, stressing both its antiquity
;:
Porter (:cc,) :c,; see also Porter (:cco).
;:
Connolly (:cc:a), esp. ,; also Gleason (:,,,): e.g. :o; on Polemo; and :, on Favorinus:
To assume and then assimilate personas was to become oneself; Schmitz (:,,,); Webb (:cco),
stressing, against Schmitz, that identication with gures of the past was never absolute, being
always in tension with the demands of the present, mediated through the sophists representation
in a way the audience would never have been allowed to forget.
;,
Cf. Webb (:cco) ,, on VS :.:c, ,o;, which describes imitation of Hadrian of Tyre (who was
himself expert at imitating other sophists) after his death.
;
Connolly (:cc:a) ;; and cf. Connolly (:cc:b) on the educational processes which lay behind these
skills, practised on a much less sophisticated level by pupils across the empire: the progymnasmaton
and melete, the rhetorical exercises in which the student assumed the voices of characters from
myth and history to gain practice in epideictic, deliberative and forensic types of speech-making
(,,c).
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,
and its quasi-divine potency.
;,
The voice matters for Philostratus in part
because it is the vehicle through which the sophist brings the past to life.
The Greek writers of this period, inuenced by these sophistic practices,
regularly take on the persona of an iconic gure from the Greek past: Dio
Chrysostomrepeatedly presents himself as a Socrates gure, or an Odysseus
gure;
;o
Lucian himself uses the same technique, most importantly in his
regular use of the persona of Menippus.
;;
Lucians portrayal of the conversation with Homer in the True Stories
is not in itself, however, a satire on these sophistic practices of vocal res-
urrection. If anything, as I have suggested already, it seems to be aimed at
scholarly practices which purported to explicate and interpret the words
of canonical authors.
;
It is no surprise, then, to see that the imagery of
giving voice to the authors of the past is prominent not just in sophis-
tic oratory, but also in compilatory writing in its many different types
scientic, technical, philosophical, encyclopaedic, miscellanistic which
tend to pride themselves on their knowledge of earlier sources.
;,
We nd
it as early as Plato, where the poet Simonides is brought into dialogue at
Protagoras ,,,a,;b, although in this case any sense of the immediacy of
Simonides voice is mitigated by the fact that Prodicus acts as an inter-
preter or defence lawyer, speaking on Simonides behalf; and it is striking
also that Socrates later (at ,;e,a) expresses his dissatisfaction with this
technique of bringing poets of the past into discussion, on the grounds that
they cannot be questioned, and prefers that people should rely on their
own powers of speech.
Images of dialogue with authors of the past are particularly common in
the compilatory writing of the Roman empire.
c
Seneca, for example, often
uses the imagery of forensic or senatorial debate to describe his engagement
with the philosophers of the past.
:
The Latin architectural writer Vitruvius,
rather differently, describes confrontation with the learning of the past in
terms of scholarly discussion with earlier authors, in the preface to Book ,
of his On Architecture:
;,
See esp. VS c: and frequent later mentions.
;o
See Moles (:,;), esp. ,o:cc.
;;
See Branham (:,,) :c,.
;
E.g. Jacob (:cca) ,,: on the genre of Homeric Questions, which stretched back at least to
Hellenistic Alexandria.
;,
Cf. Taub (:cc) ,, for the idea of intellectual community including long-dead authors in ancient
scientic and philosophical writing; and Too (:ccc) and (:c:c) ,::, on the idea that learned
individuals could internalise the texts they read so as to become walking libraries.
c
See also chapter : of my forthcoming volume Encyclopaedias and Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to
the Renaissance (edited jointly with Greg Woolf ) for related discussion.
:
See Hine (:cco) ,o.
,c Saints and Symposiasts
In addition, many people born in the future will seem to debate with Lucretius
on the nature of things as if face to face, or with Cicero on the art of rhetoric,
many of our descendants will hold conversation with Varro on the subject of the
Latin language, and many future scholars will seem to hold secret conversations
with the sages of Greece, consulting with them at length. In short the opinions of
wise writers, which ourish thanks to their antiquity, and despite the absence of
their bodies, when they become involved in our deliberations and debates, all have
greater authority than those who are present in person. Therefore, Caesar, I have
relied on these authors, having called upon their advice and their good judgement,
in composing these volumes. (,. pr. :;:)
Among Greek authors, Galen is fairly typical of the way in which the
exercise of doxography i.e. examination of the opinions of previous
authors in medical and other technical texts could be presented as a
dialogue or debate, with different authors allowed to express their opinions
in turn. His work On the Souls Dependence on the Body opens as follows:
That the faculties of the soul depend on the mixtures of the body I have
tested and investigated in many ways not once or twice but very often,
not on my own but rst of all with my teachers, and later with the best of
philosophers.
:
That nal phrase is a reference to the many philosophical
writers who are quoted in the rest of the work Plato, Aristotle and
Hippocrates in particular but it is striking that Galen, in equating his
own reading of their work with the face-to-face contact of a teacher-pupil
situation, prefers not to make it immediately and unequivocally clear that
he has dead rather than living philosophers in mind. Admittedly it is
striking that Galen every so often draws back from this conversational
image, keeping it at arms length, most forcefully so in ,:
,
According to Plato death occurs when the soul is separated from the body. But as
for the question of why great loss of blood causes that separation, or the drinking
of hemlock, or burning fever, if Plato himself were alive I would have been glad
to learn from him on that point. But since he is no longer alive, and since none
of the Platonic teachers has ever taught me the reason . . . I will venture to state
myself that . . . (,, K.;;,)
On the whole, however, the absence of Plato, which prevents him from
explaining himself, does not stop Platos voice from sounding in the text.
What it means is simply that Galen himself comes to act as Platos mouth-
piece (as also for Aristotle and Hippocrates

and others). Over and over

again he makes decisive and authoritative judgements on what Platos
:
:, K.;o;.
,
Cf. ,, K.;;,: we must ask Aristotle, or rather his followers.

On Galens reinvention of Hippocrates in his own image, see Lloyd (:,,:).

Voice and community in sympotic literature ,:
opinion was, quoting at length, criticising and contradicting those who
set themselves up as Platonists without fully understanding their masters
views.
,
These kinds of metaphor clearly also appealed to antiquarian, miscel-
lanistic writers (as far as those categories are separable from those already
discussed).
o
Erik Gundersons reading of Gellius draws on that image
repeatedly to describe Gellius practice, citing a number of examples.
;
Antiquarian writing, he suggests, is about nothing so much as an embrace
of the polyphonous alterity of the community of scholars and of the archive.
Antiquarian writing is lled with voices. Reading generates a self that is
thoroughly authored by the authors thereby consumed and digested.

It is important to stress (as we will see for Plutarch) that these images
of conversation are not completely dominant. Compilatory authors some-
times prefer to discuss the ways in which they have collected material, view-
ing quotations as objects rather than utterances. The encyclopaedic and
miscellanistic writing of the Roman empire, unlike performance oratory,
could never escape from its own writtenness.
,
These images of conver-
sation with the past are always eeting and circumscribed. Platos famous
passage in the Phaedrus (:;,de), where Socrates draws attention to the
limitations of writing, which is unable to answer back, as the spoken word
does, exercises a strong hold in post-classical literature.
Nevertheless, the metaphor of speech is a very popular way of describing
the continuing inuence of ancient texts. Moreover the symposium, as we
shall see, was a literary space which allowed for a particularly rich version
of that process of entering into dialogue with the past. The authors of
the Greek heritage are brought into conversation not simply quoted,
but argued with and rephrased, in much the same way as the symposiasts
argue between themselves. Plutarch and Athenaeus also of course preserve,
reactivate, absorb the voices of the dinner guests themselves. The literary
symposium was traditionally a space where the description of sympotic
conversation could blur with the framing which contained it. Platos Sym-
posium, for example, does not give us an unmediated account of the event,
but presents it instead as an account by someone called Apollodorus, who
,
E.g. ::, K.:;:.
o
See also Wiater (:c::), esp. ,cc:c for examples from Dionysius of Halicarnassus of verbatim
quotations which allow classical authors to speak for themselves and so to join in with the virtual
interaction between author and readers.
;
See Gunderson (:cc,) ::, on NA :c.:o, ::,,c on :.: and :o; on :.,.

Gunderson (:cc,) :,:.

,
Cf. Whitmarsh (:,,,), esp. :,: for a similar tension in the pseudo-Lucianic Nero (now ascribed
to Philostratus).
,: Saints and Symposiasts
has heard it from Aristodemus, who was present at the symposium himself,
which took place many years before. The result is that we can never be
sure quite how much of what we are hearing is the actual words of Socrates
and his companions, and how much we should ascribe to the contribu-
tions of Aristodemus and Apollodorus, modied over many intervening
years.
,c
Past and present thus turn out to be inextricable from each other
in our experience of the symposium, as the words of the original banquet
are grafted on to the words of the present moment of their narration by
later narrators. As we shall see in chapter , Athenaeus offers a complex
extension of that technique of blurring between reported conversation and
framing narrative. In doing so he shows us the authors of the past speaking
through the mouths of the learned dinner guests whose conversation he,
in turn, brings back to life.
bakhtin and literary voice
Finally in this chapter, there is one body of theoretical material which offers
some particularly suggestive starting-points for examining these ideas about
literary voice in more depth, and that is the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and
those who have applied and extended his approaches in recent decades.
,:
This book does not pretend to offer a sustained Bakhtinian reading of the
literature of the symposium, still less to make an innovative contribution
to Bakhtinian scholarship, but it will nevertheless be useful to lay out some
key questions which arise from Bakhtins work, and which will be useful
reference-points every so often in what follows, in the hope that they will
allow us to generate some fresh insights into the ancient texts.
For Bakhtin all human expression is dialogical, in the sense that it is
in dialogue with the multi-faceted linguistic and social background from
which it emerges and to which it is in turn directed. Tzvetan Todorov sums
up those ideas eloquently as follows: Intentionally or not, all discourse
is in dialogue with previous discourses on the same subject, as well as
with discourses yet to come, whose reactions it foresees and anticipates.
A single voice can make itself heard only by blending into the complex
choir of voices already in place. This is true not only of literature but of all
voices.
,:
That process of dialogic utterance is always a social act, involving
,c
See Henderson (:ccc).
,:
For introduction, see, among many others, Todorov (:,), Morson and Emerson (:,,c); and for
application of Bakhtins work to classical texts, see Miller and Platter (:,,,); Branham (:cc:) and
(:cc,b).
,:
Todorov (:,) x; cf. Bakhtin (:,:) :;: for the prose writer, the object is a focal point for heteroglot
voices among which his own voice must also sound; these voices create the background necessary
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,,
an actual or implied audience: meaning (communication) implies com-
munity. Concretely, one always addresses someone, and that someone does
not assume a merely passive role (as the term recipient could lead one to
infer): the interlocutor participates in the formation of meaning.
,,
Some types of literary writing, according to Bakhtin, do their best to shut
out that multi-faceted, polyvocal character of language, attempting to stress
their own singleness and consistency of voice; others, however (sometimes
labelled by Bakhtin as dialogic, even though he also in different contexts
uses that term to describe the processes inherent in every act of human
communication) do the opposite, revelling in the richness of the competing
voices and tones and perspectives which are woven into them, dramatizing
as complexly as possible the play of voices and contexts enabling speech or
writing as social acts.
,
Bakhtinplaced epic and lyric inthe former category,
the novel in the latter. All authors, on that model, have the mingled voices
and accents of countless others speaking through them at any one moment.
Some, however, are more self-conscious than others in their exploitation
of that phenomenon.
,,
Some authors, in Bakhtins account, take those
techniques so far as to achieve an effect he calls polyphony, which involves
bringing into dialogue a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and
consciousnesses.
,o
That involves, in other words, the free play of different
perspectives on the world within a single text, each (including the authors)
as valid as the others.
There is one particular set of techniques, viewed by Bakhtin as charac-
teristic of the novel in particular, which lie at the heart of all these dialogic
effects, and that is the presentation of utterances which seem to blend two
different voices, or to contain within them the marks of dialogue with some
unnamed other what he refers to as double-voiced speech.
,;
One of the
ways in which that effect is sometimes achieved is through a set of closely
related techniques, where the speaker temporarily adopts an alien style of
speaking which is grafted on to his or her own with implied quotation
marks. Bakhtin identies a number of different kinds of double-voicing,
including stylisation (occurring when the speaker and the other voice he
for his own voice, outside of which his artistic prose nuances cannot be perceived, and without
which they do not sound.
,,
Todorov (:,) ,c.
,
Morson and Emerson (:,,) ,:.
,,
E.g. Lodge (:,,c) ,c,, esp. ,: One could develop a typology of genres or modes of writing
according to whether they exploit and celebrate the inherently dialogic nature of language in living
speech or suppress and limit it for specic literary effects.
,o
Bakhtin (:,a) o; and see Morson and Emerson (:,,c) :,:o for exposition.
,;
See esp. Bakhtin (:,:) :,,:: and (:,a) :::o,; Todorov (:,) ;c; Morson and Emerson
(:,,c) :o,,.
, Saints and Symposiasts
uses are essentially in agreement) and parody (where they are in conict).
As an example, we might look at Bakhtins analysis of a passage from
Dickens Little Dorrit:
The conference was held at four or ve oclock inthe afternoon, whenall the region
of Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was resonant of carriage-wheels and double-
knocks. It had reached this point when Mr Merdle came home, from his daily
occupation of causing the British name to be more and more respected in all parts of the
civilized globe capable of appreciation of worldwide commercial enterprise and gigantic
combinations of skill and capital. For, though nobody knew with the least precision
what Mr Merdles business was, except that it was to coin money, these were the
terms in which everybody dened it on all ceremonious occasions . . . [book :,
ch. ,,]. The italicised portion represents a parodic stylisation of the language of
ceremonial speeches (in parliaments and at banquets) . . . Further on and already
in the language of the author (and consequently in a different style) the parodic
meaning of the ceremoniousness of Merdles labours becomes apparent: such a
characterisation turns out to be anothers speech, to be taken only in quotation
marks (these were the terms in which everybody dened it on all ceremonious
occasions).
,
Double-voicing also occurs in scenes where the speakers words are uttered
in dialogue with an imagined and absent other. Here, for example, is
Bakhtins account of Raskolnikov, the hero of Dostoevskys novel Crime
and Punishment:
Characteristically his inner speech is lled with other peoples words that he has
just recently heard or read . . . He inundates his own inner speech with these words
of others, complicating them with his own accents or directly reaccenting them,
entering into a passionate polemic with them. Consequently his inner speech is
constructed like a succession of living and impassioned replies to all the words of
others he has heard or been touched by, words gathered by him from his experience
of the immediately preceding days.
,,
How helpful are these ideas for our understanding of the sympotic
miscellanies of the ancient world? Bakhtins concept of polyphony needs
particular care. He viewed it as the culmination of the dialogic techniques
already discussed, and he represented it as the invention of Dostoevsky.
:cc
,
Bakhtin (:,:) ,c,. David Lodge has written at length along similar lines about the ways in which
Bakhtins categories can be applied to twentieth-century ction, with reference to authors like
James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence: see Lodge (:,,c) :,;; also Pearce (:,,) c::: for a survey of
other attempts to apply Bakhtinian ideas of dialogue by contemporary literary critics.
,,
Bakhtin (:,a) :,; and on this technique see Morson and Emerson (:,,c) ,:,.
:cc
E.g. Bakhtin (:,a) ::::: the ancient menippea does not yet know polyphony; however, see
also Plaza (:cc,) for a careful examination of the question of whether we nd something like
Dostoevskian polyphony in Petronius Satyrica.
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,,
I am certainly not claiming that any of the texts I discuss in this volume
are polyphonic in that sense. I have therefore preferred terms like multi-
vocal to describe in a non-technical sense the combination or interaction
of different voices. Moreover, ancient narrative in general shows very little
sign of the second of the two categories just referred to, that is the tendency
to represent the complex inner life of a character as a process of internal
dialogue.
:c:
Nevertheless, a wide range of recent studies not just on prose texts
like the Greek and Latin novels, but also on verse have shown that
ancient literature contains plenty of examples of the rst of Bakhtins
broad categories of double-voicing. The ancient habit of interweaving
quotations from earlier authors into the texture of newly created works
clearly sometimes produces effects of stylisation and parody as Bakhtin
denes them (although Bakhtin himself has relatively little to say on the
way in which double-voicing can be achieved through and within the act
of verbatim quotation from earlier literature, and offers only occasional
hints in that direction).
:c:
The Socratic dialogue form has recently been
characterised in Bakhtinian terms as a form which aims at incorporating
and reshaping/parodying a great range of other genres.
:c,
The ancient
novels have also been seen as particularly fruitful hunting grounds for this
kind of technique, and Petronius especially has regularly been characterised
as a strongly dialogic text in recent scholarship.
:c
One might feel, admittedly, that the sympotic miscellanies the late and
pedantic descendants of Platos Symposium are not the most promising
place to look for dialogic writing (in Bakhtins sense of the term) in
Greek and Roman culture. For the most part the many-voicedness of the
ancient sympotic miscellanies is a less subtle, more explicit phenomenon
than Bakhtins double voicing: in the ancient symposium, in other words,
the different quoted source texts tend to be distinguished from each other
:c:
See Morson and Emerson (:,,c) ,, on Bakhtins sense that it was largely absent from ancient
narration.
:c:
E.g. Bakhtin (:,a) :c for parodically reinterpreted citations listed among the things which
give the ancient seriocomic genres their multi-toned character. More helpful in relation to these
practices is the large body of recent scholarship on intertextuality (as dened by Julia Kristeva
with reference to Bakhtin, e.g. Kristeva (:,c) ,o,:) in classical, and especially Latin literature: see
Hinds (:,,) for starting-points. However, see also Batstone (:cc:), esp. :c;, who stresses the fact
that intertextuality in itself does not necessarily produce dialogism in the strong sense (i.e. the kind
of dialogism which dramatises self-consciously the dialogue between different views of the world,
as opposed to the kind of dialogism, in the weak sense, which is inherent in all human discourse);
cf. Morson and Emerson (:,,c) ,:,:; for the same point.
:c,
See Nightingale (:,,,), esp. o on Bakhtin and Todorov; and the brief comments of Bakhtin (:,:)
:,.
:c
See N. W. Slater (:,,c); Plaza (:cc,) :,,:cc.
,o Saints and Symposiasts
very carefully and clearly, rather than being fully integrated into the words
of the author and his characters.
Nevertheless I want to suggest that Bakhtins ideas have some relevance,
and that approaching these texts with Bakhtinian dialogism in mind can
help us to open up new questions, and to appreciate more clearly some
of their fascination. To be more specic: I want to suggest in some of the
later chapters of this book that we do encounter in sympotic miscellanism
the idea of source texts inltrating themselves into a speakers voice. As
we shall see in chapter , that is particularly the case for Athenaeus Deip-
nosophists where it is frequently made difcult for us to keep track of whose
words we are hearing at any one moment those of author, symposiast
or quoted text. And that may in turn have been one of the reasons why
Bakhtin sensed in these texts at least the rst glimmers of the techniques he
admired so much in the post-classical novel tradition. Certainly many of
Bakhtins passing comments on what he refers to as ancient seriocomic or
Menippean writing (he uses the term Menippean in a much less precise
sense than those scholars who have studied Menippean satire as an ancient
genre),
:c,
a category which for him included the sympotic miscellany,
:co
resonate with the points I have been making about the literary symposium,
and provide some encouragement to explore further these texts dialogic
characteristics.
:c;
In characterising the ancient seriocomic genres more gen-
erally, for example, he stresses not only their deliberate multi-styled and
multi-voiced nature,
:c
he also speaks of their tendency to bring past and
present into contact, in ways which are strikingly appropriate to the sym-
potic enterprise: In these genres the heroes of myth and the historical
gures of the past are deliberately and emphatically contemporized; they
act and speak in a zone of familiar contact with the open-ended present.
:c,
Bakhtins ideas about double-voicing are not, therefore, straightfor-
wardly applicable to sympotic authors like Plutarch and Athenaeus.
:c,
See Bakhtin (:,a) :c:c; for similarly broad application of that category, developed indepen-
dently, see Frye (:,,;) ,c,::; for criticism of this kind of very broad usage, see Relihan (:,,,)
,::; Weinbrot (:cc,), ::,.
:co
See Bakhtin (:,a) :c;, :: and ::c; also (:,:) ,:,.
:c;
That makes it all the more odd that his work has had almost no attention in modern scholarship on
ancient sympotic miscellanies (although that neglect must be partly due to the fact that Bakhtins
discussion of ancient texts is often brief and unnuanced). The obvious exception is Jeanneret (:,,:),
whose whole approach to the classical and Renaissance symposium genre is informed by Bakhtinian
concepts of polyphony, although he does not at any point discuss their signicance for Plutarch
and Athenaeus in particular; see also Whitmarsh (:ccc) ,;:, n. : for brief acknowledgement of
Bakhtins interest in Athenaeus.
:c
Bakhtin (:,a) :c.
:c,
Bakhtin (:,a) :c; cf. ::: on the Lucianic genre of the dialogue of the dead, in which people
and ideas separated by centuries collide with one another on the dialogic plane.
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,;
Nevertheless they do offer us some suggestive models, so long as we sup-
ply the appropriate adjustments and caveats, for thinking about the uses
of voice and quotation in the symposium tradition, and so more broadly
speaking for understanding ways in which the readers of these texts might
have perceived a special kind of richness and complexity within the sym-
potic miscellanies of the Roman empire.
Finally
::c
in postscript a brief word on the relevance of Bakhtins
ideas of carnival may be helpful. Bakhtin sees the medieval carnival as an
institution for freedom from authority, linked with the liberating force of
carnivalesque laughter. And he argues that certain literary works harness
that power within textual form, partly by their strategy of mixing ofcial,
high language with vernacular speech. He traces these phenomena back
beyond the medieval world, to classical institutions and literary forms,
for example to the genre of Menippean satire already discussed, and to
the Roman festival of the Saturnalia, which had a reputation as a time for
licensed overturning of social norms, when masters would serve their slaves
at table, and which was often the setting for erudite sympotic literature,
for example in works by the emperor Julian and by Macrobius in the
fourth and fth ce centuries respectively (more on those in the chapters
following). Part ii of this book glances at ideas of carnival in discussing the
transgressive consumption of Greco-Roman and early Christian ction,
where it is a more obviously useful point of reference.
:::
Encyclopaedic
and miscellanistic works like those of Plutarch and Athenaeus, and indeed
Macrobius, are not at rst glance the best places to look for Bakhtinian
carnival within ancient literature; the sobriety of Plutarch and his fellow-
guests is in some ways far removed from carnivalesque overturning of social
hierarchies.
:::
Nevertheless the idea of carnival has some relevance even for
Part i. Caryl Emerson speaks of a carnivalesque ideal of plenitude without
accumulation, and practices of list-marking which prove nothing except
::c
One important additional issue, which there is no space for here, is the fact that dialogue, in
Bakhtins view, is central to social self-formation, as well as to literary creativity: our selves are
always formed through and against the background of the materials society and tradition make
available to us; selfhood, by that model, is itself a kind of authorship, formed through the constant
experience of dialogue with the world. For discussion of these issues, see Holquist (:,,c) :;,;
Bakhtin (:,a) :,, with Morson and Emerson (:,,c) oc for Bakhtins use of the image of the
symposium to describe this process; also Bell and Gardiner (:,,) for Bakhtins inuence on the
social sciences. The table-talk texts of Athenaeus and (especially) Plutarch and others are interested
in those processes too: both of them show us symposiasts struggling to assert their own voices and
their own identities through their dialogue with behavioural conventions and quoted authorities
from the past.
:::
See below, pp. :,o for further discussion and bibliography.
:::
However, see Bakhtin (:,b) :, n. ;c and ,,, for brief mention of the limited inuence of
sympotic authors like Plutarch and Athenaeus on Rabelais carnivalesque writing.
, Saints and Symposiasts
that the richness of the material world is inexhaustible and not to be
contained within it, which takes the sober, archaic genre of the catalogue
and the inventory and makes it joyous and fertile.
::,
The inventorising
exuberance of Athenaeus deipnosophists, who always have room for one
more quotation, just as Plutarchs Sympotic Questions always has room for
one more argument, implausibly ingenious arguments included, clearly
has a certain amount in common with these carnivalesque ideals. They
also have some resonances with the concept of unnalisability, which is
central to Bakhtins views on both social and literary creation: the idea that
the dialogic processes of expression are always ongoing, never complete.
::
That said, it is important to stress that carnival and dialogue, for Bakhtin,
are never purely chaotic forces. What Bakhtin is interested in instead is
the tension between the free play of voices and the forces which limit and
constrain that freedom, controlling and channelling human expression in
ways which seek singleness of meaning.
::,
That tension, between chaos
and control, between endless proliferation and authoritative utterance, is
central to all four of the key texts I examine in Part i. For both Plutarch
and Athenaeus, the rich reactivation of the voices of the past in the sympo-
sium, and the atmosphere of indeterminacy traditionally associated with
sympotic speech, are a key part of its attraction. At the same time, for both,
the liberating powers of sympotic proliferation are potentially problematic
if they are indulged too far. For example, Athenaeus deipnosophists, as we
shall see, immerse themselves gleefully in the virtual world of the library,
itting from one quotation to the next in ways which look at rst sight
chaotic; indeed Athenaeus shows us repeatedly how their own voices are
in danger of getting lost from view, drowned out by the clamour of quo-
tations for which they act as mouthpieces; and yet they too, when we look
closely, use very sophisticated methods for keeping their quoted material
under control, helping their interlocutors, and us as readers, to follow the
thread of their conversation. As we shall see in chapters ,, these tensions
between proliferation and control, are if anything even more apparent for
Christian and late antique sympotic writing, which is often very wary of
the dangers of excessive individuality and ingenuity or else the dangers of
::,
Emerson (:cc:) :,.
::
See Morson and Emerson (:,,c), esp. ,oc.
::,
As Michael Holquist has pointed out, many readers nd it tempting, on rst approaching Bakhtins
work, to feel that it is relatively easy, by comparison with other theoretical approaches to literary
writing, with the risk that his work can become drastically oversimplied in its application: Such
categories as Bakhtinian carnival or polyphony, come to mean nothing more than a liberating
licentiousness in the rst case and no more than multiple point of view in the other: Holquist
(:,,c) :c. Cf. Morson and Emerson (:,,c) , for good discussion of these issues; also Whitmarsh
(:cc,b) on the ancient novels.
Voice and community in sympotic literature ,,
excessive proliferation and indeterminacy which are inherent in sympotic
speech. The voices of the past come to life, then, within the literary sym-
posium, and that is one central reason for its continuing appeal. They are
never given free play, however: they must be controlled and channelled and
used responsibly, according to the demands of the particular community
to which they are addressed.
chapter 3
Plutarch
plutarch and the symposium
Plutarch, as we have already seen, believed passionately in the value of
sympotic community and sympotic conversation. The Sympotic Questions,
more obviously so than most other ancient miscellanies, is a strongly
didactic work. Plutarch aims to draw us into the community he depicts,
and to teach us its characteristic styles of speech. Illustrating that process
in more depth is the main aim of this chapter.
:
I want to look rst, however, at the wider context of Plutarchs other
writing, in order to show how much it has in common with the Sympotic
Questions. For example a number of his other works show a very similar
interest in recommending habits of independent, philosophically inspired
response within all areas of intellectual activity. In some cases, moreover,
those habits of thought are linked explicitly with the institution of the sym-
posium. Plutarchs On Listening is a case in point.
:
The work is addressed
to a young man named Nikandros, who has recently reached adulthood.
Plutarch opens the work by urging him to take reason as his guide in life,
and to draw on his childhood education in philosophy. He then turns
specically to the subject of hearing. The sense of hearing, he explains,
can be dangerous if misused; Nikandros must cultivate a style of listening
which is obedient and attentive, but also selective and sceptical, rather than
passive and unreective: for the mind does not require lling like a vessel,
but rather, like wood, needs only a spark, which will produce an impulse
towards inventiveness, and a desire for the truth (:, c). The rest of
the dialogue illustrates those claims. Throughout the work, the sympo-
sium is mentioned repeatedly, both as a context for the styles of listening
Plutarch has in mind and as a metaphor for them. In o, for example, he tells
:
For brief summary of the text see above, p. :o; for Plutarchs listing of his predecessors, p. ::; for the
prefaces, pp. ,c,:; for details of available texts and translations, p. ,c, n. :.
:
See Goldhill (:,,,) :co; for brief discussion.
oc
Plutarch o:
Nikandros that it is good to listen affably, as though one is a guest at a
banquet, in other words not in a spirit of rivalry, but also not in a way
which suppresses ones capacity for criticism:
When speakers are successful, we should assume that they are successful not by
chance or spontaneously, but rather through their care and hard work and study,
and we should imitate these qualities, feeling admiration for them and a desire
to emulate. When speakers make mistakes, on the other hand, we must turn our
minds to the question of what the reason for the error was and where it came
from. (o, cb)
Similarly in :c we hear that we should be willing to listen respectfully, but
also be ready to contribute problems for discussion when that is appropri-
ate, just as an ideal symposiumguest would do. And in :, Plutarch explains
that we should avoid the temptation of passive listening, like those who
sit back and enjoy themselves at a dinner party while others do the work.
Rather we must work together with the speaker, criticising our own argu-
ments as much as his. Mutual respect and co-operation between listener
and speaker are the hallmarks of Plutarchan listening, as they are of ideal
sympotic conversation as Plutarch represents it.
Elsewhere Plutarchs references to consumption and the symposium
often demonstrate, or recommend in abbreviated form, principles which
are valued highly in the Sympotic Questions: friendly, inventive conversation
and philosophically guided moderation.
,
In some cases, however, Plutarch
presents us with sympotic occasions which depart from that harmonious
image. In his Lives, for example, the symposium is sometimes a place where
Plutarchs subjects reveal their virtues. Just as often, however, in line with
the long-standing tendency for historiographical texts to be interested in
disorderly symposia, Plutarch offers us pictures of historical gures trans-
gressing ideal philosophical conduct quarrels, excessive consumption,
political plotting, sometimes even murder and decapitation.

If the sym-
posium is a place for revelation of a mans true nature, as Dio Chrysostom
claims in his Oration :;,
,
it will be particularly promising as a place for
exploring aws and peculiarities of character.
,
For other examples, see (among many others) Advice about Keeping Well ::,d::;c on the importance
of moderate eating and drinking for health, but also (::,e) the value of achieving that when in
company without causing offence; On Garrulousness ,c,d,cb on the way in which drunkenness
leads to foolish and excessive talkativeness.

See Paul (:,,:); Titchener (:,,,); Whitmarsh (:cc:) ::,; Billault (:cc), esp. ,;;:; also Ribeiro
Ferreira, Le ao, Tr oster and Barata Dias (:cc,) :,::oc for a string of chapters on symposia in the
Lives.
,
See above, pp. :, and :,.
o: Saints and Symposiasts
Plutarchs most extended engagement with sympotic traditions outside
the Sympotic Questions comes in his peculiar dialogue Symposium of the
Seven Sages (SSC).
o
The work is set in the distant past, in the court of
Periander in Corinth, and describes a meeting between the seven great wise
men of Greek tradition. The account of that meeting is framed, in Platonic
style, by a conversation between two interlocutors Diokles, who was
present at the banquet, and his friend Nikarchos, who asks to hear about
it. The context of the banquet itself is drawn vividly. In :, for example, we
hear that Periander has decided to sacrice to Aphrodite for the rst time
after a period of neglect since the suicide of his mother (with whom he had
committed incest, as Diokles reminds us), partly because he has recently
had dreams of his wife Melissa (whom he has killed, a detail which is not
stated explicitly). We also hear that Periander has prepared richly decorated
carriages to carry the sages to the shrine of Aphrodite where the feast will
take place, but that the sages prefer to walk, setting off through the dust and
busy roads of the city. In this opening section, and indeed in the glimpses of
life in the Corinthian court which follow later in the work, there is a sense
of unease and ill-omen: for example, in ,, :,c we hear of the recent birth
in Corinth of a baby half-human half-horse. That atmosphere is overlaid,
however, by an impression of calm in the sages themselves, with their
detached perspective on the world. The bulk of their conversation is taken
up with a disjointed series of different debates. Despite that disjointedness,
however, there are unifying themes: for example they talk repeatedly about
different types of oikonomia (management) management of the state, of
the household and of the cosmos.
;
The relationship with the Corinthian
context is a complex one, given that Periander is so far from being a
representative of good management of either state or family. In dealing
with Periander, it is as if the sages wisdom on the subject of oikonomia is
being subjected to an enormous practical test. Even in the context of such
a dysfunctional household the sages relaxed, sympotic sense of perspective
seems capable of bringing at least a temporary sense of healing. We hear,
for example, that Periander has even put aside his usual habits of luxury,
in the hope of impressing them (SSC , :,ccd).
One of the works attractions is the way in which it offers us access
to events and gures from the past (a common feature of ancient sym-
potic writing, as we have seen). That idea is underlined in the very rst
o
For good introduction, see Mossman (:,,;) and Busine (:cc:) ,,:c:; also the various chapters in
Ribeiro Ferreira, Le ao, Tr oster and Barata Dias (:cc,) ,,,::, especially Kim (:cc,).
;
On the importance of that theme, see Aune (:,;) ,:, and ,ooc; and Aalders (:,;;); on these and
other elements of the works thematic coherence, see Defradas (:,,) :::, and Mossman (:,,;).
Plutarch o,
sentence of the work: It must be the case, Nikarchos, that time will bring
much shadow and indeed complete obscurity to events, if even now, in
relation to such recent and new happenings, false reports have been made
and are being believed (:, :ob). That utterance (imitating the open-
ing of Platos Symposium) is addressed by Diokles to Nikarchos, but it
also speaks pointedly to the works readers, alerting us to the conjuring
trick Plutarch plays in bringing the event to life. The fantastical charac-
ter of Plutarchs reconstruction becomes even clearer when we consider
that he anachronistically combines gures who could never in reality have
dined together.

And the temporal distance of the events Plutarch describes

is made clear by numerous small details in the opening section which
stress the superstition and brutality of the world within which the sages
move.
In at least some respects, however, the sages are close to the symposiasts
of the Sympotic Questions. Admittedly their compressed style of speech,
which follows in the tradition of collecting the sayings of the seven sages, is
quite different from the kinds of conversation we nd in the Sympotic Ques-
tions, especially in sections ;::, where the sages speak in epigrammatic,
riddling fashion, taking it in turns to give very abbreviated, one-sentence
answers to a set of ethical questions: how should a household best be man-
aged? What type of state is most effective?
,
The Sympotic Questions does
include plenty of gnomic sayings, but its tendency is always to use them
as examples within a longer speech, or as starting points for analysis in
themselves. Nevertheless some aspects of their wisdom are close to what we
nd in the Sympotic Questions, especially their commitment to principles of

See Mossman (:,,;) ::::; Le ao (:cc) ,.

,
See Kim (:cc,) for a strong statement of the differences between this riddling style of speech and
the approach to dialogue Plutarch and his contemporaries favoured; also Martin (:,,) on the
way in which the seven sages in archaic Greek literature are used to illustrate a very inuential
performative concept of wisdom which he views as quite specic to archaic Greece (esp. ::, on
the seven sages as symposiasts); Busine (:cc:) on Plutarchs use of very old traditions of the sages
aphoristic wisdom. Kim must be right about the alienness of their compressed style of speech,
although it is worth stressing that the traditions of ascribing aphorisms to wise men may have had a
deep-rooted inuence on the whole symposium genre of which Plutarch is a representative: see Gray
(:,,:) for the argument that Xenophons Symposium has its origins in the adaptation, development
and transformation of a wider collection of stories about what the wise men of old did and said at
their symposia (;); Demarais (:cc,) for the claim that the SSC, like the Letter of Aristeas (discussed
further below, pp. :,,), with which it shares many motifs, is inuenced by a Hellenistic tradition
of recording advice given to rulers in sympotic contexts (and ,o for the high value Plutarch gives to
aphoristic wisdom in other works, citing On the Pythian Oracle and the Life of Lycurgus). Plutarch
himself, in his On Garrulity :;, ,::ab, mentions the compressed speech of the Delphic maxims
know thyself and nothing to excess and so on as a useful model for those who wish to void
excessive talkativeness: see Brechet (:cc;) :::: on this passage of On Garrulity, and on the concept
of the bien dit in Plutarch.
o Saints and Symposiasts
philosophical moderation. Some sections of their conversation, especially
from the second half of the work, where their conversation becomes
more uent, would even slot seamlessly into the Sympotic Questions.
:c
A good example of thematic overlap is Thales opposition to excessively
status-conscious seating arrangements (SSC ,, :,ab), which has much in
common with Sympotic Questions :.:. Plutarch offers us, then, an almost
miraculous fantasy of access to the sympotic past, a past which is regularly
enlivened by exotic and alien details, but which is also at least in some ways
remarkable for its continuity with the sympotic priorities of the present
day as Plutarch represents them.
community in the sympotic questions
In much the same way, Plutarch offers us a fantasy of access to his own
sympotic community in the Sympotic Questions. One of the reasons for this
texts powerful appeal is the vividness of the eavesdropping experience it
offers to us, especially inthe opening sections of its individual chapters, with
their brief sketches of setting and guest-list. This is a work full of people.
Plutarch conjures before our eyes an imagined community of remarkable
breadth and variety.
::
The occasions he describes seem to be spread over
many decades of his life, and it is clearly not the case that all of the characters
he mentions could have dined together as contemporaries. Nevertheless
they are all assumed into the same virtual sympotic community.
Some of the most memorable moments of characterisation come from
the repeated presence of Plutarchs family members, often portrayed affec-
tionately and even a little irreverently. They include Plutarchs sons,
::
his brothers,
:,
his father,
:
and a number of relatives by marriage.
:,
Even
Plutarchs grandfather Lamprias makes a number of appearances.
:o
Lam-
prias commitment to many of the same sympotic ideals which inspire
:c
Kim (:cc,) argues that Plutarch invites us to judge for ourselves whether it is better to portray
the sages in archaising form (as in the rst half of the SSC), or to co-opt them opportunistically
so that they become representatives of a more modern style of speech (as in the second half ). See
also Romeri (:cc:) :c,,; also Aalders (:,;;), Busine (:cc:) ,:c: and Hershbell (:cc) on
interrelation between the sages views and Plutarchs own opinions about political theory, and about
the principle that philosophical life should involve political engagement.
::
Cf. Klotz (:cc;) o,, and (:c::) :o,; also Mossman (:,,;) ::o for similar points about the
cosmopolitan character of the community in the SSC.
::
See Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. ii, o,o.
:,
See Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. i, o.
:
See Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. :, oo.
:,
E.g. QC :., o:ca; :.,, o,oa; :.,, o:c; ;.:, ;cce; ;.,, ;c:d.
:o
See Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. i, ::c. Lamprias contributes to discussion in ,.,, ,.o, ,., ,.,; and in
:.,, o::e and ., oo,c his sympotic behaviour is remembered in the past tense by family members,
clearly speaking after he has died.
Plutarch o,
Plutarch himself demonstrates once again the way in which Plutarchs
sympotic communities prize their links with the past. In this case the link
between past and present is acted out not only through scholarly discus-
sion, but also quite literally within Plutarchs family, which passes down its
sympotic knowledge from generation to generation.
In addition, we see some of Plutarchs most intimate friends, gures
like the addressee Sosius Senecio himself who reappear over and over
again in the various chapters. The work also contains an enormous cast
of occasional characters, some of them well-known political or cultural
gures, others not known from other sources. Plutarch regularly marks
out age distinctions, drawing attention to the youthful inexperience of
some participants and the experience of others. Moreover, this is a work of
great geographical diversity: many of the occasions he describes are in his
home town of Chaironeia, but he also records symposia in a great range of
different cities in the Greek-speaking world (although in quite a few cases
the location of the conversation is not specied). In some cases we even
nd Plutarch dining in Rome.
:;
The regular inclusion of Roman guests
(again, Sosius Senecio himself is the prime example; Mestrius Florus, consul
under Vespasian, is another regular symposiast and one of Plutarchs close
friends) further enhances that sense of the inclusiveness of the sympotic
community.
:
The only glaring gap is the absence of female guests.
:,
It is
likely that it would not have been uncommon for elite women and men
to dine together even in the east of the empire by the time Plutarch was
writing. Plutarchs exclusion of women from his banquets may well reect
his own practice as a host and that of his friends, but whether that is the
case or not, it points to the highly traditional character of the philosophical
conversations described, marking them out as modern inheritors of the
traditions of Plato and Xenophon.
Plutarch also often differentiates strongly between different profes-
sions and philosophical persuasions.
:c
In :.,, for example, we hear that
Theon the grammarian, when we were being entertained at the house
of Mestrius Florus, posed the question to Themistokles the Stoic of why
:;
See esp. .;, ;:;b; also :. pr, o::e.
:
See Jones (:,;:) o on Plutarchs friendships with prominent Romans, drawing heavily on the
QC; and p. ,c, n. ,, above, on the western identity of the addressee Sosius Senecio.
:,
The sympotic community in SSC, by contrast, includes women guests, as well as the ex-slave Aesop:
see Le ao (:cc).
:c
E.g. Hardie (:,,:) ;,o, with reference to a number of examples: e.g. QC ,.: where the guest
list includes the rhetor Herodes, the Platonist philosopher Ammonius, Plutarchs brother Lamprias,
Trypho the doctor, Dionysus of Melite the farmer, the Peripatetic Menephylus, and Plutarch himself
(;,,).
oo Saints and Symposiasts
Chrysippus, in mentioning in many of his writings strange and extraordi-
nary things . . . never gave an explanation for any of them (:.,.:, o:oef ).
Chrysippus, as a great Stoic writer, is an appropriate subject for Themis-
tokles. He in turn then asks a question appropriate to his grammarian
interlocutor: do not camp so far away from your own area, but explain
why Homer depicted Nausikaa washing clothes in the river, not in the sea,
even though it is nearby (:.,.:, o:;a). Interestingly, the discussion follow-
ing draws attention to the inadequacy of Theons answer, which involves
quoting from Aristotle a scientic opinion about the different properties of
fresh and sea water: this problem which you have proposed to us Aristotle
has already solved a long time ago (:.,.:, o:;a). Theon, it seems, is con-
tent to rely on his grammarians skill of quoting from previous literature.
Plutarch, however, speaks immediately afterwards, challenging Aristotles
views with his own scientic speculations, together with further quotation
from Homer. This passage is in line with a tendency we see throughout the
work, towards slightly negative (though also for the most part affectionate)
characterisation of grammarians for the narrowness of their approach to
problem-solving.
::
More broadly speaking, it also suggests the ultimate
inadequacy of narrow disciplinary knowledge. The best sympotic speech,
it seems, shows a command over a range of specialisms. Plutarchs symposia
are marked by diversity professional diversity, geographical diversity and
so on but they also aim to transcend it.
sympotic speech
It seems odd, given the vividness with which Plutarch portrays the social
and intellectual life of the late rst and early second centuries ce, that the
Sympotic Questions had such a bad press in twentieth-century scholarship. It
has been regularly denigrated, along with many of its miscellanistic cousins,
for unscientic styles of argument, frivolity and lack of structure.
::
The
biggest problem of all, it seems, is the style of speech Plutarch and his
friends cultivate. And yet for Plutarchs readers or at least for his ideal
readers as the text constructs them this style of argumentation must have
been one of the key features of the works attraction, as we began to see in
the last chapter.
:,
::
See Horster (:cc), esp. o:::.
::
E.g. Barrow (:,o;) ::; Fuhrmann (:,;:) xxiv; Flaceli` ere and Irigoin (:,;) lxxxiii; Teixeira (:,,:)
:::; Romeri (:cc:) :c,, is an important recent exception, focusing especially on the way in which
Plutarch (unlike Athenaeus) follows Plato in privileging speech ahead of food and drink.
:,
Cf. Frazier and Sirinelli (:,,o) :,,:c; for excellent discussion of the attractions of ingenious speech
in the QC; and K onig (:cc;a) for longer discussion of some of the issues dealt with here.
Plutarch o;
How exactly is this style of speech characterised? And why do Plutarchs
symposiasts speak as they do? Most often we see one of the guests proposing
a topic of discussion, often a topic which arises from the circumstances of
the party itself. We then hear attempts at explanation from a succession
of different guests, many of whom rely not only on erudition but also
on ingenuity; sometimes, but not always, at the expense of plausibility.
This distinctive style of ingenious, multiple interpretation has a range of
different connotations. For one thing it has a philosophical pedigree: it
occurs with various functions and justications in Aristotelian writing,
particularly in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, which Plutarch a number
of times refers to and imitates in the Sympotic Questions, and which fol-
lowed a question-and-answer format.
:
Later Aristotelian usage seems to
have inuenced the habit of laying out in turn the opinions of a range of
different Schools or thinkers, a process often referred to in modern scholar-
ship as doxography.
:,
Plutarch also seems to have been inuenced at least
supercially by the sceptical thinking of the New Academy, which used
arguments in utramque partem arguing in turn for both sides of the same
question in order to justify suspension of judgement.
:o
Alternative expla-
nation also occurs with rather different connotations in Epicurean
:;
and
Pythagorean
:
writing. More generally speaking, it reects the rhetorical
character of ancient scientic analysis: ancient scientic discourse devel-
oped in a society without formal educational or professional qualications,
where scientists had to establish their legitimacy through debate.
:,
Within
Plutarchs symposia we often see scientic arguments exposed to scrutiny
in an adversarial process to which the symposium, with its tradition of
capping or reversing the arguments or quotations made by other contrib-
utors, is particularly well suited. In Sympotic Questions ,.:, for example,
:
For Plutarchs other works in this Problems tradition, see especially the Platonic Questions and the
Natural Questions. Alternative explanation was important also for a number of Aristotles successors.
Theophrastus, for example, often offers several different explanations for the same natural phe-
nomenon in his meteorological writing, both in order to give an impression of comprehensiveness,
and in order to emphasise the importance of all four of the elements earth, air, re, water for
his view of the workings of the universe, by giving one explanation for each: see Taub (:cc,) :::.
:,
See van der Eijk (:,,,), esp. Runia (:,,,) in that volume for clear introduction to doxographic
writing.
:o
See Babut (:,,), esp. ,oo;.
:;
See Asmis (:,) ,::,o; and Hardie (:,,:) ;o:. Epicurean theory holds that all explanations
are equally valuable, the main aim of explanation being to remove superstition by showing that a
number of plausible rational explanations exist.
:
E.g. Hardie (:,,:) ;:,, mentioning the close links between Platonism and Pythagoreanism in
this period, and the inuence of Pythagoreanism on Plutarchs teacher Ammonius.
:,
On the rhetorical character of scientic writing in the imperial period, see Barton (:,,), esp. :,,;
and :;,; and on the way in which the QC draws on patterns of argument familiar from rhetorical
educations, see Schenkeveld (:,,o) and (:,,;); Sluiter (:cc,a).
o Saints and Symposiasts
Ammonius argues that ivy is naturally hot; Plutarch overturns his argu-
ments, arguing that it is cold; in ,., Athryitos argues that women are
cold in temperament, Florus that they are hot. In Plutarchs hands this
inherently reversible style of sympotic speech becomes a vehicle for testing
out the strengths and weaknesses of particular scientic claims. In some
cases, moreover, the variety of different viewpoints on show seems to be a
reection of the different philosophical and professional afliations of the
various speakers.
,c
Alternative explanation occurs elsewhere in Plutarchs
work too. In some cases there is a sense that the explanations offered can be
hierarchised according to criteria of plausibility. That impression is partic-
ularly prominent in some of Plutarchs other dialogues, where there seems
to be a gradual progression from less to more plausible interpretations.
,:
However, even there it is rarely the case that one single version is agged
unequivocally as the right one, and in some cases, especially in the enter-
prise of interpreting mythical material, that sense of indeterminacy, in
the face of the secrets of the divine, is represented as necessary and even
desirable.
,:
In Roman religious analysis the process of speculative anal-
ysis, which admits several different alternative explanations for a ritual,
is itself often represented as an act with ritual overtones,
,,
and Plutarch
may be offering a philosophically inected version of that assumption
here.
Practices of alternative explanation thus have a complex, philosophically
serious pedigree. At the same time, however, it is clear that Plutarch and
his guests sometimes use alternative explanation in a way which aunts
its entertaining qualities, and its unreliability and even absurdity as a
means of deciphering the problem under discussion. At times, it even
seems that Plutarchs aim is to bring together many different voices in a
way which resists the idea of any nal authority. Admittedly, this kind
of indeterminacy does not always meet with approval: the symposiasts
are criticised every so often for being excessively ingenious or excessively
rhetorical. . (;:,f;:a) is a good example: When Sospis had nished,
Protogenes the grammarian addressed Praxiteles the periegete (guide) by
name: Shall we let the rhetoricians proceed with their ownway of speaking,
attempting to prove their point by likelihood and probability, while we
,c
Cf. Hardie (:,,:) ;,o.
,:
E.g., see Hardie (:,,:) ;,,, making that point for On the E at Delphi and On Isis and Osiris;
cf. Boulogne (:,,:) o,.
,:
See Hardie (:,,:) ;,:.
,,
See Feeney (:,,), esp. ::;,:; he is surely wrong, however, to characterise alternative explanation
as a predominantly Latin technique (::,): its importance for Plutarch even outside the context of
discussing Roman religion suggests the opposite. See also Beard (:,;).
Plutarch o,
ourselves have nothing to contribute to the discussion from our research;
Protogenes goes on to quote from an obscure text, using his skills as a
grammarian, in an attempt to refute Sospis argument. Here, then, we have
an example of individual guests attempting to police the styles of argument
on display. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that we should not take
this too readily as a sign of the works discomfort with ingenuity.
,
Apart
from anything else, Protogenes jibe is in itself an ingenious, rhetorical
attempt at sympotic capping, and itself leads to a further proliferation of
the argument; it is also then criticised in turn by the speaker following.
Elsewhere in the work we see similar examples of characters indulging in
ingenious argumentation even as they criticise it.
,,
Clearly, then, it would be wrong, in the playful space of the symposium,
,o
to be too solemn about insisting on serious problem-solving at all times.
In fact, one of the functions of alternative explanation is to contribute by
its humour to the friend-making character of the symposium, preventing
the discussion from becoming too dry and unconvivial,
,;
and contributing
to an atmosphere of sharing. That atmosphere of equality is enhanced by
the sympotic tradition of guests speaking in turn: Plutarch often describes
a sense of being obliged to contribute to discussion, and the need for
improvisation which stems from that obligation. In ,., (o,:b), for example,
he tells us that he is reusing an argument he had come up with a few days
before, when he had been forced to extemporise (co:coytoioci). In
:.: (o,,c), similarly, Plutarch speaks in order to avoid the impression of
joining in the conversation without making a contribution.
Most importantly of all, perhaps, the tradition of speaking in turn has
didactic functions. Throughout the work, in line with archaic and classical
traditions of elite education in the symposium, we see young men learn-
ing these styles of conversation from their elders, gaining the condence
to make their own contributions
,
or else in some cases cowed by the
,
Cf. Frazier and Sirinelli (:,,o) :cc:.
,,
E.g. the speech by Plutarchs brother Lamprias in .o, ;:od;:;a.
,o
See esp. Frazier (:,,) on play (paidia) in the QC.
,;
Cf. discussion of friendship in Plutarchs symposia above, p. ,:.
,
For the education of young men in Plutarchs symposia, see Roskam (:cc,). It is likely that Plutarch
managed some kind of school in Chaironeia, and that some of the participants in the symposia were
young men who had come to study with him: see Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. iii, ,. For traditions
of young men participating in the symposium as part of their social and moral education, see above,
p. o; and Roller (:cc,) :,;;, on Roman practice (but also with discussion (:o:) of QC ;., where
Plutarch warns against the danger of exposing the young to immoderate sympotic performances).
Plutarchs insistence on the inclusion of young men is a notable departure from the stipulations of
Plato in the Laws that only older men over the age of thirty should be admitted: see Tecusan (:,,c)
:;.
;c Saints and Symposiasts
authoritative air of those who have already contributed, failing to realise
that ingenuity may be as valuable in the symposium as certainty. In other
cases we see Romans learning to accommodate themselves to Greek styles
of analysis and conversation.
,,
Plutarch himself is a prominent presence
in the work. Often he speaks last in discussion, with the implication that
his own speech can serve as a model for others.
c
At other times, however,
especially in Book ,, which (unlike all the other books of the Sympotic
Questions) consists of a set of discussions from a single occasion, we see
him reminiscing about his own youthful experience of the symposium and
about his own involvement in the processes of learning how to speak.
:
In
all of these cases, the habit of alternative explanation draws Plutarch and
his interlocutors into dialogue with each other, helping them to habituate
themselves, through both observation
:
and participation, to the unwrit-
ten rules and rhythms of sympotic conversation, which are so central to
the philosophically informed performance of Greek identity as Plutarch
envisages it.
Plutarchs text also engages us as readers, challenging us to read actively
and to learn these skills for ourselves. For one thing, the anecdotes and
quotations and topics of conversation Plutarch includes in the work were
presumably attractive to many readers because of their capacity to be
memorised and reused in new social and intellectual contexts.
,
Not only
that, but the habits of alternative explanation on show here are surely
also intended to draw us in as readers to respond for ourselves to the
puzzles under discussion, and in the process, to absorb the unwritten rules
of sympotic behaviour, just as a young symposiast might be expected to
do; and from there to cultivate the inquiring habits of mind which are
the key to a philosophical understanding of the world. In that sense the
,,
See Swain (:,,c) ::,,:; at one point, for example, Plutarchs Roman friend Florus, presumably
motivated in part by a desire to display his commitment to Hellenic knowledge, objects to the
inclusion of Egyptian material in a discussion; Plutarch takes him to task for failing to realise
the capaciousness of the Greek interpretative tradition, its capacity to accommodate other cultural
traditions (,.:c, ofo,a).
c
For good examples see QC :.,, ,.:, ,., o., o.,, o.o, ;.,; Plutarchs strong personal presence
contradicts commonly made claims that his authorial function in the work is as an anonymous
collector of other peoples material: e.g. Jeanneret (:,,:) :oo;; Barrow (:,o;) :,. See also Klotz
(:cc;) and (:c::) for similar discussion of Plutarchs self-presentation in the QC, stressing especially
the way in which he presents himself at a range of different ages.
:
See Jones (:,;:) :,:, on Plutarchs youth and his association with Ammonius.
:
See Swain (:,,o) :,: A key part of Plutarchs plan for moral improvement, with the aim of
constituting ones life according to philosophy, was the observation of others, with several examples
from the Moralia.
,
See Goldhill (:cc,) on the functions of anecdote in Roman imperial culture, esp. :c,:c on this
text.
Plutarch ;:
whole work is unied by its didactic purpose.

The more we read,

the more the metaphor of eavesdropping I used above becomes inad-
equate, as we imagine our way into the virtual community Plutarch
presents to us.
,
Admittedly it is not an easy task to learn from the text, or to extract from
it any easily summarisable models for behaviour. Plutarchs Greek is dif-
cult and allusive. His argumentation is often labyrinthine and compressed,
moving fromone quotation or example to the next in very quick succession.
In many of the conversations there is a tendency to resist simplistic rules
for sympotic behaviour: the guests repeatedly stress the fact that behaviour
must be adapted according to circumstance; they argue against each others
views, restlessly exploring different possibilities for how to run a successful
symposium and how to approach argument. The dominant impression,
moreover, except perhaps in Book ,, is of a work lacking any simple overar-
ching structure or narrative progression. One effect of the sheer richness of
the material, however, is that we very soon begin to see thematic overlaps
emerging between consecutive discussions, and repeated rules and patterns
of argumentation, which between them hold out a promise of coherent
sense lying beneath the miscellanistic surface. That sense of coherence acts,
I suggest, as an emblem for the more profound connectedness which a
philosophical education can, in Plutarchs view, offer us, with its capacity
to draw together the diversity of human experience into morally coherent,
if never entirely nalisable, patterns.
o
sympotic questions books 2 and 3
I want to offer here two main examples of the way in which Plutarch
threads his didactic preoccupations and thematic patterns through the
ostentatiously varied texture of particular books. Book ,, rst of all, is
saturated even more densely than the rest of the work with scenes of
young men learning distinctively Plutarchan styles of speech. In ,.:, to

Cf. Hobden (:cc) and (:cc,) on the didactic character of Xenophons text, esp. (:cc) :,o; on its
importance as a model for Plutarch, and (:cc,) ,; on the way in which Xenophons Symposium
uses traditions of competitive sympotic speech in order to represent sympotic wisdom as open to
debate.
,
Cf. Lim (:cc) :,o for suggestive discussion of the way in which sympotic dialogue invites a
sense of cultural complicity from the reader.
o
Cf. K onig (:cc;a); Teodorsson (:,,o) makes the related claim that there is a kind of psychological
connectedness between successive chapters which adds to the works impression of realism, con-
tributing to the impression that Plutarch is recording real conversations as they come to mind in
his memory.
;: Saints and Symposiasts
begin with, Plutarch records an occasion in Athens, at a party held after
a sacrice to the Muses, where Plutarchs teacher Ammonius criticises
the practice of wearing ower garlands at a symposium as an unworthy
practice for serious philosophers, and so prompts the young men (c
vtcviosci (ooa)), at least those who do not knowhimwell, to remove their
garlands in embarrassment. Plutarch, however, knows better, as Ammonius
star-pupil should, and so sets out to refute his philosophical mentor: I
knew that Ammonius had thrown the topic into our midst in order to
encourage practice and enquiry (ooa).
;
He seems to have grasped the
need to exercise ones ingenuity, and the need to admit at least certain types
of pleasure into the symposium, in contrast with the other young men,
who fall for Ammonius insistence on a complete banishment of frivolity.
Plutarchs impressive display then continues in ,.:, which is represented as
a continuation of the conversation in ,.:. Ammonius sets out an argument
for the belief that ivy is a hot plant, rather than a cold one, as is commonly
believed. Once again the young men are cowed into silence. The other,
more experienced, guests then urge the young symposiasts to attempt a
response, and it is once again Plutarch who speaks, as soon as a promise
has been secured from Ammonius not to intimidate the young men by
arguing against them. Plutarch contradicts Ammonius with reference to
precisely the passage of Aristotle used by Ammonius himself. Strikingly,
that technique of arguing against an opinion with reference to exactly the
principles cited in support of it is used similarly by Florus in ,., o,:c (but
I think that your opinion is refuted by precisely those same proofs), on
a different occasion, in a way which offers us the opportunity to build a
cumulative picture of the lessons embedded in the text through consecutive
reading of these different and apparently disjointed dialogues.
In ,.o and ,.; as often elsewhere in the work Plutarch switches
from description of his early philosophical training to description of occa-
sions much later in his life, after he has reached a position of intellectual
authority.

In ,.;, for example, Plutarchs aged father proposes to the

;
t,c o tioc, c:i ,uuvcoic, tvtsc sci n:notc, sc:ctnstv tv uto :cv c,cv c
Auucvic, . . . Cf. :.:c, o:bd for Philopappos telling of the story of Democritus and the cucum-
ber, which illustrates the same principles: Democritus eats a cucumber tasting of honey; he puzzles
over the reason for the taste; someone tells him it has been stored in a jar with honey; nevertheless
he determines to continue to seek possible alternative causes: For the discussion, even if it achieves
nothing else useful, will give useful practice (t,,uuvococi . . . c c,c, tcptti). See also Jacob
(:cca) ,o for intellectual exercise connected with the question-and-answer format as an ideal
stretching back to Aristotle.

There are several similar instances in other books of older men setting an example for their younger
fellow-guests, although their authority is not always unchallenged: e.g., in :.:, Plutarchs father
begins the discussion by playfully criticising Plutarchs brother Timon for his seating of the guests;
Timon disagrees, and Plutarch and his other brother Lamprias then join in with the debate; in ,.,,
Plutarch ;,
young men who were studying philosophy (:c, qicocqc0oi utipcsici,,
o,,f ) a discussion of why sweet new wine is the least intoxicating kind of
wine, while the experienced Plutarch looks on. On this occasion there are
several contributions from them, in contrast with the silence of ,.: and
,.:.
,
Plutarch sums up these contributions with praise of the young mens
ingenuity and readiness to make their own arguments rather than simply
relying on received opinion.
,c
At the same time he also points casually to
two very obvious explanations they have missed, one of them taken from
Aristotle, as if to remind us and them that ingenuity on its own is
never enough, unless it is supplemented by exhaustive reading (of the kind
a grammarian might pride himself on). The contrast between the young
Plutarch and the old Plutarch, at the beginning and the end of Book ,,
seems deliberately pointed, reminding us of how the day-to-day experi-
ence of philosophical speculation can contribute to lifelong education and
philosophical self-improvement.
The Sympotic Questions many scenes of learning are thus threaded
through the work in a way which prompts us as well as the young
symposiasts of the dialogues themselves to drawlessons fromthemcumu-
latively. We undergo a repeated process of exposure to common patterns of
argumentation, dialogue after dialogue, just as the young men must learn
night after night, and gradually we begin to build up a sense of how we
can make the different dialogues t together with each other. In Book :,
similarly, recurring themes and principles of argument cluster together in a
way which gives a shadowy impression of coherence and progression to the
book. :.:, for example, is a discussion entitled What are the subjects about
which Xenophon says people, when they are drinking, are more pleased to
be questioned and teased than not. This is the longest dialogue in the whole
of the Sympotic Questions, but the problem also spills out beyond the end
of :.:, into the repeated scenes of teasing with which the rest of Book : is
saturated, as if to emphasise the need to supplement theoretical discussion,
however exhaustive, with personal experience. Teasing had always been an
important part of the social interaction of the symposium, a chance to act
out shared values in a way which could potentially be quite coercive and
o;oe a learned rhetorician impressed the young men, but Plutarch and his friend Loukanios make
a point of disagreeing.
,
That silence is also mirrored in ,.o, o,,e, another of the dialogues set later in Plutarchs life,
where the young men are reduced to silence when one of the older guests contradicts their claim
that Epicurus should not have introduced discussion of the best time of day for sex into his
Symposium.
,c
Cf. o., o,d for vivid statement of the importance of that principle; also :.:, o,,b, with Frazier
and Sirinelli (:,,o) :,;,.
; Saints and Symposiasts
exclusive, all the more so for its apparent light-heartedness.
,:
The promi-
nence of teasing as a theme for Plutarch in this work is important: it shows
that for him the symposium is still very much a social event, a time for
social performance, rather than just an inert frame for intellectual display.
Plutarch does admittedly stand out from the earlier sympotic tradition by
his careful attempt to theorise what is in most other sympotic contexts left
as implicit, practical knowledge: he sets limits on what kinds of teasing are
morally and socially appropriate, and characteristically stresses the impor-
tance of adjusting ones practice according to the character of the man
who is being teased. Even for Plutarch, however, it seems that theoretical
knowledge is not enough; in addition one must learn by seeing teasing in
action, experiencing for oneself rules of sympotic conduct which can never
be adequately captured on paper. In :.: (o,,a), for example, in the course of
a discussion on Why people become hungrier in the autumn, Plutarchs
brother Lamprias is teased for his gluttony; at :.:c (o,e), a totally separate
occasion, Lamprias acknowledges his own gluttony but accuses Hagias of
the same; in :., (o,,e) Plutarch is teased by Alexander for not eating eggs,
but then teases Alexander in return (o,,f ); and Soclarus is teased in :.o,
ocb for the strangeness of the plants which grow in his garden, an obser-
vation which then leads into erudite scientic/horticultural discussion on
techniques of grafting.
Equally prominent in Book :, though perhaps less obvious, since it is
not the subject of explicit discussion at any stage, is a recurring interest
in the dangers of misattributing causes in analysing remarkable natural
phenomena. In :.;, for example, there is a long discussion of a type of sh
called the ship-holder (tytvni,), which is said to have the power to slow
down ships, despite its tiny size, by attaching itself to their hulls. At the end
of this discussion, Plutarch debunks a whole series of explanations for that
remarkable power by suggesting that the ships are held back not by the sh,
but by seaweed, which is precisely the thing which attracts the sh there in
the rst place. In other words, he rejects the possibility that the presence of
the sh is the cause of the ships slowness, pointing out that the presence
of the sh and the slowness of the ship may instead be common symptoms
of a third phenomenon, the seaweed. That strategy of argument is closely
matched in the two quaestiones which follow. In :. Plutarch rejects the
explanations offered for the belief that horses bitten by wolves tend to be
unusually spirited, by suggesting that it is only the spirited horses who
escape from the wolves in the rst place. And then nally in :.,, we hear
,:
Cf. above, p. :c.
Plutarch ;,
a discussion about why sheep bitten by wolves have sweeter esh. Here,
however, there is no explicit attempt to draw the obvious conclusion
not that they have sweet esh because they are bitten, but rather that they
are bitten because they have sweet esh to begin with. Plutarch seems
to be leaving us to reach that conclusion independently, drawing out for
ourselves the lessons of the two preceding dialogues.
Plutarch thus repeatedly emphasises the requirement that the philoso-
pher should be able to use any conversation as a starting point for philoso-
phy. By that principle it should not matter whether we read his own work
disjointedly and out of context or not. And yet at the same time he weaves
faint thematic continuities into his work, challenging us to draw these out
for ourselves, and so to experience the way in which disparate material
can begin to resolve itself into unity if only we read carefully enough
not only ethical unity, but also glimmers of narrative unity, for example in
these series of particular types of argumentation in Books : and ,, which
between them tell an artfully structured story about how we can hone our
own skills of analysis.
voices of the library
As we have just seen, Plutarch himself often plays a prominent role in
the work.
,:
At other times, however, he seems strangely self-effacing and
reluctant to use the rst person, relying instead on impersonal expressions
(the conversation turned to) or rst-person-plural verbs (we discussed).
,,
In some cases he even speaks about the conversations the words (logoi)
as if they have a life or momentumof their own, where the agency, or at least
the precise identity, of individual speakers becomes irrelevant. In .,, for
example, Why sailors drawwater fromthe Nile before dawn, no individual
speaker is named (the same is true of quite a few other chapters).
,
We
hear, after the rst argument has been presented, that in addition to
these fairly persuasive responses an argument arose (ttcvtsutv c,c,)
(;:,b).
The explanation for that effect presumably lies in part, again, in
Plutarchs awareness of the importance of community. After his starring
,:
See esp. Scarcella (:,,) ::o:;.
,,
One might contrast his essays on practical ethics, where he portrays himself more consistently as
the sole authority on the subjects he discusses: see Van Hoof (:c:c) ooc for that point.
,
See Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. iii, ::: for the point that neglect of the details of setting and
characterisation may be particularly common especially with scientic topics in the Aristotelian
problemata tradition.
;o Saints and Symposiasts
role in many of the conversations he melts back into the wider sympotic
community, as if acknowledging the fact that sympotic conversation, for
all its reliance on dazzling individual displays of ingenuity, is always ulti-
mately a communal effort. Importantly, that community involves not just
his fellow guests, but also the many authors of the Greek past who are
drawn into the conversation through the act of quotation. The promi-
nence and authoritativeness of their voices may be one further factor in
Plutarchs decision, at least in some passages, to allow the precise physical
context of conversation, along with the characterisation of himself and his
fellow guests as recognisable individuals, temporarily to fade away from
view.
,,
My aim in this section is to explore that possibility in more detail
by looking at a set of passages from the Sympotic Questions which imply
a kind of independence for quoted authors, or which project an image of
community between quoted authors and present-day symposiasts.
Most obviously, this sense of community and communication between
past and present is enhanced by the impression that Plutarch and his guests
hold the same civilised sympotic values as the authors they quote from, or
at any rate that they interpret those authors in such a way as to make it
appear that that is the case.
,o
Take, for example, the following extract from
Sympotic Questions :.: (Whether the host himself should seat his guests,
or whether it should be done by the guests themselves), where Plutarch
raids the Homeric poems for a succession of examples of good practices of
seating at dinner, quoting, among other passages, Odyssey ;.:;c::
And we praise Alcinous too because he seats the stranger beside himself: making
his manly son Laomedon get up from his seat, Laomedon who was sitting next to
him and whom he loved the most. For seating the suppliant in the place of the
person one loves is a suitably tactful and humane thing to have done (ttioticv
tuutc, sci qivpctcv). (:.:, o:;b)
Homer, and indeed Alcinous, are here represented as gures who share
despite the vast expanse of intervening centuries between them Plutarchs
views on sympotic behaviour.
,;
The precise situation Homer describes
entertaining a shipwrecked suppliant could hardly have been a familiar
one for Plutarch and his fellow symposiasts. But the important point is
that Plutarch claims to recognise here, in his passing comments, a shared
sensibility, an ability, on Homers part, to recognise and approve the practice
,,
See K onig (:c::a) and (:c::b) for further discussion of self-effacement and the voices of the library
in the QC.
,o
Pieters (:cc,) :: makes a similar point for Machiavelli.
,;
Cf. below, pp. ,; on Athenaeus use of Homer.
Plutarch ;;
of courtesy and (that most distinctively Plutarchan virtue of all) humanity
(:c qivpctcv).
,
At times we see the idea of communication with the past rather than
just shared values brought into play by the vivid metaphors Plutarch uses
to describe the act of quotation. Christian Brechet has recently published a
fascinating article onPlutarchs use of different words to describe the process
of citation, drawing many of his examples from the Sympotic Questions.
,,
He points out that Plutarch (like many other ancient authors) oscillates
between a range of different usages. Sometimes he uses language which
implies engagement with the text as a written, physical object (for example,
the language of placing or bringing in a quotation, in a way which implies
that quotation is an act of writing). Sometimes he uses the language of
memory (one remembers or recalls quotations, or quotations come to
mind). At other times he uses auditory language (listen to the words
of , I have heard so-and-so saying).
oc
The last of those is of particular
interest to me here. As Brechet makes clear, the prevalence of that usage
(not in itself particularly unusual for ancient language of citation, but still
strikingly common in Plutarchs work) ts well with Plutarchs view that
proper listening is a key philosophical skill, and with his (conventional but
strongly held) assumptions about philosophy as an activity to be conducted
above all in an oral environment. However, Brechet seems to me to miss the
obvious further step of exploring the possibility that this use of auditory
language for citation sometimes implies a kind of independence for the
quoted author.
o:
In order to illustrate that point, let us look in more detail at some
examples of the language used for citation in the Sympotic Questions. One
technique which recurs every so often is the technique of citation without
specic attribution, where the symposiasts quote from an author by simply
incorporating the words of the source texts into their own, expecting their
hearers to recognise the quotation. Much more frequent, however, are
the expressions sc: + accusative, meaning (according to), and various
phrases meaning as x said, most commonly c, qnoi. None of these
usages is individually remarkable, and all are standard means of introducing
citations in non-sympotic works by Plutarch and others. Nevertheless, they
might occasionally, and for some readers, have left an impression of the
,
See Duff (:,,,) ;;.
,,
Brechet (:cc;). There has been much work on other aspects of Plutarchs citation practices: e.g. see
many of the essays in DIppolito and Gallo (:,,:) and in Gallo (:cc).
oc
See Brechet (:cc;) :c:, for an outline of those various possibilities.
o:
He sometimes touches on that issue briey, for example at Brechet (:cc;) :c, and ::.
; Saints and Symposiasts
quoted author entering into the discussion in person, in the light of other
more explicit references to that idea in passages like the ones quoted below.
Sometimes the words of quoted authors are introduced where we might
expect a contribution from a symposiast, or vice versa, with the result that
an unwary reader might be momentarily unclear about which of the two we
are hearing. That said, Plutarch uses that technique much less frequently
than Athenaeus, as we shall see in chapter , and on the whole Plutarch
avoids any possibility of confusion by his fairly consistent use of tenses:
aorist (x said) to describe the speech of his fellow-guests and present
(y says) to introduce quoted texts.
More striking for our purposes are those passages where the idea of a per-
sonal relationship between symposiasts and quoted author is paraded more
blatantly. Some of these passages even conjure up a picture of the involve-
ment of the author in the symposium itself. Plato in particular is often
treated in these terms, appropriately enough given his own commitment
to dialogue as a philosophical form and his own interest in reactivating the
voice of Socrates and bringing it to life for future readers. My rst example
comes from .:. This quaestio records a conversation held on the same
occasion as .:, at a birthday celebration for Plato. .: opens as follows:
After this, when silence had fallen, Diogenianos, making a new start
(tiv . . . putvc,), said, Are you willing, since the conversation has turned
to the gods, that we should invite in (tcpccutv) Plato himself as a partici-
pant (scivcvcv), given that this is Platos birthday, examining in what sense he
intended the claim that God is always doing geometry? if indeed that claim is
to be attributed to Plato. (.:, ;:bc)
Diogenianos is the speaker who lls the silence making a new start
(tiv . . . putvc,) but he does so by bringing Plato forward as a
contributor, as if to join in with the discussion and with the communal
endeavour of philosophical analysis, as the word participant or partner
(scivcvcv) implies. Admittedly it is not easy to hear or interpret Platos
voice Diogenianos acknowledges that there is some doubt about whether
these are the words of Plato himself but even the attempts at decipherment
which Plutarch and his fellow-guests make seem to have assumptions of
personal interaction lying behind them. For example, Florus later suggests
that Plato may have been riddling without being spotted (civi::cutvc,
tntv, ;:,a), as if he himself has listened more carefully, and judged
Platos tone more effectively thanhis fellowguests. In,.,, similarly, Plutarch
tells us that Lamprias was ustered, but then, after just a brief pause, said
that Plato often makes fun of us (nuv . . . tpcotcitiv) by his use of
Plutarch ;,
words (,.,, ;cb). Here, Plato joins in with the light-hearted exchange
of the symposium. That sense of Plato as participant is made particularly
pointed by the fact that it has been immediately preceded by other examples
of teasing, and specically by two uses of the verb tcitiv in the previous
sentence (;cab), where Ammonius asks Lamprias to stop playing around
and to address the matter seriously. Teasing is in fact a constant motif for
the Sympotic Questions, as we have seen.
o:
It is not just Plato whose conversation is envisaged as equivalent to or
engaged with that of the symposiasts themselves. In :.:, o:,e, we hear
that Xenophon . . . has in a manner of speaking placed before us (nuv
tpctnstv) the problem under discussion. That verb (tpcc) is
often used for the guests raising new topics for discussion (in other contexts
it refers to the action of proposing a topic for an orator to speak on). And
at ,.o (o,,c), we hear that some of the guests brought in or invited
Xenophon (tcptccv the same word used to describe the introduction
of Plato in .:). Similarly in :.,, o:;a, in the course of the discussion
already mentioned on why fresh water instead of sea water is used to wash
clothes, the symposiast Theon (in a passage already quoted above) tells us
that this problem which you have proposed to us (tpctnsc,) Aristotle
has already solved (tustv) a long time ago (tci), rebuking his fellow
guests as one might rebuke someone who has not been paying attention
to the conversation. The word tci (long ago) of course signals the
temporal gap between Aristotle and the symposiasts a gap which is never
lost sight of completely but it is nevertheless clear that Aristotle has himself
been engaged in precisely the same debate as the symposiasts themselves.
After laying out Aristotles thesis, Theon asks Does not Aristotle seem to
you to speak plausibly (ticvc, t,tiv) in this matter? (o:;b), in much
the same way as one might assess the plausibility of the contribution of a
fellow guest who has just spoken. In .,, ;:cd we hear of another question
which according to the speaker has already been solved (tuoci) by
Aristotle.
The text is full of other examples which similarly imply various types
of personal relationship with the authors of the past. In ,.o, o,,b, for
example, Plutarch describes a group of young men who have only recently
begun to spend time with (tpcottqci:nsc:t,) ancient texts, a word
which can mean, more specically, to spend time with a teacher. In ;.;,
;:ce Plutarch says even though Euripides is dear (qic,) to me in respect
of other things, he still has not persuaded me at any rate (tut ,c0v co
o:
Similarly in ;.,, ;c:d, Alexio, Plutarchs father-in-law, mocks Hesiod (sc:t,tc :c0 Hoicocu).
c Saints and Symposiasts
ttttist) on the topic under discussion. In .:c, ;,f, Favorinus, present
as one of the dinner guests, is described an appropriately sympotic detail
as a lover (tpco:n,) of Aristotle.
It is important to acknowledge that Plutarch does not use these images of
personal relationship and reactivation of voice evenly. Often the language
he uses for citation implies on the contrary that the symposiastic speaker
is actively in control of the process of citation. In .:c, ;,f, for instance, it
is striking that Favorinus ends up not quoting from Aristotle, but instead
from Democritus, and his relationship with Democritus text is envisaged
very differently, as something far removed from personal exchange: on that
occasion, however, he took down an old argument (c,cv . . . tccicv)
of Democritus, as if blackened with smoke, and did his best to clean and
polish it.
o,
Here, it is explicitly the words and opinions themselves which
are being confronted, rather than their author. Elsewhere, the language of
witnessing is common, as if the source texts are being brought inone-by-one
within a court-roomcontext:
o
that metaphor keeps more distance between
symposiasts and quoted authors than the metaphors of conversation.
Nevertheless these images of personal involvement surface often enough
to form an important repeated motif for the work. It is striking, too, that
these images surface much more often in the Sympotic Questions than in
Plutarchs other works. It is much harder, for example, to nd similar
instances in his On the Face in the Moon, a text which similarly recounts a
conversational attempt to solve a scientic problem, and is similarly packed
with quotations from earlier authorities, but which tends (although with
occasional very striking exceptions)
o,
to conne itself to more conventional
citational imagery of the kind Brechet discusses. The image of personal
engagement with quoted authors is thus particularly appropriate to tra-
ditions of sympotic speech, articulating a sense of community not just
with ones fellow symposiasts, but also with the Greek past. To be sure,
for Plutarch, citation should never be indiscriminate we should never
give free reign to source texts without interrogating them, and without
choosing those parts of them which are morally useful.
oo
At times in the
o,
As Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. iii, :, explains, this passages alludes to Od. :,.;:c, where Odysseus
tells Telemachus to fetch weapons from where they are hanging above the hearth.
o
For one good example (among very many others) see ., oo,c.
o,
E.g. On the Face in the Moon ,, ,::f for the image of entering into conversation with an earlier
author; and o, ,:,f where one of the speakers is said to have been persuaded of something by
Aeschylus. In addition, the character who puts forward the Peripatetic view (from On the Face in
the Moon :o, ,:e onwards) is called Aristotle.
oo
See Brechet (:cc;), esp. ::,:, with reference also to Plutarchs work How the Young Man Should
Listen to Poetry; also K onig (:c::b).
Plutarch :
Sympotic Questions, moreover, the idea of citation as a process of personal
engagement with the authors of the past seems to encourage individual
self-assertion rather than suppressing it, as individual speakers agree, or
take issue with, the authors of the past.
o;
At other times, however, and
despite Plutarchs commitment to the ideals of active personal response,
the symposiasts of the Sympotic Questions seem content to let those ear-
lier texts nd their own voice, stepping into the background even as they
display their own virtuoso mastery of the skills of memory and quotation.
festival banquets in the greek cities
I want to turn now to one nal aspect of the Sympotic Questions portrayal
of community and continuity with the past, in looking at the way in which
Plutarch draws attention to the works overlaps with traditions of sacricial
banqueting and festival activity. Like the Sympotic Questions, the civic rituals
of public feasting, and the many thousands of surviving inscriptions which
record them, functioned as performances of cultural memory. There were,
of course, enormous differences. Nevertheless, my argument here is that
Plutarch is repeatedly interested in exploring what they have in common,
representing his own styles of philosophical conversation as an elevated
equivalent of the communal activities of the city. I offer rst a sketch of
two particularly common features of civic commensality, to supplement the
outline presented in chapter :, before returning to look more specically
at some key passages of Plutarchs work.
My rst point is simply that inscriptions recording festival feasting
often envisaged successive feasts as part of a series. Each new banquet
and each new distribution was unique, but also rmly anchored within
centuries of local tradition, and within the recurring structures of the
yearly festival calendar. In some cases, large numbers of almost identical
banquet inscriptions seem to have been put up very close to each other
within Greek cities, recording each new event through familiar, formu-
laic language, adjusted only to take account of variations in the identity
of benefactors or setting. For example we have a string of inscriptions
from second-century ce Syros, recording a series of banquets in these
terms;
o
and a very much longer collection of inscriptions from the sanc-
tuary of Panamara in Caria, stretching into the fourth century ce, record-
ing invitations to sacricial feasts.
o,
These inscriptional series conjure up
o;
See Brechet (:cc;) :: for the image of dispute between present-day speaker and quoted author.
o
IG XII, o,,o;.
o,
See Roussel (:,:;); Hatzfeld (:,:;); Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:) ,o:,, c:; Smith (:cc,) :.
: Saints and Symposiasts
an impression of the recurring rhythms of festival time as something which
structures the life of the city. Plutarch, I suggest, draws on those patterns
of representation in his Sympotic Questions, showing us how the recur-
ring rhythms of sympotic conversation are both framed by and equivalent
to though also elevated above the repeated patterns of the local and
Panhellenic festival calendar.
Secondly, these inscriptions often show a fascination with the range
of possible guest-lists.
;c
In many cases sacricial banquets were offered
to the whole (male) citizen body. Often the inscriptions also specify that
resident foreigners and foreign visitors are invited; and sometimes Roman
guests are mentioned in a category of their own.
;:
Plutarchs text similarly
fosters an atmosphere of cosmopolitan hospitality, where Greek cultural
tradition can forge unity across local and even Greek/Roman boundaries.
That cosmopolitan character is often particularly conspicuous in those
conversations of Plutarch which are explicitly said to be set at festival
occasions. Often, in addition, the inscriptions specically mention the fact
that the sons of citizens are invited, preparing themselves, presumably,
to take up their roles as full citizens.
;:
This recurring feature of festive
life paralleled of course within classical traditions of the symposium
is matched by Plutarch, albeit with a more philosophical inection, in
the scenes of learning we have already examined. Some banquets go even
further towards inclusiveness and specify the presence of slaves or citizen
women.
;,
At other times, however, the inscriptional evidence attests to
more exclusive gatherings for example, occasions where only members
of the citys Council are invited. Plutarch himself reects these trends, as
seen in the opening of ., discussed further below, where he explains his
preference for small-scale festival banquets instead of those at which the
whole city is present. Plutarch in other words draws on the assumption that
civic feasting can be subdivided into a hierarchy, in order to present the
philosophical symposium as a special form of elite commensality, elevated
above normal day-to-day practice.
Before we look further at Plutarch, I want to illustrate both of those
trends now through brief discussion of one remarkable text from rst-
century ce Boiotia (composed perhaps half a century before the Boiotian
;c
For a survey of the different categories of invitees, see Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:) ,cc.
;:
See Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:) ,,,o.
;:
See Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:) ,,o;; and for young men learning their roles as citizens in festivals, see
Rogers (:,,:).
;,
On women participating in and funding civic banquets in both cases infrequently see van
Bremen (:,,o) :,c,.
Plutarch ,
Plutarch was writing his Sympotic Questions). It is an enormously long
inscription, in honour of one Epaminondas of Akraiphia, a wealthy local
politician, recording his benefactions to the city over an extended time
period, and packed with references to banquets and distributions of many
different types.
;
The rst of these to be mentioned in the surviving section
of the text is linked with the festival of Hermes and Herakles, summarised
as follows: He entertained the city at breakfast on the same day in the
gymnasion after publishing a proclamation; he did not omit anyone not
only of the local residents but even of the visiting strangers along with free
children and the slaves of citizens because of his customary love of good
repute (lines :,,). This occasion is clearly at the more generous end of the
feasting scale. It goes out of its way to give an impression of inclusiveness,
including even visitors to the city. That said, it is worth noting that slaves
are usually invited only to distributions and smaller meals breakfasts or
handouts of snacks rather than full sacricial dinners.
;,
In that respect
at least there is clearly an awareness of social hierarchy lying not very far
beneath the proclamations of equality. We then see Epaminondas taking
on the chief magistracy and immediately sacricing a bull to the Augusti,
and feasting the whole city: his generosity, we hear, causes wonderment not
only in Akraiphia itself, but also in the surrounding cities (:,,,). Here,
sacricial feasting allows the city to present a proud public face to the rest
of the Greek world. The prominence of ideas of communal identity is hard
to miss in both of these opening examples community of the city as a
whole, and also the theme of sub-groups within the civic population.
After that we are allowed a moment to digest, as the text takes us off with
Epaminondas rst of all to mend Akraiphias protective dike a measure
probably connected with the need to protect the citys food production in
the face of potential food shortage, which we know from other sources was
a matter of great anxiety within rst-century ce Boiotia
;o
and then on an
embassy which was one of his great career achievements, recorded at length
in another inscription found close to this one. It is not long, however, before
the series of banquets starts again with redoubled generosity. Listing in this
inscription, and in others like it, is not simply a matter of dry bureaucratic
record-keeping, but instead a celebration of the richness of a citys wealth
and resources, in much the same way as the listing of a sympotic writer like
;
IG vii :;::, with translation and brief comment in Oliver (:,;:) (whose translation I use here).
;,
See Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:) c:.
;o
For other roughly contemporary decrees from Akraiphia, which praise benefactors, not only, like
Epaminondas, for provision of banquets but also for ensuring food supply at a time of shortage, see
Robert (:,,,), esp. o,, and (:,o,).
Saints and Symposiasts
Athenaeus celebrates the overwhelming richness of the resources of Greek
paideia. The big spur for this new onslaught of feasts is the revival of the
festival of the Ptoia, in honour of Apollo Ptous. Epaminondas benefactions
are described as follows:
Feasting magistrates and councillors ve times with magnicent annual banquets,
and supplying the city with a breakfast for a stretch of ve years
;;
he never once
put off a sacrice or expenditure. In the sixth year at the beginning of the contest
he gave the town distribution for the coming festival, giving all the citizens and
incolae and alien property-holders a basket of grain and a half-jug of wine each. He
carried out the great ancestral processions and the ancestral dance of the trailing
costumes, and sacricing a bull to the gods and Augusti, he continuously offered
gifts of meat, breakfasts, sweet wine and banquets. Then in groups from the
twentieth to the thirtieth day of the month he invited to all the breakfasts also
sons of the citizens and male slaves of age, while his wife Kotila entertained at
breakfast the wives of the citizens, and also maidens and female slaves of age. He
did not leave out even the stall-keepers and those who helped in arrangements for
the festival. He entertained them at breakfast privately after a proclamation, which
no-one else had done, none of his predecessors, for he did not wish anyone to be
without a share in the favours that came from him. (oc;)
We then hear of a distribution of sweet wine in the theatre for local
spectators and foreign visitors, with gifts thrown to the crowd (;). And
then just as the series seems to be drawing to a close, Epaminondas begins
again:
Assuming the ofce all over again, with the carrying out of the games after the
banquet for the whole demos he now gave distributions of ten denarii to be spent
on each dining room, and a jar of old wine and six denarii for what they ate with
their bread as the rest of the expenditure on each. (;:)
The inscription ends with a nal statement of the honours voted.
Throughout these passages, then, the text stresses the importance
of custom, mentioning ideas of tradition repeatedly. Here, the city,
with Epaminondas help, is acting out its identity within an established
template although in a way which also leaves room for Epaminondas
to innovate and surprise. We also see Epaminondas interest in trying out
a different way of mapping out the citys identities, drawing attention to
different groupings within the city at different times. In that sense, the
inscription celebrates the communal life of the city, but at the same time
repeatedly allows us glimpses of political and social hierarchy below the
surface.
;;
I.e. during each day of the festival, for the rst ve years it was held.
Plutarch ,
festive identity in plutarchs sympotic questions
How, then, does Plutarch exploit this background within the Sympotic
Questions? Nearly :, per cent of the Sympotic Questions conversations
are explicitly set at specied festival occasions or at banquets otherwise
connected with public ofce-holding.
;
In these cases the symposium hosts
are often festival ofcials or local priests, holding small banquets for friends
and local notables in their own homes. In some examples we see very
eminent dignitaries participating in sympotic discussion as equals: one
striking example is the presence of Philopappos, prince of Commagene
and wealthy benefactor of Athens, at a symposium in Athens described
in :.:c. That symposium is said to follow a dramatic festival competition
to which Philopappos had contributed vast sums of money (possibly the
Dionysia of ,; ce).
;,
These festival chapters are signicant for the history
of festival banqueting partly because they give us evidence, from a different
perspective, for many of the customs which are attested in the epigraphical
record. More important for now, however, is the way in which Plutarch
uses these settings, in order to characterise philosophical conversation as an
equivalent albeit an elevated and philosophically inected equivalent
of festival activity.
c
In Sympotic Questions :., for example, the dialogue opens as follows:
We were celebrating the victory party (:c ttivisic) for Sosikles of Korone,
who had won the prize for poetry at the Pythian games. Since the athletic
contests were approaching, most of the conversation concerned the wrestlers,
for lots of famous ones had come for the contest. And Lysimachos, an
epimeletes [i.e. festival organiser] of the Amphictyons who was present, said
that he had recently heard a grammarian show that wrestling was the oldest of
the sports. (o,b)
Here we see Plutarch relaxing and talking with his fellow Pythian ofcials.
This is a festival occasion. And they take their starting-point for discus-
sion from the events of the festival although the conversation goes in a
;
I count a total of ,; symposia (there are ,, quaestiones i.e. chapters in the work, each dealing with
a separate problem, but in many cases Plutarch makes clear that two or more successive quaestiones
were treated on the same occasion); of those :, are rmly in that category of festive occasions: :.:c,
:.:, :.,, :.:c, ,.;, .:, ,.:, ,.:, ,.,, o., ;.,, . and ,.::,; cf. Frazier and Sirinelli (:,,o) :,, for
a similar list.
;,
See Jones (:,;:) :; for that suggestion, and Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. i, :,,o for alternative
possibilities; also Whitmarsh (:cco) ,, on this scene.
c
Cf. Schmitt-Pantel (:,,:) ;:: for a similar attempt to compare QC (esp. :.:c) with the picture of
sacricial feasting we gain from the epigraphical evidence, emphasizing both Plutarchs engagement
with civic life and also his tendency to distance himself from it.
o Saints and Symposiasts
direction which the average wrestling fan would presumably not have cho-
sen. It seems particularly signicant here that we nd the victor Sosikles
speaking himself (o,d). The poetic victor apparently also has the skills
necessary for holding his own in philosophical conversation. By that stan-
dard, the Plutarchan skills of sympotic speech are linked with the skills
which bring public, agonistic acclaim.
,.: hints at a similar link between sympotic speech and its festive equiv-
alents. The chapter is a discussion of whether or not the poetry contest
is the most ancient component of the Pythian games. Plutarch starts the
dialogue as follows: At the Pythian festival there was a discussion about
whether the newer competitions ought to be abolished (o;d). He then
sets out some of the main arguments used on either side. It sounds at
rst as though the discussion which Plutarch summarises is a symposium
discussion, but we then learn in the next paragraph that these opening
sentences actually refer to a discussion of that topic in a Pythian Council
meeting, where Plutarch himself had spoken against making any change
to the festival programme:
During the Council meeting I tried to dissuade those who wanted to change
the established programme and who criticised the contest as if it was a musical
instrument with too many strings and too many notes. And then at the dinner
which Petraios the agonothete [festival organiser] hosted for us, when the same
topic of conversation came up again (cucicv c,cv tpcottocv:cv), I once
again defended the musical arts; and I demonstrated that poetry was not a late and
recent addition to the sacred games, but that it had been awarded victory crowns
even in the ancient past. (o;ef )
The learned and ingenious styles and topics of speech which we nd in
Plutarchs symposium conversations seem to be useful and authoritative
for more public, ofcial contexts too, in the sense that they contribute
to highly publicised decisions about festival programming. Plutarch hints
here that there is no clear dividing line between entertaining private speech
in the symposium and authoritative public pronouncement. The phrase
cucicv c,cv tpcottocv:cv when the same topic of conversation
came up again backs up that impression, although we might also assume
that the playfulness of the sympotic context makes the detail of the two
discussions very different, for all their similarity of subject matter. Once
again, moreover, he suggests that his own contributions to debate are equiv-
alent to the contributions of the competitors at the festival, by repeatedly
applying the language of competition to his own interaction with the other
interlocutors.
:
:
See Klotz (:cc;) o,,o: for good discussion.
Plutarch ;
., too, creates similar effects:
When the Isthmian games were happening, during the second of Sospis spells
as agonothete, I avoided (oitq,cutv) most of the dinners, when he entertained
together many foreign visitors, and often all the citizens as well. Once, however,
when he invited his closest and most scholarly friends to his home, I was present
too. When the rst course was cleared away, someone came in bringing a palm-
frond and a woven garland to Herodes the rhetor, sent by a student of his who
had won the encomium contest. He accepted them, then had them taken away
again; and then he said he had no idea why different contests have different types
of garland, while all of them alike give palm-fronds as prizes. (;:,b)
They then proceed to discuss that problem at length. Here we see several
characteristic features. For one thing, Plutarch hints that the conversational
skills which he and others, like the rhetor Herodes, are displaying are con-
nected with the skills on display in the festivals contests. It is as if Herodes
skill in speaking which is in a very loose sense encomiastic, in the sense
that his answer to the question under discussion involves him in praising
the palm tree has been the model for his pupils victory in the competi-
tion. The opening lines also imply that the banquet Plutarch attends is part
of Sospis ofcial duties as agonothete. Plutarch thus represents the con-
versation as an episode which falls within the boundaries of festival time,
although he also insists on his own discriminating dislike of banquets where
too many people are present. In that sense the conversations he records are
not direct equivalents of general festival practice. Instead they are repre-
sented as more elevated versions of it. If we follow the implications of that
parallel, sympotic conversation is to be seen as a performance of cultural
memory just as much as the processions and sacrices which traced their
way through the city streets of the Greek east so frequently.
The technique of setting sympotic discussion in a festival context
stretches right back to Plato and Xenophon. ln Xenophons Symposium,
the party follows Autolykos victory in the boys pankration contest at the
greater Panathenaia. In Platos Symposium, the party takes place the day
after Agathons victory in one of the Athenian contests for tragic drama.
Socrates, we hear, preferred not to attend the celebration on the night
itself: I avoided (oitqu,cv) Agathon yesterday when he was holding his
victory party (:c, ttivisici,), fearing the crowd, but I agreed that I would
come today instead (:;a). Both Xenophon and Plato thus stress the way
in which Socrates philosophical activity is parallel to, but also at a certain
remove from, the communal activities of the city.
:
:
On Platos appropriation for philosophy of the civic settings of festival and gymnasium, see Blondell
(:cc:) o,; also Sider (:,c) for Platos Symposium specically.
Saints and Symposiasts
Plutarch takes on that motif, enriching it through repetition and varia-
tion across the many conversations he records, and supplementing it with
vivid observation of the festival culture of the Greek cities of the Roman
empire. The language he uses sometimes even recalls these precedents. For
example in :.:c, o:a the opening lines paint this occasion as a modern ver-
sion of Agathons party: In the victory party (tv . . . :c, . . . ttivisici,) of
Sarapion. That same word victory party recurs in :., o,b, quoted above.
Those two examples do not reproduce Socrates stand-ofsh attitude to the
initial celebration. Nevertheless Socrates preference for a smaller gathering
is imitated closely by Plutarch in the passage from ., ;:,b already quoted:
both Plutarch and Socrates use the same word, avoided (oitq,cutv /
oitqu,cv).
,
For Plutarch too, it seems, philosophical conversation should
parallel the activities of festive celebration, while also standing at one
remove from them.
In creating this idealised space, of course, Plutarch recognises the dan-
ger that it may be violated or disrupted, as Plato and Xenophon also do.
The dangers of anti-social behaviour, of faux-pas and insult, are carefully
policed, but are nevertheless ever-present as possible dangers. Repeatedly,
for example, we see Plutarch and others attempting to smooth over dis-
ruptive, insulting behaviour, or debating the question of how to keep it in
check. The idealised symposium cannot shut out the characteristics of pop-
ular commensality completely. Nevertheless the aspiration to an elevated,
idealised, sympotic community of equals, able to transcend geographical
and cultural barriers without submerging them entirely, is a powerful part
of the works appeal.
order and disorder in the sympotic questions
In conclusion: the Sympotic Questions is packed with images of community,
and committed to the idea of making sense of the world and of ones own
position in the world through the communal activity of sympotic conversa-
tion. However, these ideals of coherence and community cannot be neatly
summed up; instead they have to be experienced through the sometimes
chaotic, miscellaneous material of the text. For all the authoritative tone of
Plutarchs moralising prefaces, the work is saturated with an improvisatory
quality, an atmosphere of provisionality and unnalisability. That is true
,
For a similar sentiment, see ,.,, o;,b, where Plutarchs grandfather Lamprias suggests that large
dining rooms require a panegyriarch (i.e. a festival organiser) rather than a symposiarch, with the
implication, once again, that the ideal conversation of Plutarch and his fellow guests avoids the less
discriminating features of festival community.
Plutarch ,
at the level of sympotic ethics, as it always had been even in the archaic
and classical symposium: the challenges of navigating through sympotic
friendship and hostility and maintaining face in a sympotic setting, can
never be learnt as a simple set of rules, only by watching and learning and
debating. It is also true at the level of sympotic interpretation: it is hard,
in the conversation of the Plutarchan symposium, for any single answer
to have nal authority. I should stress that I do not mean to characterise
this as a text which supports frivolous or unlimited freedom of interpreta-
tion. Plutarch does believe passionately in the explanatory power of reason
and in the responsibility for civilised men to behave in particular ways.
There are times, too, when we see the symposiasts attempting to limit the
more chaotic aspects of their own conversation, for example by criticising
excessive ingenuity,

or trying to guard against the endless proliferation

of discussion.
,
Nevertheless Plutarch and his fellow guests have a restless
desire to resist easy answers. That drive always to add one more solution,
always to listen for one more voice, is not a barrier to community forma-
tion and coherent understanding of the universe, but rather, for Plutarch,
the very thing which makes it possible. It also draws us, as readers, into
dialogue. By setting his miscellanistic writing in the symposium, Plutarch
is able to present the relations between text and reader, between source texts
and present-day readers, as dynamic processes, processes of conversation
and community, rather than passive absorption.

Cf. pp. o,, above.

,
E.g. Florus reaction at ;.:, ;c:a, where he rejects some proposed topics, suggesting that they are so
implausible as to be unworthy of scientic discussion.
chapter 4
Athenaeus
the pleasures of accumulation
In looking at Athenaeus Deipnosophists, I want to return, rst of all, to the
question of what kinds of pleasure this text offers to its readers.
:
We have
seen already that setting miscellanistic writing in the symposium allowed
scholarly consumption and gastronomic consumption to be equated with
each other. Images of abundant food and drink provide their readers with
models for thinking about how compilation can bring pleasure. That
metaphor is much more important for Athenaeus than it is for Plutarch.
Athenaeus work is saturated with a sense of the abundance and richness
of the culinary heritage. Athenaeus also stands out for his desire to show
the intertwining between words and food unlike Plutarch, who follows
a Platonic model where words are separated from and elevated above
the concerns of physical appetite.
:
In the Deipnosophists, accumulation of
words and accumulation of food become inextricably linked with each
other.
The deipnosophistic techniques of gastronomic compilation have visual
parallels in ancient feasting culture. There are quite a few sympotic mosaics
surviving which appeal in some way or another to the pleasures of accumu-
lation, juxtaposing large numbers of sympotic artefacts and ingredients.
Figure .:, for example, a mosaic from third-century ce Thysdrus in north
Africa, shows a typically rich accumulation of foodstuffs, a separate one in
each of the small panels (known as xenia). The image combines luxury and
eye-catching realism with a teasing reminder for its viewers of their own
:
For brief summary of the text see above, pp. :o:;; for Athenaeus listing of his predecessors, p. :,;
for the preface, pp. ,,; for details of available texts and translations p. ,c, n. :; for the epitome,
p. ,,, n. :c.
:
Romeri (:cc:); and see also Romeri (:cc,) and (:cc,) on the way in which Athenaeus quotations
from Plato articulate his critical attitude.
,c
Athenaeus ,:
Figure .: Thysdrus, mosaic with xenia including scene of dice players; third century ce.
distance from the represented pleasures: if we reach down to pick up what
is on the oor our hands meet only cold stone. That theme of the inacces-
sibility and unrecapturability of culinary pleasure is even more prominent
in Figure .:, another mosaic from Thysdrus from roughly the same date,
,: Saints and Symposiasts
Figure .: Thysdrus, House of the Months, mosaic from triclinium with xenia and
unswept oor motif; third century ce.
which shows piles of discarded food debris.
,
There are parallels for that
unswept house motif in a number of mosaics from the Roman period.

They too, like gure .:, give pleasure through their quasi-encyclopaedic,
compilatory quality. At the same time they also joke about the precarious-
ness of our grasp of the abundance of ancient sympotic experience: in our
desire for vicarious experience, through art, of the pleasures of feasting, we
are like hungry servants condemned to pick through the leavings of the
banquet long after its end. It is not impossible that Athenaeus sometimes
has a comparison between these kinds of images and his own text in mind:
certainly he mentions sympotic artwork more often than any of the other
sympotic writers of the ancient world.
,
Whether that is the case or not, his
work shares with these artworks not only an aesthetic of abundance and
variety, but also, every so often, a teasing awareness of the gap between
actual and represented food, for example in the many scenes where eating
is comically and endlessly deferred by talking.
o
At the same time, we might
,
On these images, see Foucher (:,o:), also Dunbabin (:cc,a) :,oo, who discusses them in relation
to other mosaic images of abundant food; and Canfora (:cc:) vol. i, plates :; for other examples
of abundant food mosaics along the same lines.

See Dunbabin (:cc,a) o; Moorman (:ccc) c,; also Pliny, HN ,o.: for the ancient genre of
discarded food mosaics.
,
The description of the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Book ,, discussed further below, is a
good example.
o
On ancient still-life food images, and on the way in which they were used to explore ideas of
reality and illusion, see Squire (:cc,) ,,;:; for the deferral of eating within Athenaeus text, see
Athenaeus ,,
see the growth of these kinds of food mosaics as themselves inuenced by
compilatory texts like that of Athenaeus: certainly they are more common
in the late antique world after the likely date of Athenaeus work (late
second or early third century ce) than in the early empire.
;
Ultimately, however, Athenaeus goes far beyond these visual parallels,
presenting us with a labyrinthine virtual world whose complexity can be
fully realised only in textual form. Of course, Athenaeus compilatory ambi-
tions have many precedents, not only in works like the Sympotic Questions,
but also even in many of the works he quotes, which themselves list food or
accumulate quotations and stories and facts related to food.

Nevertheless
Athenaeus compilation surpasses any of these texts in its scope and in
its restless curiosity about even the most trivial of culinary practices. The
enormous bulk and richness of the Deipnosophists encourages us to become
absorbed as we read. The work as a whole does have structuring criteria
which are discernible as soon as we step back from the detail and contem-
plate it as a whole, at least in the sense that individual books of the work
often focus on one or two guiding themes. Nevertheless it is all too easy
to lose sight of that bigger picture in the process of reading. The kinds of
pleasure Athenaeus text offers are not entirely unfamiliar to those who have
whiled away hours of their lives browsing through modern compilations on
food and cooking: works like the Oxford Companion to Food, the Larousse
Gastronomique and their many less famous and less comprehensive cousins
within the eld of modern food writing. Like Athenaeus, these works hold
some of their appeal in the random encounters they offer: in looking up
one entry our eyes may wander to the next, prompting us to follow up
another, new item of curiosity and another, leading us further and further
away from the original focus of our reading, even if we may eventually
come back to it. The conversational procedures of the deipnosophists have
much in common with that kind of navigation, in the sense that they are
always touched to some degree by a spirit of indiscriminacy. The very fact
that Athenaeus avoids the kind of division into separate conversations we
have seen for Plutarch, opting instead for a lengthy single conversation in
constant ux (or at any rate a small number of different conversations,
since there are some indications that Athenaeus is describing more than
Davidson (:ccc), esp. :,,,c,; and for a good example, discussed briey by Davidson, ,,,,bc
and ,ode.
;
See Dunbabin (:cc,a) :,; on this late antique concentration.

For some examples, see above pp. :::, on the banquet genre and on recipe compilations; Wilkins
(:ccca) on food listing in Attic comedy, much of it preserved only in Athenaeus; also below in this
chapter on Kallixeinos account of the procession of the Ptolemaia; Gow (:,o,) and Dalby (:cccb)
on the anecdotists Machon and Lynceus, who collected sympotic sayings and stories.
, Saints and Symposiasts
one occasion), contributes to the more chaotic character of his work.
,
If
we expect the deipnosophists to speak with the focus and directedness of
modern scholarly discourse we will be disappointed.
:c
Their discussions
have more in common with the language of the fan: the deipnosophists are
fanatics of the culture of consumption and the history of comedy, fasci-
nated by snippets of literary culinaria and obscure vocabulary, obsessively
citing their favourite passages and competing with each other to nd more
and more obscure quotations. The best way to enjoy the Deipnosophists,
I suggest, is to read the text slowly, savouring every word, submerging
ourselves, as far as we can, in that deipnosophistic way of looking at the
world.
community and history
For all their indiscriminacy, however, the conversations recorded in the
Deipnosophists, like those of the Sympotic Questions, are held together by
a unifying ideological and intellectual agenda. Like Plutarch, Athenaeus
is interested in conjuring up a picture of an idealised and harmonious
intellectual community. The work has a roughly contemporary setting: it
seems to be set in the last decade of the second century ce, perhaps a few
decades before it was written.
::
Athenaeus includes guests from many dif-
ferent professional and philosophical backgrounds, although without quite
matching Plutarchs variety.
::
Moreover the deipnosophists techniques of
conversation have a certain amount in common with what we have seen
already in the Sympotic Questions. The learned symposium, as Athenaeus
represents it, acts as a training ground in methods of analysis which had
great prestige and wide applicability within the intellectual culture of the
Roman empire. Christian Jacob has shown how the deipnosophists, like
Athenaeus himself, use a range of common scholarly techniques to nav-
igate through the vast resources of the Hellenistic library.
:,
They bring
inert texts to life by their practices of quoting, ltering, juxtaposing, and
so drawing new meaning from the huge body of the Greek literary past,
in ways which have much in common with the techniques of sophistic
,
Cf. Jacob (:cc:) xxxiiixxxvii; however, see Hansen (:cc,) for the argument that Athenaeus is
presenting material from a number of different conversations.
:c
See Barker (:ccc) for a good example of such frustration.
::
Precise dating of setting and composition are debated: see McClure (:cc,) :c, n.,,, for summary
with further bibliography; also Baldwin (:,;o) and (:,;;).
::
See McClure (:cc,) ,,o; Jacob (:ccc) xxvi.
:,
Jacob (:cc:), esp. lxxilxxxiii, (:cca), (:ccb), (:cc,a), (:cc,b).
Athenaeus ,,
rhetoric.
:
Often Athenaeus characters, like Plutarchs, speak in response
to particular puzzles (zetemata), set for them by their fellow guests: in its
simplest form that involves gathering together as many examples as possi-
ble of a particular word from within the vast storehouses of quotation they
hold within their minds.
:,
Throughout there is an implication that we as
readers can learn from watching the deipnosophists in action, that we too
can admire and habituate ourselves to the rhythms of sympotic speech as
we read,
:o
although the role models Athenaeus presents us with are even
less suitable for direct imitation within real conversation than those we
nd in the Sympotic Questions. That is partly because Athenaeus is rela-
tively unconcerned to make his fantasy conversation conform to realistic
models of oral communication. The archaic and classical symposium had
a heavily oral character, where quotation relied on memory. Athenaeus, by
contrast, relies heavily on the written technologies of note-taking, recom-
bining often very long excerpted passages into a larger whole.
:;
In that
respect there is an obvious contrast with Plutarch, who usually connes
himself to very short quotations which can be seamlessly inserted into
conversation.
This community of the deipnosophists, like the community made up
by Plutarch and his fellow guests, is thus a scholarly community, held
together by shared techniques of analysis. It is also strongly marked as
a Greek community, given cohesion by its shared knowledge of Greek
tradition. The guests quote from an extraordinary range of earlier Greek
authors, in many different genres, and delve into the obscurest corners of
the Greek language, with their love of unusual usages.
:
They rarely show
any explicit concern with the idea of Greek identity as such. Instead, the
Hellenic reach of their conversation manifests itself in local details: they
draw examples from across the Greek world and even from beyond its outer
edges, and they show a fascination with local practices and local history.
:,
:
See Anderson (:,,;a) on Athenaeus links with his sophistic contemporaries.
:,
See Jacob (:cca) ,:, on the long history of this mode of analysis, stretching back to the scholarly
practices of Hellenistic Alexandria.
:o
See Jacob (:cc:) xcvii for that didactic potential.
:;
See Jacob (:ccc), esp. o, where he discusses Athenaeus as part of a tradition of Greek scholarship
that relied extensively on books as a medium to produce and to transmit knowledge, to reshape
it and reorganise it, thus creating new aesthetic and intellectual effects from the various steps of
compiling, summarising and rewriting; also Jacob (:cc,b), although he stresses there that citation,
for Athenaeus, is still a performance, requiring ingenuity to make the quoted source appropriate to
its new social and cultural context.
:
See Swain (:,,o) ,,: on Athenaeus connection with contemporary Atticism.
:,
See Wilkins (:cc) on the way in which the text maps out culinary culture according to geographical
criteria.
,o Saints and Symposiasts
At the same time, Athenaeus goes further than Plutarch in portraying this
Greek world as one which is (for the most part harmoniously) intertwined
with Roman culture. The text celebrates not only the richness of Greek
tradition but also the abundance of the Roman empire, which frames that
richness and makes it possible.
:c
All of the discussion recorded in the work
(whether we imagine a single event or several different occasions) takes
place within the city of Rome itself.
::
In one remarkable passage we even
hear the sounds of celebration from the streets of Rome intruding on the
deipnosophists banqueting:
Even though many speeches of this kind were still being made, at that moment the
buzzing of pipes became audible, and the clashing of cymbals and the beating of
drums, all of this accompanied by singing. It happened to be the festival referred to
in the past as the Parilia, but now known as the Romaia, the temple in honour of
the Fortune of the city having been founded by the entirely excellent and cultivated
emperor Hadrian. That day is celebrated every year as a special occasion by all the
inhabitants of Rome and visitors to the city. (, ,o:ef )
Typically this festival context is soon forgotten, as Ulpian and his fellow
guests launch into a debate, prompted by this interruption, about the
vocabulary of dancing and feasting and their use in earlier literature. How-
ever, this short passage represents a fascinating rewriting of the Plutarchan
habit (inherited in turn from Plato and Xenophon) of portraying sympotic
discussion as a kind of festive speech. In Athenaeus case, the festival is a
Roman one, in contrast with Plutarchs Greek festive settings. Athenaeus
also imitates Plutarchs inclusion of Roman guests, through regular men-
tion of the deipnosophists wealthy Roman host Larensis. Like the Romans
of the Sympotic Questions, Larensis makes regular and impressive contribu-
tions to discussion. The difference is that Athenaeus also draws attention in
overwhelmingly positive terms to Larensis great erudition, his enormous
library, his patronage of Greek culture, and his favourable relations with the
emperor.
::
Plutarch, by contrast, makes it clear that his addressee Sosius
Senecio deserves praise primarily insofar as he embodies the Greek virtues
Plutarch himself admires, rather than portraying him as a Larensis-style
orchestrator and patron of Greek culture.
:c
See Braund (:ccc); Jacob (:cc:) xxvixxxiii; Wilkins (:cc); Anderson (:,,;a) ::c, by contrast,
judges that Roman material features only very rarely in the discussions themselves.
::
Cf. p. o,, n. :;, above, for conversations in Rome (relatively few) in the QC.
::
See the eulogy recorded at :bd; with Braund (:ccc), esp. ,: for this and the many other
appearances of Larensis; Too (:c:c) :c:; and Whitmarsh (:ccc), esp. ,c, for possible negative
overtones in Athenaeus portrayal of Roman patronage.
Athenaeus ,;
Athenaeus community, like Plutarchs, is also a community that links
the past and the present. One of the deipnosophists aims is to preserve a
history of sympotic culture. In doing so they act out their own position
within a wider Greek sympotic community stretching back over many
centuries. The work is a vast, though largely unsystematic, inventory of
the culinary and sympotic customs of the Greek world, and even more
so, of the passages from earlier literature which record those customs.
:,
In
some cases we can even detect moralising intent: one repeated theme in
his historical sections (concentrated especially in Books , , and ::) is the
contrast between luxury and moderation, and it may be that Athenaeus
intends to present his contemporary readers with a warning about the
danger of the former, drawn from the texts of the past, but relevant also
to the present, aimed above all at the ultimate consumer city, Rome.
:
That said, it is important to stress that Athenaeus is far from consistent
in his moralising tone, and if he does intend the work to be viewed as
an attack on luxury and excess there must be a degree of self-mockery in
that theme, given the excessiveness and over-abundance of his own text in
literary terms.
To take just the rst and most obvious example, the account in Book : of
eating and drinking in the Homeric epics allows the works readers to look
right back to the very founding moments of Greek literature and Greek
culture, measuring up their own activities against those of Homers heroes.
What they nd, thanks in part to Athenaeus ingenious presentation of
the material, is a degree of continuity with present-day customs and ideals,
albeit counterbalanced with many exoticising details. The Homeric heroes,
unlike modern Greeks, may sit to feast rather than reclining (:, ::f and :;f ),
and they may pour libations after dining to Hermes rather than Zeus the
Fulller (:, :obc), but they are nevertheless powerful role models for the
present-day symposiast. At the opening of his section on the Homeric
heroes, for example (as summarised by the epitomator), Athenaeus stresses
Homers devotion to ideals of frugality and moderation, pointing out that
in even the most luxurious of feasts in the work, the only food served is
beef:
. . . Nor does Homer set before these kings stuffed g-leaves or kandaulos [a Lydian
delicacy] or milk cakes or choice honey cakes but only foods which will bring well-
being to body and soul . . . Even in the case of the suitors, who are violent and
:,
For a good example, see Colace (:cc,) :c,:c on the way in which Athenaeus catalogue of sympotic
vessels in Book :: (discussed further below) shows a fascination with ancient artefacts no longer in
use.
:
See Wilkins (:cc;b) and (:cc) :;,c.
, Saints and Symposiasts
unrestrained in their devotion to pleasure, he does not show them eating
sh or birds or honey-cakes. Homer strives to exclude the magic of culinary
art . . . (:, ,ac)
These delicacies and others like them are precisely the kind which are
served to the deipnosophists in Book :, prompting them to glut them-
selves on obscure erudition on the subject of cakes (:, o:fo,c).
The deipnosophists in that scene fall comically short of the frugality of
Homers heroes, albeit with a gluttony which is metaphorical rather than
literal.
The work as a whole, then, gives its readers access to an enormous
network of stories against which they can measure up their own diets and
their own gastronomic and sympotic activities in the present. At the same
time the deipnosophists are also acutely aware of the precariousness of
that history. Their conversation is an act of cultural salvage.
:,
The work
leaves us with the impression that even the smallest object, chosen at
random, can open up a vast and rich virtual world by the anecdotes and
quotations it prompts, bringing the past to life, although that is never
an easy task. Athenaeus work has much in common in that respect with
some of the writing of his contemporaries. The travel-writing of Pausanias
is a particularly good point of comparison. Pausanias is obsessed with
the fragments and ruins of Greek history as they show themselves on the
landscape of present-day Achaia, and with the complex virtual world of
Greek history which they bring to life, for those who know how to read
the stories lying behind them.
:o
Athenaeus, like Pausanias, is fascinated by
fragments, and the way in which they can offer us tantalising glimpses of
the past, a complete picture of which is always just out of reach.
:;
proliferation and control: book 9
Athenaeus text, then, is unwieldy and focused above all on the pleasures of
the particular. Lying behind the mass of detail, however, there are powerful
and coherent images of community and communal history. What, though,
is it like to read this text? How is the balance between chaos and coherence
managed in practice? The best way of answering that question, I think, is
to put aside for the moment any attempt at summary and sample it from
:,
Cf. Jacob (:cc:) xvi-xvii; also (:ccb) :,:, on the way in which the deipnosophists drawattention
to the difculty of accurately attributing the works from which they quote.
:o
See Porter (:cc:) for the argument that this is typical of imperial Greek literature; cf. K onig (:cc,)
:,:c.
:;
See McClure (:cc,) :;,.
Athenaeus ,,
close up. In this section I look at a brief case study, taken from the opening
section of Book ,. I want to stress in particular the way in which the
works tendency towards an endless proliferation of quotations is at least to
some extent held in check by a guiding conversational thread which helps
to enhance the impression of an organically developing conversation, and
gives an impression of the deipnosophists grappling with an immensely
complex literary heritage, struggling, with some success, to pull it into an
orderly shape and to make a kind of sense of it.
:
The book opens with a quotation from Homer (Odyssey .::,:): Let
us remember (uvnocutc) again the dinner, and let them pour water over
our hands. There will be stories also in the morning for you and me
Timokrates (,, ,ooa). In the original context of the Odyssey these words
are spoken by Menelaus: he urges his fellow-diners to put aside their sad
reections about those who have died at Troy, and instead to turn to
feasting; he himself will be able to talk further to Telemachus, he suggests,
in the morning. In its new context, in the mouth of Athenaeus addressing
his interlocutor Timokrates, the meaning of the original is transformed.
The word uvnocutc (let us remember) is no longer an instruction to
forget about talking and eat, but instead to carry on talking, in recalling
a feast from the past a very different, deipnosophistic use of the idea
of memory. Menelaus separates talk and feasting There will be talk
again in the morning for me and Telemachus, i.e. when the separate
business of feasting is over. That sentiment could hardly be further from
the spirit of the Deipnosophists. Athenaeus use of the same phrase activates
a rather different meaning: there will be talk also in the morning for you
and me, Timokrates, just as there has been talk during dinner for the
deipnosophists. The point seems to be that the talk of the deipnosophists
ows beyond its boundaries into the scholarly space of daylight: it is not
conned to the evening, but can be repeated afterwards. Through this
opening, then, Athenaeus ingeniously twists the sense of the Homeric
original (a traditional sympotic skill),
:,
painting his own practice rather
absurdly and comically, when we stop to think about it as a continuation
of heroic practice.
From there we leap straight into discussion: For when some hams
(k olen on) were served and someone asked if they were tender (takeroi),
Ulpian asked, In what author is the word tender (takeros) attested? And
:
Cf. Romeri (:cc:) :o; and see Hansen (:cc,) for convincing suggestions about the structure
Athenaeus imposes on his material in the work as a whole.
:,
See Collins (:cc) ::,,c, with reference especially to Plato, Symposium :;ad and a number of
other passages from that text; also K onig (:c::b), esp. ,:, and ,,,:.
:cc Saints and Symposiasts
who refers to mustard (napu) as sinapu? For I see that it is being served
in sauce-dishes (paropsisi) along with the hams (k ole on)? (,ooa). Ulpian is
the gure who most often directs the deipnosophists conversations and
he is behaving here in entirely characteristic fashion, posing for his fellow
guests obscure challenges of quotation which arise from the dishes which
have been produced in the dining room.
,c
He then supplements those two
initial questions with a set of additional reections and a pair of quotations
from the comic poet Epicharmos:
For I know that the word is pronounced like that, in the masculine form k oleon,
and not just in the feminine form as our Athenians claim. Epicharmos at any rate,
in his Megarian Woman, says, sausages (orua), cheese, hams (k oleoi), vertebrae,
but not even one thing which is edible. And in his Cyclops, sausages (chordai) are
delicious, by Zeus, and so is ham (k oleos). (,ooab)
He then latches on to the word sausages (chordai), in the second of those
two quotations, in a way which leads him even further away from his initial
two questions, explaining that Epicharmos more often uses the word orua
for sausage. At this point we might momentarily wonder if Ulpian is going
to be dragged away from the real context of the banquet in front of him,
quoting passages on sausages, and from there to other subjects, pursuing
links indiscriminately, as one quotation leads him to another by a process
of potentially endless association. Immediately, however, he drags his atten-
tion back to the food which sits in front of him, letting his eye run over the
other dishes: I see seasoned salt in other sauce dishes (paropsisin) (,oob).
He follows that by a six-line quotation from Antiphanes to demonstrate the
point that the Cynics are full of unseasoned salt (the nuances of the joke
are obscure, but it is clearly not intended to be attering, given that the
word unseasoned is regularly used in negative terms, with connotations of
unpleasantness and severity).
,:
Finally he looks over to another dish: I also
see garos (fermented sh-sauce) mixed with vinegar, and I know that these
days some of the inhabitants of the Black Sea area manufacture a special
kind of oxygaron (vinegar-and-fermented-sh-sauce) (,ooc).
Ulpians speech in itself is a microcosm of the text as a whole, illustrat-
ing in very short space many of the techniques which lie at the heart of
deipnosophistic speech. The difference from the conversations of the Sym-
potic Questions should be immediately apparent: Ulpian is focused much
,c
Athenaeus (or the epitomator) notes Ulpians obsession with where obscure words are attested at :,
:de; on Ulpians love of words (and the love of food which characterises his foil Kynoulkos), see
also Wilkins (:cccb) :,,c; Romeri (:cc:) ::,c.
,:
Cf. Canfora (:cc:) ,:;, n. , for further discussion.
Athenaeus :c:
more narrowly on quotation almost for its own sake, rather than using it
also as a basis for ethical and scientic problem-solving. And in this brief
passage he offers the beginnings of a literary and linguistic inventory of six
separate sympotic phenomena tender, mustard, ham, sausages, salt, and
sh sauce with vinegar like a lexicographer beginning to collect attes-
tations of the words which have been assigned to him. In the process, he
quotes from three works by two different authors. He also slips in a nal
reference to current practices among the Greek communities of the Black
Sea, a reference which is typical of the works concern with the geographical
spread of local Greek customs, and demonstrates nicely that Athenaeus
concern is not exclusively with the past but also with the gastronomic
culture of the present, and all its different geographical variants.
In what follows, two different speakers then respond to Ulpians chal-
lenge, taking it in turns to bulk out the beginnings of the inventories he has
presented them with. Zoilos, speaking rst, answers the challenge about
the word tender very quickly, rattling off two quotations in turn:
Zoilos, answering these questions, spoke as follows: Aristophanes, sir, in his
Lemnian Women, used the word takeros to mean delicate in the following
line: Lemnos, which produces beans which are tender (takerous) and good.
Pherekrates in his Small Change does the same: to make the chickpeas tender
on the spot. (,oocd)
Zoilos then moves on to the vocabulary of mustard, offering three examples
of the word sinepu from the didactic poet Nikander of Kolophon. Then
comes a fourth, less straightforward example, from the grammatical writer
Krates:
Krates in his On the Attic Dialect mentions Aristophanes who says: he gave me a
mustard (sinapu) look and knitted his brow, at least according to Seleukos in his
work On Hellenism; but in fact the line comes from Knights and goes like this: he
gave me a mustard (napu) look. None of the Attic writers uses sinapu; but both
forms are permissible. (,ood,o;a)
He backs up that claim with some comically ingenious etymologies. The
word sinepu, for example, may be so called because the smell hurts our
eyes (sinetai tous opas); similarly we say krommyon (onion) because we
squeeze shut our eyes (tas koras muomen) (,o;a). After that, for good
measure, having answered Ulpians two key questions, he throws in a bonus
quotation from Aristophanes on salt and vinegar, picking up on Ulpians
musings on that subject. Finally he throws out a challenge to Ulpian in turn,
asking for a catalogue of quotations where the word paropsis (side-dish) is
:c: Saints and Symposiasts
used for a serving vessel the sense Ulpian had used for it: It is right that
you should give us a reply on the question of who has used the word paropsis
for a vessel (,o;b). He follows that with three quotations from the comic
poet Plato, and one from Aristophanes, which demonstrate that Ulpians
use of paropsis to describe a serving-dish is contrary to normal usage.
Ulpian himself is silent, whether stunned into silence through his own
ignorance or in order to give someone else a turn is not clear. At that point
a third speaker, Leonides, joins in, reeling off a long string of examples of
the word paropsis which support Ulpians usage, as well as two disputed
cases:
It is used ambiguously in the rst book of Xenophons Education. For the philoso-
pher says: He brought in to him paropsidas and many kinds of sauces and foods.
And paropsis is used by the author of the Cheiron which is attributed to Pherekrates
in reference to a sauce and not, as Didymos claims in his On Corrupt Vocabulary,
for a vessel. (,oab)
Leonides then switches abruptly back to the question of the gender of the
word ham. It is only after Leonides speech that Athenaeus pauses for
breath, introducing a new phase of the discussion, prompted by the arrival
of some new dishes.
Throughout Zoilos contribution in particular there is a dazzling impres-
sion of citational virtuosity: we are being confronted here with a fantasy
of almost superhuman scholarly recall (although it should be stressed that
it pales into insignicance by comparison with the many more lengthy
speeches elsewhere in the work). Zoilos skips from one quotation to the
next without hesitation, showing an instant ability to lter through the
mass of texts which are lodged in his memory, so much so that he is able
to state, seemingly with complete condence, that there is no instance of
the word sinepu attested in the whole of Attic Greek. He instantly puts
his nger on the one possible exception to that claim the misquotation
from Aristophanes as quoted by Krates as quoted by Seleukos (an inter-
esting moment in itself, in the sense that it illustrates how Athenaeus and
his speakers view second- or third-level scholarly commentary as material
worthy of analysis, just as valid as the original texts of Attic comedy and
other primary genres; Leonides correction of Didymos implies the same).
In addition, Zoilos challenge to Ulpian on his use of the word paropsis has
a note of combativity to it, as if designed to show that Ulpian has (perhaps
surprisingly) slipped up, misusing the word in question. Leonides contri-
bution then shows us decisively that that is not the case; he too seems to be
able to lter through all the texts he has lodged in his memory, as if with
Athenaeus :c,
a built-in search engine, in his immediate and unhesitating list of uses of
the word paropsis.
Zoilos account is also another good example of the way in which
conversations in this text tend to proliferate. This proliferation can take
the form either of a multiplication of answers (i.e. in this case a gradual
accumulation of relevant passages) to the problems already posed, or a
multiplication of questions or topics: in this case Zoilos introduces an
additional topic, the meaning of paropsis, in addition to the string of
questions already set out by Ulpian. Again, the contrast with Plutarchs
more focused conversation in the Sympotic Questions, which deals for the
most part with one question at a time (although admittedly with some
digressions) should be clear. Nevertheless despite this potential for almost
endless proliferation, it is important to stress that the deipnosophists do
not, for the most part, lose control, but instead grope their way towards
an (always provisional) imposition of order. In the process their powers of
memory are applied not just to the literary archive but also to their own
conversation. They jump from one subject and one quotation to the next,
but they never forget what their fellow-speakers have already talked about.
For example, Leonides return to the subject of the word ham reminds
us that these speakers are capable of juggling many different subjects of
enquiry without losing track.
voices of the library
Athenaeus text thus performs a constant balancing act between prolifera-
tion and control, between randomness and directedness. The multiplicity
of the work of course comes above all from the abundance of sources it
presents us with, and the deipnosophists struggle for control is above all
a struggle with the sources they quote. For Athenaeus, as for Plutarch, the
symposium setting is a powerful frame for miscellanistic writing because
it helps us to view the processes of engagement with the authors of the
past as a dialogue, rather than a sterile process of passive absorption and
citation. The deipnosophists conjuring up of these voices is marked by an
enormous variety and versatility: they jump between genres, and juxtapose
prose and verse. They allow the authors of the past to speak through them,
risking self-effacement in the process, as Yun Lee Too has pointed out in
her work on Athenaeus deipnosophists as walking libraries.
,:
,:
Too (:ccc), esp. ::, on self-effacement; also (:c:c) :cc:; cf. Jacob (:cc:) lli; and for the idea
that quoted authors speak through the mouths of the deipnosophists, see Jacob (:ccb) :,,o and
:c Saints and Symposiasts
These processes of giving voice to the authors of the past still surpris-
ingly understudied in modern scholarship on Athenaeus are the main
focus of the rest of this chapter. I want to suggest in particular that there
is one feature of Athenaeus work which, while not entirely unparalleled,
nevertheless sets the Deipnosophists apart from its sympotic relatives, and
that is Athenaeus tendency to blur the different levels of the conversa-
tions he reports. What Athenaeus presents us with, to be more precise,
is an elaborate series of frames:
,,
the outside frame of Athenaeus address
to Timokrates,
,
which contains the conversation of the deipnosophists,
which in turn contains the source texts they quote, some of which them-
selves even contain inserted speech or quotation. Because the text moves
quite readily, sometimes abruptly, backwards and forwards between these
framing levels (unlike, for example, Platonic dialogue, where such move-
ments are for the most part clearly signalled), and because Athenaeus own
quotation-obsessed style of speech, in his role as narrator, is so similar to
that of his characters and in some cases even to that of the quoted texts
for those reasons it often becomes easy to lose track at least momentarily of
which level we are in at any one moment.
,,
Bakhtins list of different tech-
niques of double-voicing, discussed above in chapter :, does not include
anything exactly like this. Nevertheless, it should be clear from everything
which follows that Athenaeus approach does have something in common
with the effects he identies, in the sense that it causes the voices of dif-
ferent speakers to be overlaid with the accents of others. Athenaeus own
voice merges with those of his deipnosophists; their voices merge with their
source texts; and we slip between these different levels as we read, lured
into missing the points of transition from one level to the next, so that the
boundaries between library and life become broken down.
Once again, it is important to stress that there are many factors hold-
ing that chaos in check. For the most part the different levels of framing
are signalled clearly, for example in the way in which the communication
between Athenaeus and Timokrates tends to reassert itself at the beginning
:,o;; also :,c on the way in which Athenaeus sometimes shows the words of one quoted author
being re-used verbatim by another: Lidentit e auctoriale attach ee ` a un texte peut donc relever de
lusurpation, voire du masque (:,c); cf. Barker (:ccc) ,,.
,,
Cf. Ceccarelli (:ccc), drawing on, but adjusting, Letrouit (:,,:).
,
Some commentators have viewed this as a conversation; however, see Hansen (:cc,) for scepti-
cism on that point, arguing that the framing addresses to Timokrates imply nothing more than
communication in writing to the texts addressee.
,,
Cf. de Jong (:cc,), esp. ,,:co on the blurring of voices between primary and reported
narrator which she sees as a familiar technique even within archaic and classical Greek
literature as a subcategory of the technique of metalepsis, dened by Genette (:,c) :,;
as transgression of the boundaries between different narrative levels.
Athenaeus :c,
and end of each book;
,o
or in the way in which the deipnosophists usu-
ally signal the beginning of each new quotation with the name of author
or source work.
,;
The quotation from Odyssey Book at the beginning
of Deipnosophists Book ,, quoted above, is in fact relatively unusual in
being spoken without specic attribution to the poet. In this willingness
to name quoted sources, Athenaeus is very close to Plutarch; if anything he
does it more consistently. Both Athenaeus and Plutarch are quite unusual
in this respect by the standards of imperial Greek literature which tends
to atter and seduce the reader into a generous assumption of shared
knowledge precisely by not providing references and footnotes.
,
More-
over, the very fact that so many of the quotations in the Deipnosophists are
in verse helps to differentiate them from the conversation which surrounds
them.
Sometimes, however, the divisions are more uid, and there are many
clusters of quotation in the text where the scrupulous separation between
speakers and quoted texts is less clear, particularly in those passages where
Athenaeus uses long sections of quotation in prose: here in particular it
is often difcult to be sure where the quoted passage ends and the voice
of deipnosophist or narrator begins again.
,,
Paola Ceccarelli has shown,
in intricate detail, how that uidity functions for Book :, as Athenaeus
slips between different levels of narrative in a way which is often hard to
follow.
c
Luciana Romeri has explored the same phenomenon,
:
and has
even pointed to the way in which the outer frame is sometimes able to
inuence the inner one, for example in one instance where Timokrates
request to Athenaeus for a particular topic of conversation is followed
by a long discussion of precisely that topic within the dialogue of the
deipnosophists, as if Timokrates himself is being drawn in as a participant
in that original party of words.
:
Some of the impetus for investigating Athenaeus habits of quotation
has arisen from long-standing interest in the question of how reliable he is
as a repository of earlier texts. On the whole, he shows a remarkably close
adherence to the original, wherever we have the source text to compare
,o
See Letrouit (:,,:) ,; Wilkins (:cccb) :,, ,::; Romeri (:cc:) :o,.
,;
See Jacob (:ccc) esp. ,:c: and (:cc:) lxiiilxx on the scrupulousness of Athenaeus and his
characters in identifying the author and edition they are quoting from.
,
See Davidson (:ccc) :,, for that quotation.
,,
See Pelling (:ccc), esp. :;,c for helpful illustration; and Olson (:cco::) vol. vii, :c:, n. : for
passing reference to one example from the beginning of Book :.
c
Ceccarelli (:ccc); Rodrguez-Noriega Guill en (:ccc) :,, touches on the same phenomenon of
switches between narrative level, but characterises them as careless transitions.
:
Romeri (:cc:) :o;.
:
See Romeri (:cc:) :o;,.
:co Saints and Symposiasts
with Athenaeus own version of it.
,
At the same time, however, even those
who stress Athenaeus faithfulness to his sources do acknowledge that
ancient practices of citing prose texts did not necessarily demand com-
plete accuracy

and that the conversational nature of the deipnosophists

quotations sometimes leads them to adjust their originals to bring them
in line with their own priorities.
,
Christopher Pelling has gone further,
in suggesting that adaptation of source texts may be an integral part of
Athenaeus technique, playfully applied, and entirely appropriate to the
works sympotic setting, given the way in which sympotic conversation
for so many centuries had valued ingenious adaptation and quotation of
earlier texts, and the adjustment of quotations to the situation and idiom
of the speaker.
o
The sympotic setting thus allows Athenaeus to dissolve the time barriers
of the past, allowing authors of very different times to speak together, albeit
often in a rather precarious fashion. That sense of anachronistic mixing also
leaves its mark on the works guest list. Many of Athenaeus deipnosophists
have the same names as famous intellectuals of the rst and second
centuries Plutarch, Galen the great medical writer, Ulpian the jurist and
others individuals who could never in reality have dined together with
each other because of the time gaps between them. What we seem to have
at rst sight is an anachronistic fantasy of intellectual superstars in dialogue
with each other. And yet as we read, as a number of scholars have recently
pointed out, it is increasingly made clear that we must doubt those identi-
cations this is not the Plutarch (Athenaeus character is said to come from
Alexandria, rather than Chaironeia), and probably not the Ulpian.
;
The
illusion of recapturing the voices of long-dead intellectual superstars turns
out to be a very precarious one. Moreover even within the sympotic society
Athenaeus commemorates, putting aside the characters association with
famous namesakes, the theme of reactivating the voices of the dead looms
,
E.g. Zepernick (:,::); Collard (:,o,); Brunt (:,c) esp. c:; Ambaglio (:,,c); Arnott (:ccc)
::; McClure (:cc,) ,;, esp. n. ,, for further bibliography.

See Lenfant (:cc;a), esp. :.

,
See Collard (:,o,) :;;; Ambaglio (:,,c) o,, who sees in Athenaeus a lack of interest in trying
to understand his sources; Ceccarelli (:ccc) :,c:; and for examples of inaccurate, misleading or
incomplete quotation in Athenaeus see Sharples and Minter (:,,); Tronson (:,); G unther (:,,);
Arnott (:ccc) gives examples of mistakes caused by the interventions of the epitomator.
o
Pelling (:ccc); cf. Jacob (:cc:) xcvi; Too (:c:c) ::,:.
;
See Braund (:ccc) :;: on Ulpian; Jacob (:cc:) xxixxxxiii and (:cc,a) ,::; Romeri (:cc:) :;
:; Berra (:cc,) on Plutarch; Too (:c:c) :c,; the identication of Athenaeus Galen as the great
medical writer seems more secure, although still not straightforward: see Flemming (:ccc); for a
more sceptical account of the claim that we are meant even to consider mistaking these characters
for their more famous counterparts, see Baldwin (:,;o) and (:,;;), esp. ; on Plutarch; cf. p. o,
above, and p. :c below for similar effects of anachronism in Plutarch and Macrobius respectively.
Athenaeus :c;
large: the impending death of the character Ulpian, who leads many of their
discussions, is pregured very close to the end of the nal book, in :,, ooc.
The whole work is in a sense an attempt to bring his voice back to life.

book 4
As a rst example of that effect, I want to turn now to the long quotation
of Parmeniskos Symposium of the Cynics in Book . That passage is an
obvious place to start just because it is one of the quotations where the
source text is, as far as we can tell, similar in its goals to Athenaeus own.
Parmeniskos too is providing a record of learned conversation (presented
in epistolary form), and his speakers are characterised in terms quite close
to Athenaeus own. It is hardly surprising then that the voices of the quoted
speakers start to blur with the voices of the deipnosophists themselves, so
that it becomes hard to tell them apart.
Roughly the rst half of Book is dedicated to quotations which record
dinner parties and customs of eating and drinking from a range of differ-
ent cultures, Greek and barbarian. At :,oa, nally, Kynoulkos the Cynic
characteristically complains about the fact that they are being prevented
from eating by an excess of talk: In my view it would be much better to
dine in the manner of the Symposium of the Cynics by Parmeniskos than to
lie here watching all of this food being carried around, like people with a
fever. We laughed, and someone said, Best of men, do not begrudge us an
account of that Parmeniskan symposium (:,obc). Kynoulkos obliges:
Parmeniskos to Molpis, greetings. Since I am generous in my communications
with you on the subject of the distinguished invitations I receive, I am anxious
lest you should be critical of me through having become full. For that reason I
want to give you a share in the dinner which was held at the house of Kebes of
Kyzikos. Drink some hyssop and give your attention to the feast. I was invited to
visit him when the Dionysia was on in Athens. I found six Cynics lying there, and
one dog-master Karneios of Megara. When dinner was delayed, a discussion arose
about which type of water is sweetest. Some of them praised water from Lerna,
others from Peirene, but Karneios, quoting Philoxenos, praised the water which
is poured over ones hands. Then the tables were set beside us and we began to
dine: we drained one bowl of lentil soup, and another one owed in. Then lentils
were served again soaked in vinegar . . . (:,ode)
That last quotation is a parody of an unidentied line of tragic poetry
describing the task of the Danaids, condemned endlessly to ll a leaking

On Ulpians death, and the idea of the text as funeral monument, not just for Ulpian but for the
whole culture of scholarship he represents, see Davidson (:ccc) :,,.
:c Saints and Symposiasts
cask (phidaknen, here replaced by phaken, i.e. lentil soup) with water. In
response to the second serving of lentils, two of the Cynics in turn offer
similar parodies of famous tragic verses, with the word lentil (phakos)
punningly substituted for evil (kakos). As far as the quoting deipnosophist
Kynoulkos is concerned the Cynics banquet is different from the one he
is currently involved in, since there is actually an opportunity to eat (albeit
with a comically frugal menu). Nevertheless the basic similarity between
Parmeniskos account and the banquet of the deipnosophists is clear from
the regular, ingenious use of quotations from earlier literature and from the
discussion of the best kind of water, which participates in the custom of
learned sympotic discussion on gastronomic topics (although again with a
joke about the sparseness of the Cynics diet, which leads them to discuss
water rather than wine).
Immediately after those quotations we then hear the following: But my
reaction (tuci ot) is the same as what we nd in the comic poet Diphilos,
for he says in his Daughters of Pelias: The little dinner was abundant,
very elegant, with a big bowl full of lentil soup for each man . . . (:,of
:,;a). Successive editors of the text
,
have ascribed that interjection to the
deipnosophist Kynoulkos, and that is certainly the most likely reading, but
it is nevertheless surely the case that a rst time reader will nd it hard to be
sure, especially without the benet of modern editorial conventions which
insist on identifying each speaker clearly. It is perfectly possible that we are
listening at this point to the letter-writer Parmeniskos addressing Molpis,
or even conceivably to one of the Cynic guests at the symposium, although
that latter reading is less likely given that the phrase translated above as
but my reaction (tuci ot) implies a contrast with the preceding speaker.
There follows a further exchange of jokes and ingenious quotations. Two
famous courtesans join the banquet of Cynics and laugh at their diet of
lentils. Karneios replies to them with an account of Pythagorean theories
about the effect of diet on the soul. That is followed by a string of three
quotations, one from Theopompus, one from Xenophon and one from
an unidentied author on Socrates, which similarly recommend moderate
diet:
For you do not understand, wretched men, that these heavy foods block out
the masterful part of the soul [i.e. reason] and do not allow your minds to
be fully conscious. Theopompus therefore says in the fth book of his His-
tory of Philip: Eating a lot and eating meat destroys ones rational powers and
makes ones soul slower, and lls one with much anger and harshness and much
awkwardness. (:,;de)
,
Canfora (:cc:) vol. i, ,,:, n. ,; Olson (:cco::) vol. ii, :,, n. :o.
Athenaeus :c,
Editors have tended to assume that this section of Karneios speech breaks
off after the phrase to be fully conscious, and that the quotation from
Theopompus, and the two which follow it, belong to Kynoulkos. But
once again it should be clear that a rst-time reader will not necessarily be
condent in that judgement; once again, this could almost equally well be
Parmeniskos, or even the Cynic Karneios, given that all of these different
speakers share the same basic idiom of erudite quotation.
,c
That confusion
is surely a deliberate effect, designed to confront us as readers with an
imaginary world where the authors of the past sometimes become hard to
distinguish from the speakers who quote them in the present. The point at
which the quotation from Parmeniskos ends is itself also hard to identify
on rst reading: we have to look very carefully to work out exactly where
the banquet of the Cynics ends and the conversation of Kynoulkos and
his fellow Cynics resumes.
,:
Once again, Athenaeus editors have generally
underestimated the importance of that fact in their eagerness to identify
each speaking voice rmly.
book 5
There are similar effects in many of the works other quoted passages of
prose. I want to turn now, for another example, to the description of
the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Book , (:,oa:c,b), quoted
by the deipnosophist Masourios from the work of the Hellenistic author
Kallixeinos. It is important to stress that this passage is quite unusual
as the longest
,:
passage of quoted prose from a historical source by
the standards of the rest of the work which tends to rely more often
on patchwork quotation and philological comment
,,
than on extended
description. Nevertheless it illustrates well, once again, the difculty of
distinguishing the different speaking voices of the text, especially in relation
to rst-person statements within quoted prose passages.
The account is astonishing for its lavishness. First comes an account of
the great display pavilionbuilt as part of the festival celebrations. Kallixeinos
then offers a description of the procession, which he says contained a
number of different sections or divisions. First and last come the divisions
,c
Canfora (:cc:) vol. i, ,,:, n. o like others ascribes this section to Kynoulkos, but also acknowledges
that the quotation of views on frugality by Theopompus and others might belong instead to one of
the Cynics whose words are reported by Parmeniskos.
,:
As all recent editors have seen, careful inspection suggests that it resumes at :,;f, after the quotation
from the unnamed author on Socrates, and then nally nishes at :,a.
,:
See Canfora (:cc:) vol. :, ,,, n. ; also Wilkins (:cccb) , for some of the longest examples of
extensive quotation.
,,
Webb (:ccc) ::,:c.
::c Saints and Symposiasts
of the morning and evening star, whose names remind us between them
of the day-long duration of the event. In between come divisions named
after the parents of the king and queen, and then divisions named after
each of the gods, all including statues, tableaux and priceless ornaments,
which would make the most lavish modern parade seem conservative and
miserly by comparison. There is an extraordinary impression here of variety,
exoticism and expense. We hear of carts with tableaux: one of them, in
the division of oats linked with the god Dionysus, including a :: foot
mechanical statue of the mountain-divinity Nysa, who rises up at intervals
from a sitting position to pour a libation of milk into a gold saucer; another
cart in the same division with a ,o-foot wine press, lled with oc satyrs
treading grapes, and producing a steady stream of new wine on to the
ground along the route of the procession; animals from every corner of the
Mediterranean world: sheep, oxen, a white bear, leopards, wildcats, caracals,
leopard-cubs, a giraffe, a rhinoceros, lions, elephants, camels, dogs, birds
of the most exotic kind; statues of Dionysus, Hera, Alexander, Ptolemy,
Priapus and many others; a Bacchic wand made of gold, :,, feet long;
women bearing the names of cities of Asia and India; ,c-foot high models
of eagles in the division of Zeus; enormous numbers of troops ,;,occ
infantry soldiers and :,,:cc cavalry; and more conspicuous than anything
(at least in the eyes of their narrator), the constant stream of precious
sympotic vessels and ornaments:
After these were carried the Delphic tripods made of silver, eighty in number,
smaller than the ones just mentioned, whose corners <. . . >, with a capacity
of four metretai; then came twenty-six water-jars, sixteen Panathenaic amphoras,
one hundred and sixty wine-coolers; the biggest of these had a capacity of six
metretai, the smallest two. These were all the silver vessels. Following on from
these processed the people carrying the gold vessels: four Laconian mixing-bowls,
decorated with garlands of vine leaves <. . . > others with a capacity of four
metretai, and two others in the Corinthian style these had very conspicuous
embossed gures situated in the upper part, while the neck and stomach of the
vessels had intricately made images in bas-relief; and each of them had a capacity
of eight metretai resting on stands. There was also a wine-press in which were
ten jars, two basins, each holding ve metretai, two barrels [or drinking-cups]
holding two metretai, twenty-two wine-coolers, the biggest of which held thirty
metretai, and the smallest of which held one. (,,:,,df )
In addition, in the text immediately surrounding this extract we hear
about censers (:,;e, :,b), trenchers for serving barley-cakes (:,;f, :cca),
wine-servers (:,b, :,,b), a drinking-goblet (:,b), saucers (:,d, :,f,
:,,b), a wine-skin (:,,a), Thericlean cups (:,,b), stands for drinking-cups
Athenaeus :::
(:,,c, :,,f ), washing-tubs (:,,c), cauldrons (:,,c), a plate-chest (:,,f ),
jugs (:cca), small wine-coolers (:cca), earthenware jars (:cca), and wine-
casks (:ccb). It is tempting to feel that Athenaeus is offering this inventory
of the procession as an image against which we are invited to measure up
the compilatory ambitions of his own work, given that the vessels of the
procession parallel the accumulation of references to sympotic vessels made
by the deipnosophists themselves (especially in Book ::, discussed below);
although if that is right, it is not clear whether the Deipnosophists as a text
surpasses the glories of the procession or falls short of them.
,
The moments I am most interested in for now, however, are perhaps
the least spectacular of all the several passages where the main ow
of the description is interrupted by a brief aside, sometimes to explain
the decisions the narrator has taken about structuring his account, and
sometimes to lament the difculty of doing justice to the original in the
description. In some of these cases it is hard to be absolutely sure whether we
are hearing the voice of Kallixeinos or of Masourios, or even of Athenaeus
himself.
In ,, :,;bc, for example, we hear the following:
Another couch had been set up opposite the symposium for the display of the
cups and drinking vessels and the other things which were needed. These were all
made of gold and covered in jewels, astonishing in their artistry. It seemed to me
that it would be a long task to describe these things in order and in their different
types; but the whole collection had a weight of :c,ccc talents of silver. And
now that I have set out everything linked with the pavilion, I will give an account
of the procession.
These rst-person comments are likely to be part of the original account,
quoted directly from Kallixeinos, and that is what all recent editors assume
without question, but in the context it is simply impossible to be sure:
we might instead imagine that we are hearing the voice of Masourios, or
even of Athenaeus himself, since there are in fact sections of the text where
Athenaeus the narrator gives up on the framing conversations entirely,
and starts listing quotations in his own voice (an obvious example is the
long catalogue of vegetable quotations (,, ,o,a,;,a) which immediately
follows the exchange between Ulpian, Zoilos and Leonides quoted above
from Book ,).
,
Cf. similar conclusions on this passage in Webb (:ccc), with reference to the way in which ekphrasis
is used in ancient writing both to conjure up the object of description before the eyes of the reader,
and also in some cases to draw attention to its absence and to the precariousness and articiality of
any attempt to preserve it; and more generally Too (:c:c) :::::.
::: Saints and Symposiasts
At ,, :c:ef, similarly, inthe middle of this vast catalogue, the rst-person
narrators voice resurfaces:
Other carts carried a golden wand of Dionysus ,c cubits in length, and a silver
spear of oc cubits, and on another was a gold phallus of ::c cubits painted and
wrapped in gold strips, having on its tip a gold star with a circumference of o cubits.
Many and various things having been mentioned as part of these processions, I
have chosen only those which contained gold and silver. For many of the things
on display were worth hearing about, including a large number of wild animals
and horses, and : enormous lions
Once again, the rst-person voice is not securely identiable. Are we listen-
ing to the quoting deipnosophist Masourios, or even Athenaeus, acknowl-
edging the incompleteness of his own attempt to reproduce his source
text? Or could this be Kallixeinos, acknowledging the difculty of match-
ing the glory of the display in words?
,,
The sense of losing ones bearing,
of losing track of whose voice exactly we are hearing, seems particularly
appropriate for such a dazzling passage of description, which draws the
reader in through its vividness, relying on recognised rhetorical techniques
of ekphrasis, i.e. elaborate visual description.
,o
These brief asides are not, taken individually, particularly prominent or
memorable, but between them, they and other passages like them build
towards an impression of instability in the identity of the speaking voices
Athenaeus confronts us with. Athenaeus lets us experience, in other words,
the way in which the boundaries between quoter and quoted can be dis-
solved. Within the space of the symposium, with its capacity to break
down barriers between past and present, we can easily be beguiled, at least
eetingly and momentarily, into a sense of past authors merging with the
symposiasts of the present, and speaking through themin composite voices.
book 11
The works longer and more chaotic prose passages thus particularly encour-
age uncertainty about whose voice we are hearing at any one time. However,
,,
Gulick (:,:;:) vol. ii, :::, ascribes the phrase I have chosen to Athenaeus or his character
Massurius; by contrast, Canfora (:cc:) vol. i, ,c, and Olson (:cco) vol. ii, ;, make no
explicit mention of the problem, but their punctuation implicitly ascribes the rst-person voice to
Kallixeinos at this point.
,o
Cf. Heliodorus, Aithiopika ,.:.: and ,..o for a festival description which absorbs its readers so much
that they lose track of the reality of the conversation they are in the middle of, imagining that the
characters being described are about to appear in person before their eyes.
Athenaeus ::,
these passages from Books and , are relatively unusual for Athenaeus in
the length of their quotations: his usual preference is for much briefer
passages. Here, therefore, I want to test out the problems of identifying
speakers in the Deipnosophists by giving my main focus to what is at rst
sight one of Athenaeus most orderly books, and hence one of the books
which seems to go furthest towards resisting the effects of blurring which
I have been describing: that is Book ::. Most of the content of the book
is in the mouth of a single speaker, the deipnosophist Plutarch (not the
Plutarch of the Sympotic Questions), who makes a long speech enumerating
different varieties of drinking vessel and quoting passages in which they
are mentioned. The quotations are for the most part short, the different
vessels are listed in predominantly alphabetical order, and Plutarchs fellow
guest Ulpian introduces his speech as a set-piece, a long-awaited party trick
of scholarly memory. In that sense, Book :: gives a paradigmatic example
of the controlling techniques which Athenaeus and his deipnosophists use
throughout the work to bring the voices of the past into conversation with
each other. Plutarch orchestrates his sources masterfully, stepping with
faultless clarity between this intricate web of quotations. He summons his
witnesses one by one, ventriloquising each of them in turn, before dis-
missing them to move on to the next in line. His own organising voice is
ever-present and distinctive, bridging between the juxtaposed quotations
though also self-effacing and business-like beside the sometimes outlandish,
extravagant language of his sources. Even here, however, as we shall see,
there are still hints of confusion, hints that the different voices we are
listening to have the capacity to blend with each other and come to
life.
The very opening words of the book show us the works outer frame
the conversation between Athenaeus and his interlocutor Timokrates
blending into the inner frame of the deipnosophists dialogue. The penul-
timate sentence of Book :c is as follows: This is what the deipnosophists
said about riddles; and since evening is catching up with us, as we think
about their comments, let us delay the conversation about drinking vessels
until tomorrow (,,b). In the opening lines of Book :: we then hear the
voice of Athenaeus addressing Timokrates again, apparently on a sepa-
rate occasion, presumably the morning following, trying to nd the right
starting point for discussion:
Come then, what shall be the beginning of our words, as the comedian
Kephisodoros puts it, my friend Timokrates?
:: Saints and Symposiasts
In the next sentence, however, we seem to slide in a rather disorientating
fashion out of the framing conversation and into the conversation of the
deipnosophists:
For we had come together early, in our eagerness for the drinking cups, and while
we were still all seated, and before the conversation had begun, Ulpian spoke as
follows. (,,d)
On rst reading, the rst words of that sentence For we had come
together early, in our eagerness for the drinking cups seem to apply to
Athenaeus and Timokrates, but as we read on in the sentence it becomes
clear that we are in fact back in the middle of the reported conversation of
the deipnosophists: the mention of Ulpian makes that clear. Moreover, the
word for even suggests a causal link between the early arrival and eager-
ness of the deipnosophists and the need for Athenaeus and Timokrates
to begin, almost as though Athenaeus is inviting Timokrates to imag-
ine himself as one of the deipnosophists, caught up in their desires and
proposals.
,;
The opening quotation from Kephisodoros also foregrounds the idea
of speaking through the voices of others. At rst glance we seem to hear
in this opening sentence a speaker calling for new beginnings in his own
voice. It is only with the mention of Kephisodoros that the second-hand
nature of these words becomes clear. That effect is unremarkable in terms
of the work as a whole, but its prominence in the very opening lines signals
its importance. Athenaeus has only a brief space in which to remind us of
his own presence as narrator and his own mastery of the deipnosophistic
skills he values so highly before we plunge into an account of the banquet
of the deipnosophists, and he chooses to do so through this simple and
elegant piece of ventriloquisation.
Ulpian then begins to speak even before they have reclined, as if unable
to restrain himself. Athenaeus, as we have seen, has already told us that
they had gathered early on that day in our eagerness for the drinking cups
(,,d). The joke here is a characteristically Athenaean one, for it soon
becomes clear that the guests are not interested solely or even mainly in
drinking, but in the opportunity to discuss different varieties of drinking
cups. It seems that this is the subject which has been scheduled for the days
discussion.
,
Ulpian certainly acts on that assumption, eagerly advertising
the discourse Plutarch has promised to give on the subject: Let us therefore
,;
On these effects and similar effects in other passages, see Romeri (:cc:) :;o;; Jacob (:cc:) xlviiiix;
Rodrguez-Noriega Guill en (:ccc).
,
See :c,b for Ulpians anticipation of this topic.
Athenaeus ::,
not delay, but let us recline now, so that Plutarch, giving the speech he
promises about drinking cups, can toast us all with full goblets (ocab).
Ulpian then launches into a selection of quotations which contain the
word cups (poteria), and a number of other related words (ocao:e).
Ulpian names each of his source authors clearly before quoting from them,
and the contrast between their, for the most part, poetic language and his
own more sober lexicographical speech makes it relatively clear when he is
quoting and when speaking in his own voice. As usual, the aim seems to be
clarity and dexterity of navigation through the body of remembered texts
Ulpian holds in his mind.
There are, however, several ways in which we are prompted to reect on
the difculty of separating the different voices we are hearing. For one thing,
the very fact that Ulpian begins talking about cups himself at this stage
immediately brings to mind the idea of ventriloquisation. Ulpian, having
just agged Plutarchs imminent discourse on drinking-cups, immediately
launches into one of his own, as if he is unable to resist the temptation to
usurp Plutarchs own role for himself; at times he seems to be speaking for
Plutarch and anticipating what he is going to say: The poet of Amorgos,
Simonides, is the rst I know of to use the word poteria (drinking cups), in
his Iambics (ocb). On reection, of course, if we have read with attention
to the different characteristics of the deipnosophists in previous books,
the stealing of Plutarchs limelight seems appropriate for Ulpian, who is
characterised throughout by his unrestrained ow of speech.
,,
The overtones of confusion intensify later, at the end of Ulpians warm-
up act, when he quotes from Chamaileon of Herakleias work On Drunken-
ness. The extract, roughly :cc words in length, is relatively short compared
with the long prose passages already discussed, but some of the same chal-
lenges of interpretation apply: it is hard for us to identify the boundaries
between Ulpians voice and Chamaileons. That is partly because the quoted
text is itself a work of sympotic history and therefore much closer than
the epic and lyric passages quoted by Ulpian immediately beforehand to
the enterprise the deipnosophists themselves are engaged in. Chamaileon,
as quoted by Ulpian, brings in a wide range of arguments and passages
to justify his claim that drinking cups of the past were bigger than they
are now, just as Ulpian himself uses a range of arguments and passages in
disagreeing with Chamaileon after the quotation ends. A close look at the
transition between Chamaileon and Ulpian at the end of the quotation
should make that clear:
,,
Cf. n. ,c, above.
::o Saints and Symposiasts
But nowhere in Greece, either in paintings or on tombs will we nd a big cup
made in ancient times, except for those on monuments in honour of heroes; for
the cups known as rhyta they gave exclusively to heroes. Some people will nd
this puzzling, unless someone explains to them that this depiction is due to the
harshness of appearances by daimones. For heroes are thought to be harsh and
violent and more likely to appear at night than during the day. And in order that
they might seem to be thus because of drunkenness rather than because of their
character they are represented as drinking from large cups. Those who describe
a large drinking cup as a silver well seem to me to speak well. In these matters
Chamaileon seems to me to be ignorant of the fact that the cup given to the
Cyclops by Odysseus in Homer is not small; if it were he would not have been so
overcome by drunkenness after three drinks, being so large. (o:bc)
After careful consideration, most readers will probably assume that all but
the last sentence here is part of Chamaileons original text: certainly Ulpian
makes the transition back to his own voice very clear at this point by
criticising Chamaileon explicitly. Nevertheless it is very difcult, especially
on rst reading, to be sure that Ulpians own voice has not taken over
earlier.
Not only that, but the words Ulpian uses to introduce Chamaileons
writings at the beginning of the extract add to the impression that quotation
amounts to a kind of ventriloquisation: Chamaileon the Herakleot says
this, in his work On Drunkenness, at least if I can remember his voice (ti
,t :, qcv, uvnucvtc) (o:a). Here the word voice (qcvn) suggests
not only that Ulpian can reproduce the text of Chamaileon, but also that
he has in some sense conversed with him before, that he and Chamaileon
have spoken face-to-face within the virtual world of the Hellenistic library.
It is striking that Ulpian worries not about reproducing the exact words of
Chamaileon, but rather his voice, his way of talking. And that aspiration
of course introduces the possibility that some of the words he reports as
Chamaileons may be his own glosses or additions.
At the end of Ulpians introduction, Plutarch takes over. The complexity
and scale of his handling of quotations soon goes beyond Ulpians prelimi-
nary efforts. Plutarchs account begins in rather convoluted style, as if he is
struggling to reign in the rst rush of voices he is confronted with, or as if
he is struggling, like Ulpian, to contain his own excitement. His opening
quotation is a claim for the originality of his enterprise: I am now going
to give a cup-speech; as Pratinas of Phlios says, not ploughing already
furrowed ground, but exploring untilled earth (o:e). There is a playful
sense of paradox in this claim, of course, given that Plutarch is working
Athenaeus ::;
almost entirely with the words of others, not least in this sentence. But it
is not an unknowing claim. Plutarchs own voice may have no existence
outside the quotations of others, but his achievement is to speak through
them in a new way, like a storyteller pulling together familiar patterns
and motifs to form combinations which have not been heard before. The
opening section of his speech plays with a number of different organising
criteria. Sometimes he strings together several quotations which describe
the same type of vessel rst a series of quotations which use the word
kylix and kreter (o:eo,f ); then a brief section on earthenware drinking
pots (oab); then Rhodian chytrides (ocd); then a switch to use of
the word ekp oma (o,c;:e; anticipated at ob and od) although in
many of these cases the key word is not the only one used. That principle
of organisation is supplemented by sections of thematic organisation. For
example, we hear at several points about cultural differences in drinking
habits (o:eo:c; o,eoa); elsewhere Plutarch focuses on the pleasures
of drunkenness (e.g. o:co,e), the way in which the physical effects of
drunkenness vary according to what material the drinking cup is made of
(obd), different styles of wine-mixing (ofo,c, and again at ;:a
b). During all of this, for example in the last of those sections, the central
subject of drinking-cups is sometimes submerged from view, before resur-
facing again, as if to show how Plutarch has clung on to the guiding thread
of his talk even in the midst of the clamour of voices which threaten to
pull him off into digressions on every side, like a good symposiarch hold-
ing the thread of conversation and excluding inappropriate talk. We then
hear examples of gold and silver cups (o,c;:c), stories of the prestige
of cup-owning (;:cd), an account of different styles of cup decoration
(;:e;:a, and again after a short digression at ;:b), and a description
of the Cretan custom of giving a cup to kidnapped boys (;:bc). The
unpredictability of this conversation which Plutarch orchestrates between
his sources is entirely typical of Athenaeus. It is, of course, a conversa-
tion very far removed from everyday speech: in some ways it follows the
sympotic custom of speaking in turn. But the number of guests at this
virtual symposium in effect, all of the authors who inhabit the memory
of Plutarch and his fellow-guests is so great that it turns instead into a
long queue of speakers each struggling to pull the conversation in his own
direction. Plutarchs job as symposiarch of these speakers is not an easy
one.
At this point (;:d), Plutarch changes tack, and switches to a dif-
ferent mode of exposition, taking in turn a range of cups in roughly
:: Saints and Symposiasts
alphabetical order (unfortunately the precise words Athenaeus uses to
signal that transition are not available to us, since we rely on the epit-
ome for this section): rst ankyle, then aiakis, then akatos, aoton, aroklon,
aleison, amphoxis, amystis, antigonis, anaphaia, aryballos, argyris, batiakon,
and so on (from ;:d to ,c,f, more than :cc pages in the Loeb Classi-
cal Library translation). Here Plutarchs controlling hand becomes more
blatant, his quotations shorter, his source texts more orderly, queueing up
in turn. It is as if he has temporarily abandoned the unplanned, sympotic
character of the opening section of his speech. We might suspect that that
rst section of his speech was itself a spontaneous account, followed now
by the set-piece for which Ulpian had prepared us. Throughout this section
Plutarch cites his sources in turn, signalling each new subject as it arrives.
The majority of his citations are introduced with words for speech Ion
of Chios says (qnoiv) (o,b), Theophrastus says (qnoi) (o,c), and so
on. The word qnoi is not strongly marked within normal prose, but in the
light of the works sympotic context it is open to more literal interpreta-
tion, a sign of the way in which the source texts are made to give voice,
in the present, within the gathering at the house of Larensis, and as we
read. Running parallel with that usage, the same word is used in the past
tense to describe the words of the deipnosophists, spoken on the particular
occasion Athenaeus is describing (for example at the very beginning of
Plutarchs set-piece: After we reclined, Plutarch said (tqn) . . . I am indeed
here to discuss cups (o:e)). That distinction between sources speaking in
the present and deipnosophists speaking in the past is one of the things
which guides us as we attempt to work out who we are listening to at any
one moment. It also hints that the source texts may be more alive, more
real, than the deipnosophists who act as their vehicles, perpetually renewed
with the immortality of the present tense.
Even in Book ::, I have suggested, the most orderly of books, there are
brief hints of the kinds of confusion the deipnosophists ventriloquisation
can lead to, of the potential for the voices of the past and the present to blur,
to become indistinguishable from each other. To be sure, that tendency
is kept in control through a wide range of highly developed signposting
techniques, and is progressively eliminated as the book goes on, into the
alphabetical section of Plutarchs speech. For much of the book as in
the work as a whole the priorities of scholarly display and close con-
trol over quotation hold sway. There are times, moreover, when we might
suspect that this process of giving voice is not successful, that Athenaeus
speakers risk ending up with a fragmentary, faded, pedantic version of the
Athenaeus ::,
past.
oc
But despite these constraining factors we can also hear, if we surren-
der ourselves to the disordered conversation Athenaeus unfolds before us,
how the sheer exuberance of the Greek literary past repeatedly threatens
to burst free from the boundaries which are set for it and takes on a life
of its own. Even within the tight control exercised by Plutarch the deip-
nosophist, the voices of the library threaten to get out of control, and to
ow out beyond the borders which are set for them.
order and disorder in the symposium: looking forward
It has seemed important in this chapter to engage with some specic
passages of Athenaeus at length. The Deipnosophists is a difcult text to
generalise about. If we generalise too much we anyway risk missing the
fascination of the particular, which is one of its most distinctive features.
Nevertheless, some overarching issues should have emerged, to comple-
ment my discussion of Plutarch. We have seen, for example, the way in
which sympotic miscellanies present us with fantasy images of intellec-
tual community. We have seen also how they delight in proliferation, in
the playful space of the drinking-party, multiplying questions and answers
which are nevertheless controlled and channelled by shared techniques of
argumentation. That proliferation is above all a multiplication of different
voices, not just the voices of the symposiasts themselves, who take it in turn
to speak, but also the voices of the past which insinuate themselves into the
conversation of the present. All of these themes have some resonance with
the Bakhtinian frame I laid out in chapter :. The dialogic phenomenon
of double-voicing in utterances where one voice becomes overlaid by
the accents of another, or the free play of perspectives in the polyphonic
novel, as Bakhtin denes it is certainly not present, in the form Bakhtin
describes, within the sympotic miscellanies of the ancient world. It is,
however, anticipated and pregured by some of the (rather different) tech-
niques and narrative forms that Plutarch and Athenaeus rely on, as Bakhtin
himself tentatively suggested. More generally speaking, Bakhtins fascina-
tion with the way in which texts explore the tension between monologic
authority and unnalisable multiplicity of perspective, has resonances with
the tensions between chaos and control which I have outlined for both of
oc
Cf. Davidson (:ccc) on the constant tension in Athenaeus text between life-afrming pleasure and
deadening pedantry.
::c Saints and Symposiasts
these texts.
o:
Those issues will be important, also, in the chapters which
follow. For the most part Plutarch and Athenaeus show their speakers cop-
ing with the multiplicity of the symposium and keeping it under control
without too much anxiety. In the second half of Part i, however, we move
to a set of texts where that process is much more anxious and fraught. The
multiplication of perspectives that the symposium encourages poses par-
ticular problems, as we shall see, for the more reverent intellectual culture
of early Christianity and late antique paganism.
o:
For similar discussion of control and multiplicity in Renaissance table-talk texts, with an emphasis
especially on the latter, see Jeanneret (:,,:), esp. :;:,.
chapter 5
Early Christian commensality and the
literary symposium
introduction
Studying early Christian feasting is a difcult business. The rewards are
potentially enormous. We have the prospect of bringing to life a world at
least as distant from our own as the Greco-Roman cultures of conviviality
I sketched out in chapter :. For some, of course, that process has major
implications for contemporary practice and belief in the twenty-rst cen-
tury. What might it have been like to dine with Jesus in early rst-century
Palestine? What were the banquets of the early church communities in
Corinth and elsewhere really like? How and why did Christian feasting
change over time? The answers to those questions, however, are hard to
pin down. The surviving evidence is sometimes opaque and allusive, full of
tantalising details which are difcult to interpret. Early Christian feasting
practices and feasting rituals have been so frequently reconstructed and
reimagined in the post-classical world that it is hard to break free from
our preconceptions of them. The enormous volume of work devoted to
these questions in recent decades has made impressive advances, but also
presents its own challenges: it takes a vast amount of reading to build up
even an outline impression of the range of approaches available from recent
scholarship.
:
It is not my intention to offer a comprehensive answer to those questions
here, although I do give an outline sketch in the opening pages of this
chapter (focusing on Christian feasting pre-Constantine; the Christian
and late antique culture of the fourth century ce and after is discussed in
more depth in chapter ;). My aim, instead, is a rather different one. We
:
Among book-length studies, see esp. Klinghardt (:,,o); McGowan (:,,,); Smith (:cc,); King
(:cc;); Taussig (:cc,); also Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus forthcoming book Memorable Meals (cur-
rently in nal preparation); Corley (:,,,) on women in early Christian meals; other key landmarks
are discussed below. For a helpful additional resource, see the papers from the Society for Bibli-
cal Literature seminar series on Meals in the Greco-Roman World currently available online at
www.philipharland.com/meals/GrecoRomanMealsSeminar.htm (last consulted ::/,/::).
:::
::: Saints and Symposiasts
may not be able to know for sure what it was like to be at an early Christian
meal. What we can confront more directly though of course without
being able to recapture for certain the ways in which they would have
been received by their original readers are the images Christian authors
created in their own attempts to put on record, provide inspiration for,
and in some cases also reshape and redirect, Christian eating and drinking
(often no doubt with a certain amount of idealisation or heightening of
real-life experience, very much as we nd in Greco-Roman depictions
of the symposium). Those images are my main subject in much of the
rest of Part i (and indeed in the second half of Part ii, in chapters ::
and ::).
In this chapter, as a starting-point, I want to focus on some broad ques-
tions often ignored in the bibliographic profusion already mentioned
about how early Christian culture engaged with the literature of the sym-
posium in imagining and representing Christian feasting. In looking at
this question we enter a very different world. Clement of Alexandria
the gure who stands at the end of this chapter may well have been
roughly contemporary with Athenaeus. In many ways the breadth of his
classical learning matches that of Athenaeus, and his work is partly designed
to draw in the educated Greek reader by its sophisticated use of familiar
classical texts. As we shall see, however, for all those similarities, the ide-
alised picture of Christian behaviour at dinner which emerges from his
work, and his rewriting of the literary symposium, are at least in some
ways profoundly alien to the Greco-Roman traditions on which they are
based.
In order to set that alienness in context, we need to start by looking a
little more broadly at early Christian relations with Greco-Roman feasting
culture. Early Christian culture had an ambivalent relationship with Greco-
Roman practices of eating and drinking.
:
Admittedly, many of the most
distinctive forms of Christian commensality had a great deal in common
with non-Christian conviviality. Between them, classical, Christian and
Jewish feasting customs formed a broadly homogeneous continuum of
shared practices stretching across the Mediterranean world.
,
At the same
time, early Christian groups like so many others in the ancient, and
:
The scholarship on the relation of Christian identity and practice, more broadly, to its Greco-Roman
and Jewish equivalents is enormous; for starting-points, see G. Clark (:cc) and Lieu (:cc).
,
That model is shared by all the studies listed in n. :, above; see also Smith (:,,c) for inuential
critique of the kind of comparative approaches which prejudge the uniqueness of Christianity; and
recently Alikin (:cc,), who draws attention to the fact that early Christian feasting shared with the
Greco-Roman symposium the custom of reading texts out loud, and uses that fact to argue for their
close interrelation with each other.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium ::,
indeed modern, world

used their own feasting practices to build a

sense of community and to separate themselves sharply from outsiders.
These practices in turn were often represented as disturbingly alien by
non-Christian observers. This was the case even very soon after the initial
emergence of Christianity in the rst century ce. Christian reception of
sympotic literature is a part of this wider story. For the most part, the
symposium is strikingly absent from early Christian literature. However,
that effacement of the symposium is never complete: traces of the sympotic
thought-world continue to exercise a powerful hold over the Christian
imagination, albeit treated often with caution and suspicion, and rewritten
into new and peculiar forms.
early christian feasting and its relationship with jewish
and greco-roman culture
What did early Christian feasting involve?
In recent years there has been a welcome reaction against over-simplied
accounts of Christian origins, and indeed early Christian commensality.
Twentieth-century scholarship tended to assume that there was a broad
homogeneity of practice and belief across early Christian culture, as if
Christianity sprang into being fully formed. Two institutions were seen
as particularly signicant for Christian feasting. The rst is the eucharist
(from the Greek eucharistia meaning thankfulness) with its consecration
and sharing of bread and wine. Early Christians traced the eucharist back
to the words of Jesus at the Last Supper.
,
It has often been thought that
we have evidence for the eucharist being celebrated in a form very roughly
recognisable to anyone familiar with modern practice from quite an early
stage in church history: for example in several passages of Acts.
o
The second
is the agape, a type of ritual meal which in the early days of the Christian
church seems often to have been conducted side-by-side with the eucharist.

See above, p. :,, n. , for anthropological approaches; and for anthropological study of early
Christian feasting, see esp. Feeley-Harnik (:,,), who stresses also the importance of food for social
differentiation in Jewish culture: food, articulated in terms of who eats what with whom under
which circumstances, had long been one of the most important languages in which Jews conceived
and conducted social relations among human beings and between human beings and God (;:).
,
The key passages for the Last Supper are Mt :o.:o, Mk :.::, Lk ::.:;:c; the most inuential
early attempt to link Christian feasting practices to the Last Supper is Pauls account at : Cor. :c.:o:;
and ::.:,o (which probably predates the gospels).
o
See Acts :.:, :.o and :c.; (all of these references to the disciples breaking bread); and for passages
which use the word eucharistia, see Ignatius, Letter to the Philadelphians (early second century ce);
Justin, First Apology oo (mid-second century); also Didache , (late rst century), discussed further
below.
:: Saints and Symposiasts
The Greek word agape literally means love. It is used repeatedly in the
New Testament to describe unselsh, spiritual love as opposed to er os,
with its connotations of sexual desire. Its use in feasting contexts implies a
community united by Christian love within commensality. This institution
too was thought to be widely attested in the early history of the Christian
church.
;
Between them, these two events eucharistic ritual followed by
communal meal were widely believed to be central to early Christian
practice.
More recently it has become clear that this picture is oversimplied.
Christian identity and Christian practice clearly were interpreted in a
range of different ways, rather than being completely uniform phenomena
stretching across the whole of early Christian culture.

Meals in particular
could be places of social and ritual improvisation, where Christian attitudes
to gender, social status and ethnicity could be reformulated and acted out
afresh.
,
Textual representations of feasting in early Christian culture were
important vehicles for these processes of reformulation. The texts we have
are not simply reections of how things were actually done, but also, in
many cases, interventions in debate, idealised images projected on top of a
complex background.
To be more specic: the neat division between eucharist and agape does
not stand up to scrutiny. Both words were used quite uidly to refer to a
range of different practices. The agape and the eucharist do not seem to
have been consistently separated from each other until the third century
ce.
:c
Eucharistic ritual was widely taken for granted as an essential part of
Christian life in the early church, as we shall see further in a moment,
::
but it
nevertheless took a number of different forms.
::
The doctrinal signicance
of the eucharist was interpreted in a range of different ways until relatively
late in the history of the church.
:,
The early history of the eucharist is made
even harder to reconstruct by the fact that both ancient commentators and
;
The earliest use of the term is probably in Jude :: (late rst or early second century ce); see also
Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans (early second century); other important early testimonies often
taken to refer to the agape (although without explicit use of that word) are : Cor. ::.:;, and Pliny,
Ep. :c.,o.

See Lieu (:cc).

,
See Taussig (:cc,); cf. Lawrence (:cc,) :;:o for suggestive discussion of eucharistic ritual as
embodied memory and lived experience, with special reference to : Corinthians.
:c
See McGowan (:cc) on the processes by which that separation may have occurred in third-century
ce north Africa.
::
See Wright (:,,:) ,o:: and ;.
::
Particularly important here is the work of Andrew McGowan, esp. (:,,,), (:,,;), (:,,,), (:cc:);
cf. Smith and Taussig (:,,c) ,oo,; Bradshaw (:,,:); Smith (:cc,) ,.
:,
See Chilton (:,,); Lieu (:cc) :o,.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium ::,
modern scholars have tended to depict early eucharistic practice in the
image of the liturgical practices of their own day.
:
This more uid model of early Christian practice has an important
impact on our understanding of the relations between Christian and Greco-
Roman (and indeed Jewish) dining. That relationship cannot be neatly
summarised. After Jesus death, we should probably imagine informal
gatherings among his followers, meeting to feast together in the ways they
were accustomed to. In that sense, new Christian ways of feasting must
have arisen organically from within the wider continuum of Mediterranean
convivial practices. Before long, however, recognisably Christian customs
began to emerge, along with attempts to set out rules and principles which
would separate the Christian feasting community from the world around
it.
:,
Christian practices of fasting also seem to have been important even at
quite an early stage in differentiating the Christian community.
:o
By the second century, Christian table fellowship seems to have been
widely viewed as a way of enacting the new identity of recruits to Chris-
tianity, and some of the surviving texts which offer instructions for correct
feasting habits should be seen in that light. One particularly important
text in this respect is the Didache (Teaching of the Lord through the
Twelve Apostles to the Nations), dating probably from the late rst cen-
tury ce, a text which gives directions for many areas of church life. It
includes instructions for communal meals, and especially for the prayers
which should accompany them. It represents an early step in the move
towards new Christian ways of living and worshipping.
:;
Didache ,:c,
for example, is often taken as one of our oldest pieces of evidence for
early Christian eucharistic feasting,
:
and that conclusion seems valid, so
long as we do not expect the practices described here to match precisely
the procedures of the eucharist as it was performed in later centuries.
:,
:
For the argument that the gospel narratives of the Last Supper were themselves responses to the
practices and needs of very early Christian communities, see Mack (:,), esp. :::c, :;,o, :,
,c; and on the way in which scholars have read back the liturgical practices of the modern day
and of the later church on to the earlier evidence see Bradshaw (:,,:) ,,,,; also McGowan (:,,,)
::;.
:,
See also L. M. White (:,,) on increasing architectural specialisation in the design of spaces for
Christian commensality during the rst three centuries ce.
:o
See Finn (:cc,), esp. ,o:.
:;
See Riggs (:,,,) :o,;, for the point about new recruits; also OLoughlin (:c:c) for vivid discussion
of the way in which the text teaches its readers how to live their day-to-day lives as part of a
Christian community; for general discussion, see also Jefford (:,,,); Klinghardt (:,,o) ,;,,:;
and commentary by Niederwimmer (:,,).
:
See OLoughlin (:c:c) ,:c.
:,
See OLoughlin (:c:c) o. One complicating factor is that Didache ,:c makes no mention of
the Last Supper precedent; another is the fact that the text describes other meal procedures at other
::o Saints and Symposiasts
Admittedly, even eucharistic practice both as described in this text
:c
and
elsewhere had some connections with Jewish and Greco-Roman feast-
ing practices. For example, the synoptic gospel accounts describe the Last
Supper as a Passover meal,
::
and it has been widely believed on that basis
that Jesus words adjust for new Christian purposes the traditional empha-
sis on remembrance in the Passover seder, and the traditional practice of
haggadah (interpretation), where the head of the household would recount
the story of Exodus and offer an analysis of the symbolism of the Passover
meal.
::
Other Jewish meal practices provided important precedents too.
:,
But despite these inuences (and despite the already mentioned difculty
of generalising about the great diversity of eucharistic practice) it is fairly
clear that early Christian commensality, as attested in the Didache and
elsewhere, reshaped feasting models drawn from the world around it in
order to make them into a recognisable symbol of Christian community
and Christian separateness.
:
The nal lines of Didache , make that point
vehemently: Let no-one eat or drink from your eucharist, except for those
who have been baptised in the name of the Lord. For the Lord has said
on this matter: Do not give what is holy to the dogs. Some scholars
have even suggested that we need to look earlier to nd the origins of
Christian self-differentiation through dining, arguing, from the evidence
of the gospels, that the historical Jesus himself aimed to create new forms of
hospitality and community, drawing on and transforming the resources of
Jewish feasting culture,
:,
although that claim is difcult to substantiate.
:o
However, this process of setting apart the Christian feasting community
was never completely clear-cut. Indeed, the relationship between Christian
points (esp. :.:), without making it clear whether or not the ritual they refer to is the same as the
one described at ,:c.
:c
On the Jewish character of many practices the text describes, see esp. van de Sandt and Flusser
(:cc:); Del Verme (:cc); Zangenberg (:cc).
::
John (:,.::) is less clear about that, describing the meal simply as a meal (deipnon) taking place
before the Passover.
::
On the rituals of the Passover seder, see further below, n. ,,. The Passover argument was made most
famously by Jeremias (:,oo); his arguments have been widely criticised, but are still inuential; see
Bahr (:,;c); Heron (:,,) , and :;,,; Feeley-Harnik (:,,), esp. :; Marshall (:,,;); Smith
(:cc,), esp. , for explicit refutation of Jeremias; King (:cc;) ::,c.
:,
E.g. King (:cc;) ;:,, with good discussion of the chaburah, a type of Pharisaic fellowship meal,
the Qumran/Essene meals, and the meals in Joseph and Aseneth.
:
King (:cc;) argues along similar lines, with exhaustive discussion of the Jewish and Greco-Roman
precedents to which early Christian practices and representations of feasting respond.
:,
E.g. Koenig (:,,) :,,:; Crossan (:,,:), esp. ,:.
:o
The obvious objection is that many of the stories of Jesus actions in the gospels may have been
responses to the needs of the early Christian communities for whom they were told, as much as
accurate biographical records: see Smith (:cc,) :::,,; also Koenig (:,,) ,::,; and cf. n. : above
for similar difculties in relation to the Last Supper narratives specically.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium ::;
and Jewish or Greco-Roman feasting practices was sometimes a matter of
debate: the Christian rhetoric of separateness was not always an accurate
reection of the situation on the ground. Pauls letters in particular can
give us a fascinating glimpse of Christian dining in formation: famously,
they show signs of debate between a range of different views.
:;
Particularly
prominent are questions about whether Christians should eat sacricial
meat,
:
whether Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians should dine
together,
:,
and how to eliminate habits of hierarchical feasting, of the kind
familiar from both Jewish and Greco-Roman tradition.
,c
This evidence
suggests that there were some who continued to follow models of feasting
familiar from non-Christian culture, at least in the very early church.
The question of how to interact with Jewish dietary laws also resurfaces
every so often in the Christian writing of the rst and second centuries
ce.
,:
Here, too, the separation between Christian and non-Christian eating
is not always as clear-cut as one might expect. At rst glance, we might
imagine that there would have been a fairly unanimous rejection of Jewish
diet in early Christian culture. As early as Acts we have an image for
the new Christian community disregarding Jewish dietary laws, in the
famous vision of Peter (Acts :c.,:o) where the Lord encourages him
to eat unclean foods.
,:
The anonymous author of the second-century ce
Letter to Diognetus : goes further, vehemently rejecting Greco-Roman
:;
For general discussion, see (among many others) Meeks (:,,) :,;o:; Holmberg (:,,,); Klinghardt
(:,,o) :o,,;:; Smith (:cc,) :;,::;; Lieu (:cc) ::o:, including analysis of statements by Paul
and his successors on Christian diet, in the context of a wider discussion of the way in which the
boundary markers of early Christian identity were not xed, but constantly being reasserted and
debated.
:
E.g. : Cor. .:::, discussed by Smith (:cc,) ::,; cf. Willis (:,,); Wright (:,,:) ,o,; Gooch (:,,,)
(with survey of previous scholarship on this passage in Appendix :: :,,,,); Meggitt (:,,); Bazell
(:,,;), who also looks beyond Paul to debate in other early Christian writers; Fotopoulos (:cc,).
On later sacrice tests, by which suspected Christians were required to offer sacrice and punished
for refusing (formalised under Decius in the mid-third century ce, but with earlier precedents), see
Beard, North and Price (:,,) :,,, with further bibliography; and see the Martyrdom of Saints
Perpetua and Felicitas o (early third century ce) for a good example of martyrs put to death for
refusing to sacrice; and cf. p. :;, belowfor further discussion of Christians and sacrice in the fourth
century.
:,
E.g. Gal. :.:::, discussed by Stegemann and Stegemann (:,,,) :o,; Smith (:cc,) :::; also
Esler (:,;) ;::c, on the legitimation of Jewish-Gentile table-fellowship as a major aim of Luke-
Acts, and (:,,) ,:o,.
,c
E.g. : Cor. ::.:;,; for discussion see (among very many others) Theissen (:,:); Malherbe (:,,)
:; Hallb ack (:,,); Stegemann and Stegemann (:,,,) :,; Smith (:cc,) :,::cc; King (:cc,).
,:
In addition to the texts discussed below, see Epistle of Barnabas :,, ;, :c; Justin, Dialogue with
Trypho :c, ::,; also c: for the argument that the Jewish dietary laws are metaphors anticipating
the coming of Christ.
,:
That said, we need to be careful about interpreting this passage purely in dietary terms; within the
narrative its primary function is in fact as a metaphor for the breaking down of social, rather than
culinary boundaries between Jew and Gentile, as illustrated in the passage immediately following
:: Saints and Symposiasts
sacrice and Jewish sacrice in turn, before going on to mock Jewish
dietary laws for their absurdity.
,,
Didache .: recommends the habit of
fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays while denouncing the Jewish habit of
fasting on the Mondays and Thursdays. However, the very condence and
vehemence of tone in the last two of these texts is a sign, once again, that
they are reacting to alternative viewpoints. It is clear, on closer inspection,
that hostility to Jewish eating habits was far from universal, especially in
very early Christian society, where the pressures of habit and communality
for those brought up within Jewish traditions were often strong.
,
Recent
scholarship has increasingly moved towards seeing Christianity as emerging
from within Judaism, rather than as a distinct cultural phenomenon.
,,
It
has also increasingly recognised the inconsistent application even of Jewish
dietary laws in the same period: certainly they did mark boundaries between
Jewish and Gentile, but it is also clear that they were open to debate and
that in many cases food was less important for Jewish identity than has
sometimes been suggested.
,o
Even the passage on fasting from Didache
.: in a sense testies to the way in which early Christian communities
continued to be marked by their Jewish heritage, given that the alternative,
recommended habit of fasting, on different days, is not radically different
from what it rejects:
,;
Didache represents a type of Christianity that to
a very large degree still denes itself by using Jewish theologumena and
following Jewish practices.
,
Our understanding of early Christian self-differentiation is further com-
plicated by the fact that early Christian culture was marked out by a strong
strand of social and ethnic inclusiveness, which stressed the accessibility of
the Christian message to all. The inclusiveness of Christian feasting could
even be taken, paradoxically, as a sign of Christian separateness. Justin
where Peter enters the house of the Gentile centurion Cornelius: You know that it is unlawful for a
Jewish man to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone
profane or impure (Acts :c.:). For discussion, see Tomson (:,,,) :c;; also Feeley-Harnik (:,,)
:,oo:; Stegemann and Stegemann (:,,,) :o,;:.
,,
However, even the Letter to Diognetus has an inclusive strand: just a moment after its denunciations
of pagan and Jewish sacrice and its mockery of Jewish dietary laws, it goes on to insist that
Christianitys exceptionality emerges despite the fact that Christians share the standard practices of
non-Christian society (,).
,
See Tomson (:,,,), arguing that clear-cut Christian rejection of Jewish food laws arises surprisingly
late (he suggests after the Bar-Kokhba war of :,:o ce).
,,
E.g. Skarsaune (:cc:); Becker and Reed (:cc,).
,o
See Lieu (:cc) :c:o; however, see also Neusner (:,;,) o for the claimthat two-thirds of Pharisaic
regulations before ;c ce dealt with meals and related issues of purity, and King (:cc;) ;, for
details of subsequent debate about those claims.
,;
See Skarsaune (:cc:) ::,; Zangenberg (:cc) ,,; OLoughlin (:c:c) ;co.
,
Zangenberg (:cc) o,.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium ::,
Martyr writes in his First Apology: We who hated and killed each other and
never had common meals with those who were not of the same race because
of their customs, now after the appearance of Christ have become people
who live their lives together (or people who eat together cucoici:ci)
(:.,).
,,
Once again some caveats are necessary. For one thing, it is clear
that the ideal of equal feasting open to all was not universally approved: the
letters of Paul, which regularly urge an inclusive approach, again provide
important evidence for those debates.
c
Secondly, ideals of social egali-
tarianism were of course far from alien to Jewish or Greco-Roman com-
mensality. The dining customs adopted by associations in Greco-Roman
culture (or guilds, groups which encouraged both social and professional
interaction between members of particular professions)
:
have often been
viewed as an important inuence on early Christian practice. Association
dining tended to have a relatively egalitarian character.
:
The same was true
for some varieties of Jewish practice, for example in the Qumran Essene
community, whose laws for feasting look strikingly similar to some of the
association regulations.
,
Nevertheless, it does seem to be the case that
cultural openness and avoidance of social hierarchy were given unusual
prominence within Christian rhetoric. Gillian Feeley-Harnik, for example,
discusses the way in which early Christian eating behaviour was intended
to contrast their more universalist politico-religious beliefs . . . with the
more nationalistic conceptions of other Jewish sects, symbolized above all
by the Passover meal.

In summary: early Christian feasting had much in common with Greco-

Roman and Jewish customs. However, early Christian communities also
,,
For discussion of this passage and the wider context of Christian mutual support, see Lieu (:cc)
:o,.
c
In support of inclusiveness at church meals, see : Cor. ::.:;, and Rom. :.::,; cf. Gal :.:,
already mentioned, where Paul rejects separate tables for Christian and Jewish; and Koenig (:,,)
,: for an account which stresses even more than most others the importance of hospitality and
inclusiveness for Paul.
:
See above, p. :,.
:
See Willis (:,,) ,o:; Malherbe (:,,) ;,:; Kloppenborg (:,,,); Kloppenborg and Wilson
(:,,o); Klinghardt (:,,o); Smith (:cc,) ;:c,; Harland (:cc,), esp. ,,; on association feasting,
and :;;:o, where he stresses the fact that early Christian congregations were not straightforwardly
sectarian, but instead were often integrated with the civic communities in much the same way as the
associations they resembled; cf. Pliny, Ep. :c.,;.; for an ancient text which views Christian feasting
as a form of association commensality.
,
See Dombrowski (:,oo); Weinfeld (:,o) ::,; Klinghardt (:,,o) ::;,c; Smith (:cc,) :,:;
King (:cc;) c; Bilde (:,,), however, argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls attest to a more exclusive
and hierarchical character than the idealising literary accounts of Philo and others; and Kuhn (:cc:)
argues that the Qumran meals show very much less overlap with Greco-Roman customs e.g. with
the ritual meals of mystery cults than the meals Paul describes; see also Davies (:,,,).

Feeley-Harnik (:,,) :.
:,c Saints and Symposiasts
used their own feasting practices in order to act out an identity separate
from the world around them. Many early Christian writers show signs of
anxiety about nding the right balance in that relationship.
the literary symposium and the gospels
How does Christian reception of the literary symposium compare? Here
too we see an oscillation between similarity and distance, but it is the
latter the peculiarity of Christian rewritings of the literary symposium
that I want to stress above all in the rest of this chapter. The emphasis in
recent scholarship on connections between early Christian commensality
and wider Mediterranean feasting culture has been enormously valuable
in countering the idea that Christian eucharistic ritual sprang into being
fully formed, as a unique and homogeneous practice insulated from the
world around it. However that very welcome development has sometimes
been accompanied by a tendency to understate the subversive, idiosyncratic
character of Christian reshaping of literary traditions of feasting narrative.
That oddity is apparent especially for Christian use of motifs drawn from
the symposium dialogue form, which seems to have been treated by early
Christianity with even more wariness than some other elements of Greco-
Roman feasting culture. The reasons for that wariness should become
clearer as we proceed.
One key early test case is the gospel narratives themselves.
,
These texts
have often been thought to draw quite closely on Greco-Roman sympotic
motifs. Even in the gospels, however, it is important to stress that Jesus
is portrayed as having a very unconventional relationship with Greco-
Roman and indeed Jewish feasting custom, overturning and challenging
convention. For the reader who comes to these texts from reading Plato or
Plutarch the dominant impression will be of the peculiarities of Jesus as a
symposiast.
The best place to look is the gospel of Luke: it is here that claims
about a very specic engagement with Greco-Roman sympotic writing
rather than just vague similarities, due to shared Mediterranean banquet-
ing culture are most plausible. Luke is also the author who is most
obsessed with food generally. Admittedly it is important for the other
gospels too, especially because the imagery of food and drink is repeat-
edly given theological signicance: for example in John, believing in Jesus
,
See Smith (:cc,) ::,; for a survey.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,:
is repeatedly equated with consuming him.
o
Luke, however, takes that
obsession much further. A simple count of his vocabulary makes that
clear: he uses more than c different words for eating and drinking and
feasting.
;
In Luke, Jesus consistently transgresses Jewish feasting customs, con-
fronting and antagonising the Pharisees, with their rigid models of correct
dining.

If we follow the logic of Lukes narrative, that is one of the things

which leads to his crucixion. Jesus transgresses Pharisaic purity laws, for
example by refusing to wash before dinner (::.,) or by dining with tax
collectors and sinners (:,.::). He denounces hierarchical Pharisaic ban-
queting customs (::.,;,, :.::), and complains about the Pharisees
hospitality (;.,o,c) while a guest in Pharisaic households. The gospel
makes clear at an early stage Jesus own freedom from appetite, most
famously in his encounter with the devil while fasting in the desert, where
he refuses bread (.:). But there is also strong contrast drawn with the
ascetic John the Baptist. Jesus, by contrast with John, engages with day-
to-day Jewish social life, and especially with its meal culture. At ;.,,, he
draws that contrast himself: John the Baptist has come not eating bread
or drinking wine, and you say, He has a demon. The son of man has
come eating and drinking, and you say, Look, this man is a glutton and
a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. That claim, in which
Jesus draws attention to his own reviled status, picks up on a passage in
Deuteronomy ::.:::, where the phrase glutton and drunkard is used to
describe an apostate from the Jewish faith.
,
Jesus table habits are thus rep-
resented as transgressive. Important also, for Luke and indeed for the other
gospels, is the imagery of the messianic banquet, which similarly looks back
to a set of Old Testament texts. Jesus, as Luke portrays him, appropriates
that image and reshapes it to describe the salvation he himself offers: Jesus
brings satisfaction, in Lukes account, to Gods hungry creation.
,c
In all of
this it seems likely although again very hard to demonstrate that Luke
may be offering models of hospitality and community aimed very speci-
cally at his own early Christian readers, who may have dened themselves
in part as banquet communities.
,:
o
See Webster (:cc,), incl. ::o for summary of previous studies on imagery of consumption in John.
;
See Karris (:,,) ,:.

See Neyrey (:,,:) for an account of those issues which draws helpfully on anthropological
approaches; also Feeley-Harnik (:,,) ,,;c.
,
See Karris (:,,) ,;o,.
,c
See Karris (:,,) ,:;; cf. Heil (:,,,), esp. ,c;:: on the way in which food imagery in Luke
anticipates the nal eschatological banquet in the kingdom of God.
,:
See Koenig (:,,) ,::,.
:,: Saints and Symposiasts
Some scholars have explained Lukes representations of feasting primar-
ily in terms of these Jewish reference-points, but it does seem likely that
Luke, and so presumably a section of his intended audience, was familiar
with Greco-Roman sympotic literature.
,:
Most important here is the way
in which Jesus, as Luke represents him, engages in table-talk.
,,
Talk is
important for Jesus throughout the gospel: for example in his rst post-
infancy appearance in the gospel we see him, aged twelve, in discussion
with the teachers in the Temple in Jerusalem (:.:,:), a scene which
is absent in the other gospels. The theme of Jesus talking is particularly
prominent in Lukes feasting scenes, not least in the Last Supper. In Lukes
version of that event, Jesus speaks at much greater length than in Matthew
or Mark. Like some of Jesus other table-talk contributions, his eucharis-
tic instructions are an example of the kind of conversation which arises
from the circumstances of the banquet: Jesus takes the physical bread
and wine in front of him as starting-points for exposition, in much the
same way (for all the vast difference between them) as Athenaeus deip-
nosophists or Plutarch and his fellow guests in the Sympotic Questions.
We see similar effects in the Last Supper of Johns gospel.
,
Similarly, in
the earlier Lukan feasting scenes already mentioned, where Jesus dines
with the Pharisees, Jesus enters into conversation repeatedly, responding
to specic questions from his fellow-guests. In some cases, for example,
Jesus speaks on subjects very close to those which recur in authors like
Plutarch and Athenaeus. For example, at :.;::, Luke gives the following
account:
,:
Conversely, some other commentators have gone too far in downplaying the Jewish background
and overstating the conformity of Lukes feasting scene to the Platonic symposium tradition: see
MacDonald (:cc) ::c: for that point, with reference to Braun (:,,,) and Smith (:cc,). Jewish
literature too was sometimes interested in representing talk over dinner (see further below), and
Jewish table-talk traditions may be signicant inuences for the Last Supper scenes of the gospel
(see above).
,,
The bibliography on these passages and their relationship with sympotic literature is extensive:
see Martin (:,,:) :: and ,:; de Meeus (:,o:); Steele (:,); Berger (:,) :,:c:,, dealing with
the literary symposium in the New Testament as a whole; Smith (:,;) and (:cc,); Braun (:,,:)
and (:,,,), esp. :,o for a largely convincing critique of scholarship which has overstated that
connection: he argues that Luke : attacks the assumptions of the symposium and so has much
in common with uncompromising, Cynic criticisms of banqueting custom; Love (:,,,) :c::; cf.
Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus forthcoming book Memorable Meals (currently in nal preparation),
which argues against Braun for a much more irenic approach, characterising Lukes mobilisation
of Greco-Roman sympotic traditions as a way of forming community. For other aspects of these
passages, see esp. B osen (:,c); Karris (:,,) ;;; Moessner (:,,); Love (:,,,); Heil (:,,,);
Blomberg (:cc,), esp. :,co,. See also Bakhtin (:,a) :,, for a characteristically brief and imprecise
claim about the absorption of symposium motifs into the gospels.
,
See Relihan (:,,:) :: on the sympotic features of that scene, including the impending death of
Jesus, which he suggests parallels that of Socrates.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,,
To those who had been invited he began to tell a parable, noticing how they were
trying to get the most prestigious seats. He spoke to themas follows: When you are
invited by someone to a wedding, do not recline at the place of honour . . . Instead,
whenever you are invited, make your way to the lowest place and recline there, so
that when your host comes to greet you, he will say to you, Friend, move up to
a higher place . . . For whoever exalts himself will be humbled; and the one who
humbles himself will be exalted.
That question of how to manage seating arrangements is widely paral-
leled in both Greek and Latin literature on the symposium, for example
in Plutarch, Sympotic Questions :.:, where it is one of the rst topics
discussed.
,,
At the same time, however, Jesus speech introduces alien elements into
that Greco-Roman frame. Take, for example, the opening of chapter ::
And it came about that when he went into the house of a certain ruler of the
Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching him closely. And behold,
a certain man with dropsy was right in front of him. And in response, Jesus said
to the lawyers and Pharisees, Is it permissible during a Sabbath to heal, or is it
not? But they kept quiet. And after grasping him, he healed him, and dismissed
him. (:.:)
This scene is centred around a question which is appropriately sympotic
in form: the alternative form of the question, is it or is it not?, pointing
to a range of possible answers, suggests that it would be perfectly at home
in one of Plutarchs sympotic dialogues. But the miraculous, unspoken
response Jesus gives to his own question is entirely alien to Greco-Roman
sympotic traditions of rational talk. And the attitude of the Pharisees is
itself a travesty of ideal sympotic behaviour: they are watching him not
out of admiration, as Plutarchs dinner guests watch their elders, but in a
spirit of hostility, desperate for him to incriminate himself. Admittedly, the
classical symposium had always been a place for scrutiny of ones fellow
diners, a place where the symposiasts true nature was revealed, a place
where a chance slip could lead to embarrassment. But the Pharisees take
their vigilance so far that they themselves lapse into an entirely unsympotic
refusal to debate or respond. Similarly, many of the other sympotic-style
questions Jesus addresses are answered by parables rather than by debate,
and these replies are represented as silencing the other guests: there is no
sign here of sympotic discussion, with different speakers contributing in
turn.
,o
Jesus, moreover, has no interest whatever in citing authorities for
,,
For a longer list of Greco-Roman parallels for that motif, see Braun (:,,,) ,;, esp. ,, n. ,.
,o
That point is made briey by Braun (:,,,) :,,, with n. :.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
his own claims, as later Greco-Roman symposium writers like Plutarch and
Athenaeus do: his wisdom comes into being fully formed, not dependent
on tradition. It may be going too far to see Jesus appropriation of sympotic
tradition, as Luke presents it, as straightforwardly hostile. It is, however,
clearly a creative and highly defamiliarising engagement.
jewish responses to the symposium
Before we look more widely at Christian rejection of the literary symposium
I want to turn briey to Jewish feasting, and Jewish feasting literature. I do
so primarily in order to explore further the possibility that the sympotic
material we nd in Luke and others may be in part inherited from Jewish
writings which themselves engage with the Greco-Roman symposium. At
the same time I want to suggest that looking at these Jewish texts can help
us to see howunusual and distinctive Christian responses to the symposium
really were.
On the whole we nd relatively few close imitations of Greco-Roman
sympotic literature in Jewish writing, partly perhaps because that tradition
tends to be drowned out by the prevalence of Old Testament models
for representing eating and drinking.
,;
Nevertheless there are quite a few
cases where we can see broad resemblances; not surprisingly so, given that
Jewish feasting practices like early Christian commensality formed
part of the wider continuum of Mediterranean feasting already discussed.
,
For example, one of the things Jewish culture and literature shared with
both Christian and Greco-Roman culture was an interest in compiling
lists of instructions for proper behaviour in situations of commensality, a
habit which was closely linked with a tradition of learned instruction and
discussion at dinner. Most notably, the question and answer Passover ritual
of the seder and Jewish representation of that ritual may well have
been inuenced by the Greco-Roman symposium.
,,
There is even one text
which draws attention to the compatibility of Jewish and Greco-Roman
table-talk self-consciously, that is the Letter of Aristeas, written perhaps
,;
See MacDonald (:cc) on eating and drinking in the Old Testament.
,
See Smith (:cc,) :,:;:; and Shimoff (:,,o) on Rabbinic acceptance and adaptation of Greco-
Roman banquet practices in the Hellenistic period; however, see also Rosenblum (:c:c), who
notes many broad similarities to Greco-Roman dining culture, but focuses mainly on the large and
signicant differences, and their contribution to constructions of Jewish identity.
,,
See Stein (:,,;); Bokser (:,), esp. ,coo, disagreeing with Stein, and arguing that the editor of
the Mishnah and his sources were aware of the similarities but strove to differentiate between the
Jewish rite and other types of banquet so as to maintain the distinctive character of the Passover
celebration (,c); Brumberg-Kraus (:,,,); Smith (:cc,) :;,c.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,,
around :cc bce. The text describes the process by which the Hebrew
Bible was translated into Greek, and narrates the story of Jewish scholars
being gathered together in the court at Alexandria for weeks on end for
that purpose. During their time there, they are repeatedly questioned by
the king during symposium gatherings on matters of wisdom, in scenes
similar to these we have seen already in Plutarchs Symposium of the Seven
Sages. One of the main themes of the work is precisely the capacity of
Jewish and Greek culture to co-exist and cross-fertilise, an ideal which
must have been continually tested in late Hellenistic Alexandria, with its
large diaspora Jewish population, where the text seems to have been written.
The Letter parades the possibility of harmonising Greek and Jewish culture
by blending Jewish wisdom traditions with the motifs of Greek sympotic
narrative.
oc
More common, however, is anxiety about the problems of negotiating
a position in relation to non-Jewish commensality and the dangers of
excessive engagement with Greco-Roman custom. At the other end of the
scale from the Letter of Aristeas is Philo of Alexandria. In his work On
the Contemplative Life he describes, in highly idealised and not necessarily
historically accurate terms,
o:
the lifestyle of a Jewish philosophical group,
the Therapeutai, comparing their admirable, moderate style of dining
with the gluttony and licentiousness of common Greco-Roman sympotic
practice (denounced in paragraphs co,):
o:
Then some tables are taken away completely emptied by the gluttony of those
who are present, who stuff themselves like seagulls, gorging themselves to such an
extent that they even gnaw on the bones, while other courses they leave half-eaten,
mutilated and scattered around. And when they are completely exhausted, having
lled their stomachs up to the throat, though they are still empty in respect of
their desires, having given up on eating . . . .
o,
(,,)
Philo rejects even the philosophical banquets of Plato and Xenophon
(,;o:), complaining among other things that both are given over to
oc
On this text, see esp. Honigman (:cc,); also Shimoff (:,,o) ,; and see Cameron (:,,,) :: for
the point that the work shows clear knowledge of the sympotic customs of the royal court; and
Demarais (:cc,) on similarities between the Letter of Aristeas and Plutarchs Banquet of the Seven
Sages.
o:
For debate about the ctionality or otherwise of Philos account, see Engberg-Pedersen (:,,,) and
Beavis (:cc).
o:
See Stein (:,,;) ::; Klinghardt (:,,o) :,::o; Smith (:cc,) :,,; Merrills (:cc) ::, for
discussion of the way in which this description uses ethnographic language to stress the oddity of
the Therapeutai by normal civilised standards; Finn (:cc,) ,o,.
o,
There are problems with the text at this point and another phrase has clearly dropped out at the end
of the sentence; most editors restore the phrase they turn to drink: e.g. Colson (:,:) :o, n. :.
:,o Saints and Symposiasts
pleasure, Xenophon because he includes dancers and other entertainers,
Plato because all the speeches are about love: even these, compared with
our peoples banquets, those who have embraced the contemplative life, are
clearly objects of derision (,). The Therapeutai, by contrast, have their
own superior varieties of table-talk. The president of the company, when
silence has been established,
explores (n:t) some question in the scriptures, or solves (ttit:ci) a problem
which has been proposed by someone else, giving no consideration to display
(ttiotitc,) for he has no desire to win good reputation by the cleverness
of his speech (otivc:n:i c,cv) . . . He makes use of a rather leisurely style of
instruction, lingering and going slowly with lots of repetitions, imprinting the
thoughts on the souls of his listeners . . . And his listeners, with their ears pricked
up and their eyes xed on him, keep still, in exactly the same posture, showing
by nods and looks that they have understood and comprehended . . . And so
when the president seems to have spoken for long enough . . . there is universal
applause. (;,,)
The language and protocols of the Greek symposium are subverted here.
The speakers exploration of particular questions (n:t, ttit:ci) is
described by the vocabulary of table-talk inherited fromHellenistic Alexan-
dria and before (Philo is writing much earlier than either Plutarch or
Athenaeus, in the early rst century ce). But what follows resists sympotic
norms at every turn: the methodical didacticism of the presidents speech
is alien to sympotic habits of speculation and ingenuity; the listeners sub-
mit passively to the speaker, and burst into applause when he has spoken,
instead of offering their own contributions.
Two other Jewish texts are particularly relevant here: The Wisdom of Jesus
Ben Sira, probably composed around :c bce, and the Palestinian Talmud,
composed in the late fourth century ce. Both of them, despite the time gap,
have remarkable similarities in their responses to the Greco-Roman sym-
posium. Neither is quite so extreme or explicit as Philo in rejecting Greco-
Roman dining and the Platonic symposium tradition, but they do both
show considerable anxiety about the problem of how Jewish feasters should
react to these things. To be more specic: both are worried about the way in
which notions of honour, hierarchy and reciprocity in the symposiumcould
conict with Jewish models of communal solidarity. Ben Sira recommends
not speaking at all; the PalestinianTalmud species that talk should concern
Torah and nothing else. In both cases as for Philos Therapeutai there is a
sense of discomfort with the competitive, honour-based culture of sympotic
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,;
speech; this discomfort has a certain amount in common with Christian
wariness.
o
christian sympotica beyond the gospels
How deep-rooted was Christian neglect of the Platonic symposium
tradition?
o,
There are, of course, some exceptions. The most obvious surviving exam-
ple is the early third-century Symposium of Methodius, which will be the
main focus of the chapter following. Jerome tells us that the Latin apologist
Lactantius wrote a Symposium, but unfortunately gives no indication of its
content:
oo
Lactantius was roughly contemporary with Methodius, and,
like Clement of Alexandria a hundred years before him, renowned for the
breadth of his classical learning. But these instances are fewand far between.
Admittedly Christian and pagan writers faced similar challenges in their
attempts to regulate behaviour at communal gatherings, and sometimes
their instructions took very similar form.
o;
Moreover, many Christian
writers clearly knew Platos Symposium and adapted its themes for their
own purposes. To take just one example, Gregory of Nyssa paints his sister
Macrina as a Christian version of Diotima, the female teacher described
by Socrates as his source of instruction in Platos text.
o
But there are very
few surviving Christian works which align themselves with the kinds of
table-talk traditions we have seen Plutarch and Athenaeus exploiting. Even
when we do nd Christian writers who are familiar with these conventions
their adoption of them is often highly selective, and marked by anxiety, by
the need to fence sympotic material into a very new, Christian form.
The absence of the literary symposium is all the more peculiar given
the close Christian engagement with Hellenic philosophy in the second
century.
o,
At rst sight one might have expected later Christian writers to
take up the invitation offered by Luke and others to explore and reimagine
the image of Jesus as a sympotic sage, philosophising in Platonic manner at
o
For these arguments, see Schwartz (:cc).
o,
Aune (:,;) o, notes that neglect without addressing it at length; see also Relihan (:,,:) :,,
for brief discussion.
oo
Jerome, De viris illustribus c.
o;
E.g. Verseput (:cc:), comparing Plutarchs concernwithconvivial harmony inthe Sympotic Questions
with the Epistle of James.
o
See Cameron (:,,:) :;.
o,
For eloquent introductory discussion of that relationship, see Ando (:cco); also Rhee (:cc,) :c;;
on apology, see Edwards, Goodman and Price (:,,,).
:, Saints and Symposiasts
table. That absence is not particularly surprising, on reection, given that
many early Christian writers gave very little attention to the life of Jesus.
;c
What is surprising, however, is the lack of interest in representing sym-
potic debate between Christian converts and others within early Christian
apologetic dialogue. There was no need for the apologists to follow the
symposium form slavishly: it was open to them to work radical changes on
the symposium genre in imitating it, as they did with other Greco-Roman
models,
;:
but for some reason they chose not to. Keith Hopkins, in his
imaginative reconstruction of early Christian culture, offers a recently dis-
covered work by an author he names Macarius which draws on many of
the apologetic motifs familiar from the works of Justin and others.
;:
The
work is set at a symposium, and in that sense it is starkly unlike any surviv-
ing Christian apologetic writing. One might imagine that the symposium
would be a promising space for Christian writers to explore their own
cultural self-positioning in relation to other communities, in the light of
traditions of the symposium as a place for cosmopolitan dialogue; as well as
being a promising place to appropriate the familiar images of Greco-Roman
culture for new Christian uses, given its relevance to Christian metaphors
of feasting with Christ. Certainly Hopkins Macarius exploits that poten-
tial. However, Justin and his fellow apologists seem very reluctant to follow
the same path. Whether Hopkins was aware of that disjunction between
imaginative reconstruction and surviving material is not immediately clear
from his text, but either way his chapter usefully poses for us the question
of why there is so little in surviving Christian literature whose setting even
faintly resembles what we nd in the work of Macarius.
Why, then, did Christian writers shun the literary symposium? Viewing
Christian literature in the light of its Jewish inheritance can of course help
us here. In some cases the literary symposium is simply drowned out by the
many Old Testament models for representing commensality. And some of
Christianitys ambivalence about the Platonic symposium tradition must
have been inherited from Jewish responses.
It is important to stress also that the indifference towards sympotic dia-
logue has parallels within some of the Greco-Roman philosophical writing
which inuenced and developed alongside early Christian writing. Ciceros
;c
See Lieu (:cc) ,; Relihan (:,,:) :: suggests, rather differently, that the absence of Christian
symposia is explained by deference towards the Last Supper symposium scenes, especially that of
John.
;:
See also Lieu (:cc), esp. ,o on the character of Christian genres as both new and not new:
those who read and heard such literature would nd themselves in a world both familiar and yet
foreign (,).
;:
Hopkins (:,,,) ::c::.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,,
dialogues, for example, which were so important in the education of many
Christians, notably Augustine, show almost no interest in convivial con-
versation. The same goes for the Neoplatonic philosophers of the third
century ce and after, who tended to convey their ideas through lecture and
treatise rather than dialogue. There are just two obvious exceptions. First,
Plotinus is said to have held a philosophical symposium on the birthdays
of Plato and Socrates, at which all of the guests were required to speak.
;,
The second is an intriguing fragment by Porphyry, preserved in Eusebius
Praeparatio Evangelica :c., (oaob), describing a sympotic dialogue
at the house of Porphyrys teacher Longinus, which includes a lengthy
discussion of plagiarism in Greek literature.
;
I aim to show in what follows, however, that there were important
additional pressures, quite exclusive to Christianity, which contributed to
the neglect of sympotic dialogue. Authors like Clement and Methodius
and Augustine, all of whom make appearances in what follows, may share
the anxiety of Philo and Ben Sira and the Palestinian Talmud; they may also
share some of its causes, not least the suspicion of sympotic adversariality;
but their worries also take different forms.
One particularly obvious factor is that the elitist associations of the
symposium would have seemed at odds with early Christianitys stress on
inclusiveness (including the tendency to allow the presence of women, in
contrast with the Greek symposium tradition) and its appeal below the elite
levels of society.
;,
Early Christian feasting consciously broke the mould of
hierarchical feasting. It should be no surprise that Christian writing tended
to follow suit. Narrative mattered in early Christian culture perhaps more
than ever before even more so than for a writer like Plutarch for its
capacity to offer models for its readers to follow.
;o
That is not to say
that we should take Christian texts as simplistic reections of Christian
practice or as simplistic expressions of shared identity.
;;
But when we read
narratives of apostolic frugality and inclusive commensality in texts like the
Apocryphal Acts to take just one example (discussed further below, in
chapter ::) we should be clear about the fact that these were offered at least
in part as ideals for imitation. The absence of elite symposium scenes in
literary narrative, in other words, may be partly linked to their irrelevance
;,
Porphyry, Life of Plotinus :.
;
See Martin (:,,:) :,.
;,
On the social inclusiveness of the early Christian movement, see Clark (:cc) :;,c; also Stegemann
and Stegemann (:,,,), who argue that New Testament communities after ;c ce showed a wide cross
section of social levels, but not the highest and lowest; and see Lim (:cc), esp. :,,, on dialogue,
especially sympotic dialogue, as an elitist form incompatible with Christian models of equality.
;o
See Cameron (:,,:), esp. ,::,; Lieu (:cc) :,;,.
;;
E.g. Lieu (:cc) :.
:c Saints and Symposiasts
to most early Christian communities. Still, that is not the whole answer,
since there are counter-examples of Christian authors, imbued with Greco-
Roman learning, whose suspicion of the literary symposium has little to
do with populism: Clement is a case in point; and that goes especially for
the post-Constantinian world where, as we shall see in chapter ;, Christian
identity could sit side-by-side quite happily with classical learning and even
classicising dining habits, but still seems to have been incompatible with
an interest in the literature of the symposium. Models of the complete
encroachment of popular on to elite culture within early Christianity have,
arguably, in the past been overstated anyway.
;
We need to look further.
Another obvious factor is Christian attitudes to pleasure and the body.
Christianity developed startlingly new attitudes to the pleasures of eating
and drinking,
;,
linking moderate consumption, albeit in many different
and contested ways, with spiritual health. In that context, the literary
symposium, with its traditions of drunkenness and excess must have looked
particularly threatening. Certainly there is a tendency to criticise pagan
feasting for its licentiousness.
c
Of course, Greco-Roman philosophical
writing similarly stressed the importance of moderation: Plutarch is an
obvious example. Even Plutarch, however, was noticeably more permissive
than many of his Christian counterparts. The symposium had always been
a space where disorder and excess could threaten to erupt at any moment; an
entirely sanitised symposium, where behaviour is universally harmonious
seems almost a contradiction in terms. Plutarch welcomes the constant
threat of disorder and teasing and makes it into something which he views
as philosophically valuable. He also repeatedly emphasises the value of
sympotic pleasure, and the friend-making capacity of wine, as we saw in
chapter :. Christian writers for some reason seem reluctant to follow his
example. It is as if the stakes are so high inChristianinsistence onabstinence
that these inherently ambiguous features of sympotic interaction are simply
seen as too risky to make it a suitable subject for narrative.
One further issue, nally, is Christian attitudes to dialogue. For Plutarch
and others, the symposium was a space where ideas were open to challenge,
where different arguments and voices could be juxtaposed with each other
without necessarily reaching any resolution. That view seems to have been
at odds with Christian views on authority, which tended to value consensus
and orthodoxy and reverence more highly. Christian writers who imitated
sympotic dialogue or discussed sympotic behaviour for example, ideas on
;
See Cameron (:,,:) ;.
;,
See (among many others) Grimm (:,,o).
c
For good examples of Christian criticism of the luxury of pagan feasting, see Justin, Discourse to the
Greeks ; Tertullian, Apology ,,, the latter with reference to the symposium.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium ::
drunkenness and proper behaviour at table often went out of their way
to avoid the technique of juxtaposing a range of equally valid responses,
aiming instead for cohesive, harmonious communication of a single view-
point. These developments will be a central issue for the rest of Part i. We
will see a rst glimpse of them in a moment in Clement of Alexandrias
Educator, where the Athenaean technique of mixing quotations from many
different types of writing, both Christian and otherwise, is represented as
being always under the control of the authoritative Word of God.
There is a risk, of course, of pigeon-holing Christian writing too easily
as authoritarian, humourless and one-dimensional. For that reason two
caveats are necessary before we go any further. My rst point is simply that
the movement towards a more authoritarian model of sympotic dialogue
was in some cases accompanied by elements of ambivalence and exper-
imentation. As we shall see, writers like Clement and Methodius (and
indeed the fth-century Latin author Macrobius, the subject of chapter
, whose works do not have any Christian content), do not simply and
dogmatically shut out the dialogic characteristics of the symposium in
their engagement with it. Instead they dramatise and explore the way in
which dialogic interaction and speculative argumentation could alternate
with more authoritarian styles of pronouncement within any depiction of
sympotic speech; in other words they feel their way towards new modes
of sympotic talk and sympotic writing, rather than just imposing them
decisively.
Of course, that qualication does not alter the fact that something
did change: despite the hesitations and equivocations of particular texts
and particular authors, new Christian attitudes to authority clearly did
contribute to wariness towards sympotic dialogue. It is important to stress,
therefore my second point that resistance to speculation and debate
would not necessarily have been understood by these authors as a lack or an
absence, but would surely rather have been envisaged in overwhelmingly
positive terms as a vehicle for harmony, a sign of reverence and piety, a
way of living and thinking to be valued and passed on. The idea that
sympotic literature could offer its readers powerful and inspiring models
for conversation and analysis was valid, in other words, not just for Plutarch
and his Greco-Roman contemporaries, but also just as much for the early
Christian and late antique writers we will be looking at in the rest of this
section.
In summary: I have offered here a range of preliminary explanations
for Christian reluctance to engage with the literary symposium. In this
form they will inevitably appear unsatisfyingly vague, and in some cases
:: Saints and Symposiasts
unsurprising. The risks of generalisation here are enormous. It is all too easy
to resort to unnuanced treatment of the complexity and variety of Christian
identity and Christian narrative and their relationship with Greco-Roman
and Jewish tradition. The case studies of Christian sympotica which are
spread right through the rest of this book therefore aim to take a closer
look at these issues within a set of specic texts, viewed by comparison
with their Greco-Roman equivalents.
clement of alexandria
After that long set of background sketches, I want to look at more length
at one nal author for this chapter, that is Clement of Alexandria. In
doing so I return more explicitly to some of the issues which were central
to chapters :: the way in which sympotic writers often aim to dene
shared behavioural standards which unite the sympotic community; their
fascination with extensive quotation from the authors of the past; and their
interest in exploring the value of dialogue and debate within sympotic
conversation. Clement of Alexandria engaged with those traditions, as did
Methodius, the subject of chapter o. They did so, however, in ways which
left strong traces of anxiety and ambivalence, and which led themto reshape
their source traditions in a defamiliarising fashion.
To be more specic: Clement is an interesting case study for Christian
worries about sympotic styles of debate. He draws heavily on the traditions
of sympotic writing we have seen for Plutarch and Athenaeus and others,
but he also departs from them, most strikingly by choosing to present his
views on sympotic behaviour as a set of instructions, rather than couching
them in dialogue form. The key text is Book : of Clements Educator,
dating from the late second or early third century ce, which engages
with the Greco-Roman literature of eating and drinking perhaps more
extensively and directly than any other Christian text from the period
this book covers.
:
The work is the middle part of Clements trilogy on
the topic of progress in Christian life. The rst work, the Protrepticus
(Exhortation), urges conversion; the second, the Paedagogus (Educator),
puts the new recruit to Christianity under the guidance of the divine word
(Logos),
:
explaining how one can live a life which brings one closer to
:
For survey of Clements attitude to food and feasting, see Grimm (:,,o) ,c::,.
:
On Clements concept of the authoritative divine voice, which is heavily indebted to Stoic and
Platonic conceptions, as well as to other early Christian writers like Justin, see Dawson (:,,:)
:,:,; also Edwards (:ccc).
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,
God; and the third, the Stromateis (Miscellany), offers progress to a higher
level of Christian understanding through allegorical interpretation of the
mysteries of the scriptures.
In all three works, Clements ambivalent relationship with Greco-Roman
tradition is apparent on many different levels. It is perhaps most imme-
diately obvious in literary terms. Clements erudition is marked by the
educated culture which also shaped Plutarch and Athenaeus.
,
The Edu-
cator and the other two works in the trilogy show a detailed knowledge of
Greco-Roman literature, mixing biblical and classical quotation. Clement
was also heavily inuenced by Greek philosophical traditions.

However,
these classical materials are used for new and distinctively Christian ethical
purposes. Much of the Educator is devoted to instructions for Christian life,
down to the smallest detail of correct behaviour. Peter Brown refers to Bour-
dieus theory of practice in talking about the way in which Clement drew
on the rules for disciplined deportment, commended by philosophers to
the Greek elites of his age, in order to wrap the believer in a web of minute,
seemingly insignicant patterns of daily living, which between them com-
municated a sense of the God-given importance of every moment of daily
life.
,
Clements rationale for quoting from so many pagan authors is that
they too were inspired by some spark of divine Logos, albeit without fully
understanding its implications.
o
That approach is in line with his univer-
salising insistence elsewhere on Christianitys status as a religion open to
all people.
;
For example his instructions for behaviour are partly moti-
vated by his belief in the danger of passion and pleasure, which allow the
irrational part of the soul to dominate the rational, belief which draws on
Stoic and Platonic ideas while recasting them for a Christian context.

,
See Marrou (:,oc) ;:o.

See Marrou (:,oc) ,,:, ;:o; Chadwick (:,oo) ,:o,; Lilla (:,;:) on the way in which Clement
combines some elements of Christian Gnosticism (while rejecting many others) with Jewish-
Alexandrine philosophy and Platonism; Berchman (:,) ,,:; Dawson (:,,:) :cc:, :c,,;
Behr (:ccc) :,:; Boys-Stones (:cc:) :,; Goldhill (:cc:b) :;:o; van den Hoek (:cc,).
,
Brown (:,) ::,o (with full discussion in :::,,); cf. Maier (:,,); Leyerle (:,,,), who also draws
on Bourdieu; Bradley (:,,) :,, who sees Clement as representative of typical Greco-Roman
concerns with deportment at dinner; Buell (:,,,) ::,,c; Behr (:ccc) :o:,; Kovacs (:cc:).
o
See Marrou (:,oc) ;; Lilla (:,;:) ,,,, esp. :,: on the claim of divine inspiration for Greek
philosophy, pointing to Clements partial dependence on Philo and Justin; Dawson (:,,:) :,,::;
Ridings (:,,,) :,:c; L ohr (:ccc) :;:,, who shows how this idea is linked with Clements
sophisticated version of the common Christian claim that Greek philosophy had plagiarised from
Jewish writing.
;
See Buell (:cc:) o,c on Clements Protrepticus.

See Timothy (:,;,) ,,c; Brown (:,) ::,: on Clements Stoicism; Behr (:ccc) :,o;, :o,;
however, see also Gaca (:cc,) :;;: on the anti-Stoic character of Clements views on sexual
pleasure.
: Saints and Symposiasts
Clements complex relationship with sympotic tradition is on show
mainly within the rst half of Educator Book : (:.:), where he turns
his attention to the question of how Christians should behave at dinner.
,
Some features of his account look very familiar for anyone who has read
Plutarch. Clements insistence on careful self-presentation in convivial situ-
ations echoes the classical fascination with the symposiumas a place to learn
proper elite deportment. Many of the topics duplicate the self-reexive top-
ics of discussion we nd in Plutarch and others, and the chapter headings,
where issues of proper behaviour are presented as questions, are very close
to the format of Plutarchan quaestiones. For example the topic of Educator
:. Whether perfume and garlands should be used (Li upci, sci o:t-
qvci, ypno:tcv) parallels Plutarch, Sympotic Questions ,.: Whether
ower garlands should be used while drinking (Li ypno:tcv vivci, o:t-
qvci, tcpc tc:cv). Moreover, he repeatedly uses the vocabulary of the
symposium, speaking, for example, of the sober symposium (vnqcicu
ouutcoicu) in :., :.:.
,c
Like Plutarch, he is happy to recommend eating
and drinking so long as it is moderate.
,:
His recommendation of simple
food in :.: has a certain amount in common with Sympotic Questions .:,
which records a discussion of the question whether it is better to eat a single
food or a mixture: both Clement and Plutarchs friend Philinos, one of the
main speakers in that dialogue, suggest a link between culinary variety and
gluttony. Elsewhere Clement draws explicitly on Greco-Roman material
(as well as scriptural instruction), in denouncing immoderate behaviour,
just as Plutarch does: for example, Clement includes regular quotations
from comic descriptions of gluttony.
There are also, however, some very striking differences. For one thing,
Clements denunciations of excessive appetite are far more lengthy and
vehement than anything we nd in Plutarch. In addition, his suspicion
of sympotic laughter acceptable in moderate form, he suggests, but
on the whole highly problematic draws on earlier philosophical think-
ing about laughter, but overlays it and intensies it with distinctively
Christian anxieties about the links between laughter and licentiousness.
,:
,
For Greek text, see Marcovich (:cc:).
,c
See Halliwell (:cc) ,, for that phrase and others like it.
,:
See esp. Educator :.,.,:, for Clements reminder that Jesus himself drank wine; Finn (:cc,) ,,
on the dietary permissiveness of Clements work by comparison with many later ascetic works;
Behr (:ccc) :oo on tensions in Clements attitude to meat and wine between disapproval and
acknowledgement that Jesus gives his approval to both in the gospels.
,:
See Halliwell (:cc) ,,,, which not only covers Clements attitudes to laughter but also in
doing so offers the best available analysis (along with Leyerle (:,,,)) of the sympotic sections of the
Educator.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,
Clements interest in the physiological effects of food and drink also has
many precedents in Plutarch and others, but he carries that interest much
further than Plutarch ever did, expressing in great detail his sense of disgust
at the bodily immoderation which accompanies sympotic misbehaviour.
Take, for example, the following denunciation of excessively enthusiastic
drinking:
It is necessary to give special thought to decorum. . . ; one should drink with
undistorted face, without swallowing ones ll, and without forcing ones eyes into
a disgured appearance in front of the drink, without gulping it down in one
draught (uuo:i) through a lack of self-control; nor should one allow ones chin
and clothes to be made wet by pouring in the wine all at once, practically washing
ones face by drenching it in the cups. Certainly the gurgling sound which comes
from much drawing-in of breath during vigorous drinking is disgraceful, just like
the noise of liquid being poured into an earthenware jar, with the throat making
sounds from the violent swallowing. (Educator :.,, ,:)
Plutarch would no doubt have agreed with the sentiments, but his interest
in the details of bodily self-presentation is always subordinated to other,
intellectual concerns. By contrast, disciplining the body seems to be one
of Clements highest priorities, with the aim of suppressing the grotesque
elements of human consumption.
Even more importantly for this chapter, Clement chooses to present
these instructions outside the narrative format of sympotic dialogue. We
have seen already that the concept of progress in education is crucial for
Clement, as it was for Plutarch. In Plutarchs case, however, there is a
carefully structured focus on individual initiative and ingenious debate as
central features of the process by which individuals make progress in the
unsummarisable rules of sympotic conversation. Clement, by contrast, is
much more prescriptive. There is nothing here to match Plutarchs scenes
of active, convivial debate. In Sympotic Questions .:, for example, the initial
speech in praise of eating one kind of food at a time is answered by a reply
arguing for the opposite. By contrast there is no discordant voice to disturb
Clements condent pronouncements in favour of culinary simplicity in
Educator :.:, which is made at enormous length, by comparison with the
very brief mention of a possible link between the two by Plutarchs speaker
Philinos (QC .:, oo:foo:a).
This preference for instruction rather than debate is in line with
Clements stress on the importance of uncompromising obedience to the
divine Logos, of which Clement acts as mouthpiece. This sense of the
singleness of correct instruction, which inspires and teaches but does not
:o Saints and Symposiasts
invite debate or doubt, shows itself in remarkable form in the opening
sections of the work. For example in :., (,.:c.:), in the context of his
introductory discussion of the character of the divine Logos as educator he
speaks as follows:
And taking the word as law, let us recognise the commands and counsel as short
and eager paths to eternity; for his instructions are full of persuasion (ttic0,),
not of fear. And so, welcoming all the more this good subjection, let us submit
ourselves to the Lord, grasping hold of the strong cable of faith (tio:tc,) in
him.
The persuasion Clement has in mind is not the persuasion of adversarial
debate, but rather the single, overpoweringly convincing voice of truth
which brings humans to salvation.
,,
And the process of education he
envisages is equivalent to the education of very young children, which
guides its young charges unerringly and unquestioningly along the right
path, as the title of the work implies (the Greek word paidag ogos is often
used of a slave in charge of escorting children to school). It is clear that this
is not an author likely to be sympathetic to sympotic ideals of speculative,
competitive speech.
That impression is further strengthened by the section of Book : which
deals explicitly with the question of how one should speak at the sym-
posium (:.;). Once again, some of Clements recommendations would
surely have been endorsed by Plutarch: for example his deprecation of
excessive talkativeness (:.;, ,,).
,
Clement goes much further, however,
recommending silence for women and for the young (Young man, speak,
so wisdom commands you, if it is necessary for you to do so, but only
a little and when you have been asked twice; compress your speech into
a few words (:.;, ,) a quotation from Ecclesiasticus ,:.;) and giving
a very high priority to the avoidance of dispute (And let contentiousness
(qicvtisic), for the sake of an empty victory in words, be absent, since
our goal is peace (:cpcic) (:.;, ,)).
,,
Those recommendations are at
odds with much of what we nd in the Sympotic Questions, perhaps most
obviously with the various scenes where Plutarch describes attempts by
himself and others to encourage young men to contribute to debate.
,o
,,
The operations of persuasion are described at length along those lines in the opening section of the
work, :.:, and repeatedly thereafter; for discussion of that opening section, see van den Hoek (:cc,)
,:.
,
Cf. above, p. ,, on Plutarchs treatise On Garrulity.
,,
However, see Osborn (:cc,) :c,o for a reminder that Clements view of debate is complicated: he
views it as valuable so long as it does not degenerate into unproductive sophistry (:c,).
,o
Cf. above, pp. ;:, on ,.:, ,.: and ,.;.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :;
The other area in which Clement is both close and not close to the clas-
sical sympotic tradition is in his techniques of listing and quotation. Here,
Athenaeus is the obvious point of comparison. Like Athenaeus, Clement
obsessively mixes and juxtaposes quotations from different genres. Many of
his source texts are from genres also used by Athenaeus: Homer, Plato, Attic
comedy. Often his descriptions of eating and drinking habits are articulated
through lists which resemble those Athenaeus gives us.
,;
At the same time,
however, there are very striking differences. Most obviously, Clement mixes
classical quotations with biblical passages, stressing his desire to harmonise
Christianandpagantradition. Not only that, but he also makes it quite clear
which of those quotations take priority: the sources he identies explicitly
are nearly always Christian sources, through phrases like scripture says or
the apostle says or the Lord says. One effect of that identication is that
we are left in no doubt about who the dominant forces in this conversation
are: the naming of these Christian sources asserts their guiding importance
for the work, in contrast with their pagan equivalents, which tend to lurk
unidentied in the shadows (although with some exceptions). Once again,
Clements theory of Logos plays a decisive role in that effect: the diver-
sity of the classical and biblical heritage is brought under the control of
a single divine voice, and made into a vehicle for articulating a coherent
ethical message, on the principle that even pagan texts can be inspired with
truth by the operations of divine Logos, even if they manifest that truth in
imperfect form. Athenaeus quoted texts speak for themselves, offering us
a variety of different valuations of sympotic luxury, ranging from celebra-
tion to denunciation.
,
In Clements case, we nd a much more consistent
message.
For a typical example we might turn to the closing sentences of :.::
Anyone who indulges in such food can never have a chance of being wise, burying
the mind in the belly, very much like the sh called the donkey sh, which
Aristotle says alone of all living things has its heart in its stomach. Epicharmos the
comic poet calls this sh the strange-stomached sh. Such are those people who
trust their stomach, whose god is their stomach, who glory in their shame, and
who give attention to the things of the earth. For such people the apostle predicts
nothing good, saying that their end is ruin.
,;
In addition to the lists of foodstuffs quoted below, see also the list of different types of wine at :.:,
,c; the lists of drinking vessels and luxurious sympotic furniture at :.,, ,, (with Marrou (:,oc) ::
for the possibility that Clement is inuenced here by Athenaeus); the list of varieties of perfume at
:., o.
,
See above, p. ,;, on denunciation of luxury as a possible aim for Athenaeus work.
: Saints and Symposiasts
Here we have four quotations in rapid succession: the rst (the phrase can
never have a chance of being wise) a quotation from Plato, Letters ;, ,:oc,
where the author denounces Italian and Sicilian banqueting habits; the
second and third from Aristotle and Epicharmos; the fourth (their end is
ruin, those whose god is their stomach) from Philippians ,.:,. As so often
in this work, the nal, authoritative word is the word of the apostles or of
scripture.
,,
That is not to say that there is no sign in Clement of the Athenaean
effects we looked at in chapter , where particular quoted voices and
particular topics seem to take on a life of their own, leading us away from
the main thread of the argument. There are moments, especially where
Clement quotes from comedy, where it is hard to avoid the impression
that his pagan source texts have hijacked the discussion, sometimes with
an Athenaean relish for descriptions of the disorderly, luxurious facets of
feasting, as if Clement can hardly resist irting with the pleasures of food
description so familiar fromGreek comedy. In :.: for example, he lists some
of the disgraceful varieties of food which his gluttonous targets lust after,
and it is here that his afnity with Athenaeus writing starts to become
more obvious:
I for my part feel pity for their disease, whereas they are not ashamed to sing the
praises of their own luxury, doing everything to procure sea-eels from the Sicil-
ian straits and eels from Maeander, kids from Melos and mullets from Skiathos,
Pelordian mussels and Abydean oysters, to say nothing of sprats from Lipara and
Mantinean turnips and even beets from Askra; and they seek out Methymnaian
scallops, Attic turbots and thrushes from Daphne and russet-coloured gs . . . In
addition, they buy birds from Phasis, Egyptian francolins, peacocks from Media.
The gluttons yearn for these delicacies, having transformed them with sauces,
providing for themselves by their own greed all the things which are nour-
ished by the land and the depths of the sea and the unmeasured space of the
air. (:.:, ,)
For a moment we might forget where we are, as we get sucked deeper
and deeper into this gastronomic set-piece, which combines vehemence
and delight in a form as intense as any of the texts Athenaeus quotes, as
if Clement is enacting the temptations of gluttony even as he denounces
,,
A high proportion of the other chapters in the Educator similarly end with scriptural quotation
included at some point in their last few sentences: :.,, :.o, :.;, :.:c, :.::, :.:, :.o, :., :.::, ,., ,.,,
,.o, ,.,, ,.:c, ,.::; several of these passages also at the same time explicitly mention the guiding
power of the divine word or of the scriptures: :.::, ,.,; many others mention that theme in their
nal lines without including quotations: :.:, :.:, :.,, :., :.::, :.:,, :.,, ,.;, ,., ,.::. Educator :.,
which ends with a quotation from Platos Laws, is the only exception.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium :,
them. His list, like the gluttons he is denouncing, does not know when
to stop. It may be that he is testing us here, challenging us to resist the
temptations of luxury. But it is hard to avoid the feeling that the narrators
voice here is speaking, at more length than is necessary, with a kind of
Athenaean relish, a scholarly gluttony for gastronomic accumulation, even
as it condemns gluttonous eating.
In the lines following, however, those impressions are abruptly reined in
as we hear the voice of scripture once again:
It seems to me that a man of this type is nothing more than a pair of jaws. Do not
desire, says the Scripture, the food of the rich. For these things belong to a life
that is false and shameful (Prov. :,.,). For these men cling on to their delicacies,
even though the dunghill will soon receive them, whereas for us, who seek after
heavenly nourishment, it is necessary to control the stomach which is beneath
heaven, and even more so those things which are agreeable to the stomach, which
God will destroy (: Cor. o.:,), as the apostle says, rightly cursing gluttonous
desires. (:.:, )
Here the instructive quality of the divine Logos reasserts itself, holding
back the text from the kind of endless proliferation and accumulation in
which Athenaeus specialises.
Clement thus never fully suppresses the multi-vocal potential of the
sympotic form. His voice, like the others we have looked at in earlier
chapters, has the voices of many others speaking through it via the act
of quotation, and his cataloguing of the luxurious faults of pagan society
seems sometimes to be done at unnecessary length and with unnecessary
enthusiasm, threatening to be overcome by a spirit of indiscriminate schol-
arly abundance. Nevertheless Clement goes much further than Athenaeus
and other Greco-Roman writers to theorise the way in which that kind
of polyvocality is being channelled and kept at bay. His theory of divine
Logos as the force which paradoxically brings unity fromthe diversity of the
Greco-Roman and biblical heritage, articulated through his own instruct-
ing voice, is the single guiding thread which helps him to bring order and
coherence from the variety of the sympotic heritage. Most importantly for
this chapter, his decision to avoid the dialogue formin favour of rst-person
sympotic instruction reinforces that impulse, helping him to sidestep the
impression we nd in Athenaeus, of an endless and chaotic cacophony of
quoted voices from the authors of the past. It also helps him to signal his
own lack of interest in debate as a thing to be welcomed almost for its
own sake, as it is in Plutarch. In that sense the Educator is a fascinating
:,c Saints and Symposiasts
example of Christian avoidance of the symposium dialogue, all the more
striking since Clement seems quite happy, unlike some of his contempo-
raries, to countenance the symposium as an unavoidable feature of social
interaction, so long as it is treated with caution. Clements devotion to
distinctively Christian models of authority, in summary, drives him to
suppress the traditional indeterminacy of sympotic dialogue, bringing the
chaotic diversity and polyvocality of the symposium under the control of
a single divine voice.
chapter 6
Methodius
introduction
In this chapter we jump forward by almost a century to see another Chris-
tian writer grappling with the pleasures and problems of the sympotic
dialogue form. Methodius Symposium (subtitled On Chastity) was written
probably during the last three or four decades of the third century ce, or
possibly in the very early fourth. It holds a special place in this book as the
only fully surviving example of Christian sympotic dialogue.
:
The dialogue
opens in imitation of Platos Symposium. Two women, Euboulion
:
and Gre-
gorion, are sharing news of the discussion at a banquet hosted by Arete
(Virtue), daughter of Philosophia (Philosophy). Gregorion recounts the
version she heard from one of the participants, Theopatra, who tells of
her long and difcult journey with a companion up a path crawling with
terrifying reptiles, and then their arrival in the garden paradise of Aretes
home. When they have eaten, Arete proposes a discussion not of the Greek
love god Eros, as in Platos version, but of virginity, and her ten guests then
speak in turn, followed by a brief nal contribution from Arete herself.
The dialogue ends with a hymn performed by Thekla, the companion of
St Paul, and a nal return to the framing narrative where Euboulion and
Gregorion sum up what they have learned.
,
The text has some preten-
sions to be a manual for achieving chastity in ones day-to-day life: here
Methodius is inuenced in part by Clement, especially in the notion of the
progressive release of the soul from the domination of the passions.

But
for the most part Methodius is much less interested in practical instruction
:
See Musurillo (:,,) , for dating. For text and commentary, see Musurillo (:,o,); for English
translation, Musurillo (:,,).
:
Others read masculine Euboulios: see Goldhill (:,,,) :o:,, n. for arguments in favour of feminine
identication, with reference to Musurillo (:,o,) :,, n. :.
,
For useful summaries of the various sections of the text, see Musurillo (:,o,) :::o and (at more
length) Patterson (:,,;) o;::c.

On the inuence of Clement, see Patterson (:,,;) ,, and ;: for that quotation.
:,:
:,: Saints and Symposiasts
than Clement in the Educator. His aim is a more exclusively theological
one. He denes chastity broadly, making it stand not just for virginity,
but for the whole practice of perfect Christian virtue, by which one can
prepare for the nal coming of Christ.
,
In doing so he distances himself
from narrower, encratist denitions of chastity whose demands for sex-
ual abstinence, signalled by the Greek word enkrateia (continence) were
motivated by the assumption that sexual relations involve the body with
the evils of the material world.
o
Why does Methodius work matter? Why should we be interested in it?
Why might his contemporary readers have been gripped and challenged by
it? At rst sight it may be difcult for modern readers to see the answer to
those questions, faced with the dense passages of theological argument and
scriptural exegesis which take up much of the work. We have to work hard
to recapture the mindset of those Methodius is writing for. But that perhaps
becomes easier when we realise that the issues Methodius discusses were
never simply dry, abstract, inconsequential questions. Christianbelief inthe
third and early fourth centuries ce could still be a matter of life and death
(and one, admittedly unreliable ancient source Jerome De Viris Illustribus
, evensuggests that Methodius was himself martyred, presumably during
the period of persecution in the rst decade of the fourth century).
;
There
was also an even more important issue at stake for Methodius readers,
that was the salvation of their souls. Identifying the proper choices for
ascetic lifestyle had consequences. As we shall see, there is a sense of
anxiety about correct interpretation in some sections of the dialogue. One
could not afford to be wrong. We also need to set those pressures within
the context of disputes about doctrine within Christianity. Methodius is
writing for anaudience familiar withcontemporary theological debates. His
,
See Zorzi (:cc,) on the breadth of Methodius denition of chastity; cf. Tibiletti (:,;); also (:,o,)
for contextualisation of Methodius representation of virginity and marriage in relation to other
Christian views on the same subject.
o
On Methodius anti-encratist views, see esp. Patterson (:,,;) ,:: and o:::, with summary at
::c:; Prinzivalli (:,,a), who points out that Methodius is in some ways unusual in constructing
a positive space for desire within Christian thought; Zorzi (:cc:a), (:cc:b), (:cc,), (:cco) and
(:cc,). On the theology of the Symposium more generally see Bonaiuti (:,::); Musurillo (:,,) :o:,
and (:,o,) :,,c; Patterson (:,,;); Bracht (:,,,) on Methodius anthropology; and Zorzi (:cco)
for a helpful review of the state of Methodius studies: like Patterson, she stresses the importance of
treating Methodius as a theological thinker in his own right, moving beyond questions about the
inuence of Origen and other earlier thinkers.
;
That said, Methodius text shows very little interest in that problem apart from a few references to the
martyrdom of Thekla, and it seems likely that it was composed at a period when active persecution
of Christians had ceased temporarily, in the decades which followed the end of Valerians reign in
:oc ce. On Methodius life, as far as we can reconstruct it, see Patterson (:,,;) :,,, esp. :; and
:,:: on Jeromes dubious evidence for martyrdom, and Zorzi (:cco) ,,c.
Methodius :,,
work is, among other things, a way of asserting his theological authority,

presumably written in response to his own experience of debate within

small and tight-knit church communities.
For example, encratist views of the kind already mentioned were
widespread in the second- and third-century church. The term encratite
was used quite exibly to describe a range of different groups, but in all
cases in reference to extreme practices of asceticism which included strict
sexual abstinence. The Apocryphal Acts, which I examine in chapter ::, are
often thought to be inspired by encratist thinking. Much encratist practice
seems to have been based on the dualist idea of a split between body and
soul, which led to assumptions about the inevitable sinfulness of human
embodiment. Methodius opposition to encratist thinking is clear through-
out the text (he was not unusual in opposing it, although the version of
chastity he constructs in its place is highly distinctive). The important
second speech, by Theophila, argues at great length, following Paul, for
the validity of sex within marriage for those who are not strong enough for
the ascetic life. And in the nal speech, by Arete, he sets out in very simple
terms his own much broader view of a chastity which requires control of
the passions in all areas of human life: Many people, thinking that chastity
(:nv c,vticv) involves above all being strong in relation to the raging lusts
(:c, cio:pcoti, . . . ttiuuic,), have fallen short of it through neglecting
other impulses and have brought reproach on those who have tried to
pursue chastity in the right way (::, :,). The closing debate between
Euboulion and Gregorion concerns the question of whether it is better to
be without passion, or whether it is better to experience passion and to
overcome it. Euboulion talks Gregorion round so that she comes to agree
with the second of those two views.
,
Methodius use of the gure of Thekla
seems particularly signicant in this respect: in other texts, especially in
the Acts of Paul and Thekla, she is an icon of enkrateia, but in Methodius
version she becomes a spokesperson for anti-encratist views.
:c
Methodius also faced the challenge of dening a position in relation to
specic predecessors. Criticising or aligning oneself with earlier authori-
ties was an important means of self-denition and self-authorisation for
Christian authors. Potentially the stakes were high, especially for those
who chose to criticise widely revered authorities although in the third

It may even have been that his own episcopal authority was at stake in his writings, if we follow
Jeromes claim that he was a bishop. The source is again Jerome, De Viris Illustribus ,; Patterson
(:,,;) ::, is sceptical about Jeromes claims.
,
On the importance of this section see Patterson (:,,;) o,; Zorzi (:cc:a).
:c
See Patterson (:,,;) o,, :c and :c: for that point.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
century the intensity of intra-Christian debate, and of anxiety about it,
had not reached anything like the levels it attained in the fourth century
ce and after. Methodius theologically literate readers would surely have
been alert to his involvement in these processes. On the whole the Sym-
posium is fairly pacic: Methodius draws on Clement, as I have suggested
already and also on Irenaeus.
::
In addition he shows clear knowledge of
the great Alexandrian theologian Origen, who was writing in the rst half
of the third century. Methodius later works tend to take a controversially
anti-Origenist stance, and it has often been thought that the same is true
of the Symposium, which seems to date from much earlier in Methodius
career. It has become clear more recently that Methodius on the whole
follows Origen closely in this text, especially in his techniques of allegorical
interpretation of the scriptures. Nevertheless there may have been some
moments even in this earlier work where Methodius readers would have
sensed the rst signs of tension with Origens views.
::
Methodius text is thus a bold and original intervention in debates
which mattered for the early church debates about chastity and human
corporeality, about the relationship between body and soul, about the
proper way to interpret the sacred texts of the Old and New Testaments. In
that sense it can also be important for us, looking back, as we try to trace out
a broad history of the development of Christian thought. The Symposium
is a distinctive landmark in the history of Christian theology, and especially
the history of Christian thinking about asceticism.
:,
Methodius was writing
at a fairly early stage in the development of these ideas, in a period where
we have very few other surviving works of Christian theology.
:
His work
seems to have been sidelined by many of his immediate contemporaries
and successors, especially Eusebius, who was perhaps suspicious of his anti-
Origenist approach.
:,
However, it is clear that some aspects of his work had
a signicant inuence over later ascetic practice and ascetic writing.
:o
In the
great set-pieces of the text, which are so full of rich, heavily visual images
especially in the opening scene-setting, in the nal hymn of Thekla, and
also in some of the virtuoso passages of allegorical interpretation we can
get some idea of why that might have been the case. This is a work designed
to inspire and even to bring pleasure (some sections more successfully so
::
See Patterson (:,,;) ;, on both Irenaeus and Clement; also Finn (:cc,) :c,.
::
See Prinzivalli (:,,); Patterson (:,,;), esp. ::,c; Zorzi (:cco) ,o.
:,
See esp. Brown (:,) :, for vivid discussion; also Cameron (:,,:) :;;.
:
For that point see Patterson (:,,;) ::; Zorzi (:cco) ,,.
:,
See Patterson (:,,;) :o on Eusebius.
:o
See Bonaiuti (:,::) :,,, especially on the admiration of Epiphanius; Patterson (:,,;) :o,o and
:,: on Gregory of Nyssa; Finn (:cc,) :co.
Methodius :,,
than others, perhaps) as well as to instruct. And it is an important text for
understanding the intellectual currents which inuenced the explosion of
ascetic practices and writings in the fourth century ce.
The Symposium is also, nally, a rich and idiosyncratic example of Chris-
tian responses to the literature and intellectual culture of the classical world,
and it is this relationship that I want to concentrate on above all in what fol-
lows. Like Methodius other surviving works, the Symposium is saturated
with Platonic reminiscences. They give an added depth to Methodius
engagement with Christian scripture, overlaying it with Platonising con-
notations. To take just one relatively trivial example, the phrase raging
or stinging lusts (cio:pcoti, . . . ttiuuic,) in the passage quoted above
not only looks back ultimately to Greek mythology to the story of Io
transformed to a cow by the jealous goddess Hera and tormented by the
stings of a gady (co:pc,) but also has a Greek, philosophical pedigree,
used for example by Plato in Timaeus ,:b in the course of a description of
the physiology of sexual desire.
:;
In imitating that usage here Methodius
characteristically opens up questions, for the philosophically alert reader,
about what kind of inheritance of the philosophical heritage his own views
represent. Encasing his vision of theology and Christian lifestyle within a
Platonising form allows Methodius to advertise his own status, in oppo-
sition to pagan Neoplatonism, as the true inheritor of Platonic thought.
At the same time, however, his treatment has a defamiliarising effect on
the Platonic models it appropriates, enlisting them in the service of a
model of chastity quite alien to anything Plato imagined. The same goes
for Methodius use of the dialogue form. Methodius clearly shares many
of the views of his Greco-Roman predecessors about the attractions of
sympotic dialogue; he also sees that many elements of it especially its
tendency to defer authority, to encourage dispute and speculative argu-
mentation need to be handled carefully, adjusted and even suppressed in
their new Christian context. In the eagerness to track Methodius doctri-
nal or philosophical relationship with predecessors like Origen and Plato,
that aspect of Methodius work has received less attention than one might
expect.
:
Methodius text is a revealing moment within the wider history
of Christianitys reforging of classical models of authority and dispute.
:,
:;
The phrase is also used for dangerous passions, without explicit sexual application, in Plato, Laws
;,a and Epicurus fragment c.
:
For other discussions of Methodius use of Platonic dialogue form (many of them quite brief ), see
Martin (:,,:) :o,; Hoffmann (:,oo) :::,c; Voss (:,;c) ,::,, esp. :c::, on the Symposium;
Relihan (:,,:) :,o; Goldhill (:,,,) :,; Patterson (:,,;) :::,; Zorzi (:cc:b) and (:cc,) including
juxtaposition and comparative analysis of a large number of passages; Bril (:cco); Lim (:cc) :,,.
:,
The key work on that topic is Lim (:,,,), discussed further in ch. ;, below.
:,o Saints and Symposiasts
setting
The setting of Methodius banquet has many Greco-Roman precedents.
Garden paradises are common in classical literature. In his depiction of
the garden of Arete, Methodius draws on traditions of ekphrasis, which
was a standard feature of rhetorical education, involving intricate visual
description designed to bring the subject to life before the eyes of the
reader and to stimulate emotional engagement.
:c
To be more specic,
the garden of Arete is a typical locus amoenus (literally pleasant space), a
common motif of landscape description which looks back ultimately to the
garden of Alcinous in Odyssey ;.:::,:. There are also Platonic overtones.
One of Methodius aims is to overlay his version of Platos Symposium
with reminiscences of the Phaedrus, where Socrates and Phaedrus converse
in a shaded grove outside the city of Athens, described at Phaedrus :,cb.
A reader who is sensitive to echoes of the landscape of the Phaedrus in
the opening sections of scene-setting will not then be surprised to nd
echoes of the philosophical content of that dialogue in the speeches which
follow.
::
There are also echoes of the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus ,;:d, which
describes an idealised landscape in the realms of the blessed.
::
However, the fantasy space Methodius has created is above all a Chris-
tian space. Here we need to pause for a moment and consider one of
the other distinctive features of Methodius theology. His work stands out
among other things for his millenarian sympathies; in other words for his
belief in a time of reward, before the nal coming of Christ which will
bring all saved souls to perfection (although it is important to stress that
Methodius millenarianism was quite idiosyncratic in being heavily spiri-
tualised and allegorised, in contrast with the more literal-minded versions
which had been common in the early church).
:,
Christian and indeed
Jewish scripture had repeatedly used the imagery of banqueting to describe
the rewards awaiting those who achieve salvation.
:
Methodius shows us
a version of that end-time feasting in action. Those connotations become
clear especially in Speech ,, where the virgin Tusiane offers a millenarian
interpretation of the Feast of the Tabernacles in Leviticus :,.,,,.
:,
That
said, the precise temporal location of the banquet of the virgins is not
clearly identied: it is set at some mysterious point in the future, beyond
the present cycle of living and dying. It does not portray its participants as
:c
See Webb (:cc,).
::
See Musurillo (:,,) :;,.
::
See Musurillo (:,,) :;, and :o, n. ,.
:,
See Bonaiuti (:,::); Musurillo (:,o,) ::,; Mazzucco (:,o); Patterson (:,,,); Prinzivalli (:,,b).
:
See esp. Isaiah :,.o:c for an eschatological mountain-top banquet, with MacDonald (:cc) :oc.
:,
See Patterson (:,,;) :co:,.
Methodius :,;
having reached a nal perfection, though they may be on the verge of doing
so.
:o
The setting may even be meant to recall real-life Christian liturgy: for
example the detail of meeting in the early morning in an east-facing garden
has echoes of what we know about eucharistic practices in this period.
:;
Moreover, the allegorical character of this landscape is impossible to
miss:
When we got near to the place . . . a tall and beautiful woman came to greet us,
walking calmly and gracefully . . . Coming forward she embraced and kissed each
one of us with great joy, like a mother seeing her children after a long absence,
saying, My daughters, I have greatly desired to lead you in to the meadow of
immortality. Now you have arrived, with great difculty along that road, no doubt
terried by many monsters. I watched you from a distance as you turned from
the path again and again, and I was afraid that you would turn back and slip
from the cliffs . . . The place was exceedingly beautiful, and full of a great sense
of peace . . . There were many different fruit trees there full of fresh fruit; the fruits
hung down cheerfully, contributing between them to a single beauty; the eter-
nally blooming meadows were garlanded with varied and sweet-smelling owers,
and from them came forth gently a perfume-carrying breeze. For nearby grew
a tall agnus castus tree, under which we rested, for it was very broad and thickly
shaded. (pr. ,)
The mixture of classical and Christian landscape is obvious in this passage:
for example the landscape of Platos Phaedrus (which similarly has an agnus
castus tree) is mixed with echoes of the Garden of Eden from Genesis.
:
Some of the details of this landscape also anticipate themes which become
important in the debate which is to follow: for example the detail of the
many different fruits all contributing to a single beauty parallels Methodius
later interest in the way in which the different voices of the virgins are
all manifestations of a single voice of divine inspiration.
:,
However, the
omnipresence of allegory is surely the most striking thing of all in this
extract: the meadow of immortality and the rough path to salvation are
standard features of Christian imagery; the signicance of the agnus castus,
a tree whose vapours were thought to calm sexual passion and which stands
here as symbol of chastity, is blatantly clear.
Food and drink, too, are present in the text primarily as allegorical
images. There is only very brief mention of the food eaten at dinner:
when we had enjoyed feasting of every kind (oci:c, tcv:coct,) and
:o
Patterson (:,,;) ;:.
:;
Patterson (:,,;) o; Lim (:cc) :,,.
:
On the Garden of Eden and the Phaedrus, see Zorzi (:cc:b); and for these and other Christian and
classical allusions, see Musurillo (:,,) :,; and (:,o,) o,:.
:,
See below, pp. :o;.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
varied festivity (toqpcovn, tcisin,), so that we were not lacking in
any pleasant thing (unotvc, . . . :cv :tptvcv ttiott,) (pr. ); enough of
food and feasting; for we have had everything fully and in abundance
(tnpn sci cqcvc) (pr. ,). There is no explicit reference to wine;
indeed drunkenness is denounced at ,.,o, ::c. The high value given
to moderation in these passages is, of course, authentically Platonic or
Plutarchan. But what sets this text apart is the way in which the text
repeatedly uses food as allegory in a much more sustained way than the
kinds of passing metaphorical use of food language we nd in Plutarch
and Athenaeus. The Feast of the Tabernacles already mentioned is only the
most extended and important example.
,c
That technique sancties and
makes acceptable the Greco-Roman sympotic obsession with talking about
food.
Classical and Christian aspects of the setting thus have a mutually enrich-
ing and defamiliarising effect. Ultimately, however, the Christian aspects
of the setting are dominant. This is an odd space in particular for sym-
potic dialogue. There are, to be sure, some classical examples of sympotic
conversation in garden spaces. For example, in Plutarch Sympotic Questions
:.o the dinner seems to be taking place outside in the hosts garden, and
the topic of conversation why some kinds of tree are not grafted arises
from a tour of the garden. And the banquets on the Isles of the Blessed
in Lucians True Stories :.::o are held in a magical locus amoenus space:
a passage which is clearly meant to parody mythical and philosophical
images of post-mortem banqueting.
,:
The pseudo-Platonic Axiochus ,;:d
already mentioned describes an afterlife full of melodious symposia and
self-furnished banquets (i.e. presumably magical banquets without servers,
of the kind Lucian describes). But despite those examples, Methodius set-
ting is highly unusual for full-blown sympotic dialogue. Plutarchs Sympotic
Questions are generally set in precise, identiable places, often linked with
festivals or other civic occasions. Before that, for Xenophon and Plato,
feasting and sympotic philosophising went hand-in-hand with the celebra-
tion of agonistic success in the contests of the city. Methodius, by contrast,
wipes away any trace of the civic, urban world and opts instead for a space
,c
This is apparent right from the opening speech of Marcella, who describes chastity as a drink
produced in heaven (:.:, ::), and talks about the need to salt the soul with chastity, just as meat
is salted for preservation. The discussion of intoxication at ,.,o just mentioned is another good
example: the speaker Thallousa not only recommends literal teetotalism but also allegorises wine,
for example by drawing a contrast between the vines of evil and madness and the vines of justice
and immortality, with reference to New Testament imagery of Jesus as the true vine.
,:
See Georgiadou and Larmour (:,,) :,,; and further discussion above, pp. o;.
Methodius :,,
far removed from ordinary human experience and from real-life geographi-
cal reference-points. It is clear straight away, as we read, that we are entering
a different world with Theopatra and her companions.
I want to stress nally, however, that none of this should be taken
to mean that Methodius is offering us an entirely lifeless picture. This
is more than just a dry, schematic allegory.
,:
The virgins do eat. Their
physical appetites are satised. Not only that, but they feel pleasure: so
that we were not lacking in any pleasant thing (unotvc, . . . :cv :tptvcv
ttiott,) (pr. ). Those brief details are surely signicant given Methodius
opposition in this work to the more extreme versions of ascetic self-denial.
Moreover, the allegorical character of the setting is not incompatible with
the possibility that we might be emotionally engaged by the atmosphere
of welcome and calm which greet Theopatra and her companions on their
arrival in the garden. Methodius is offering us an image through which
we can conceptualise the pleasures which await us in the afterlife if we
submit to a life of chastity. We may even experience those pleasures in
anticipation as we imagine our own arrival in the fantasy space of Aretes
garden, if we submit to the temptations of identication and absorption
which the passages status as a piece of ekphrasis invites. That sensitivity
to the experience of pleasure and satisfaction, in their more moderate
forms, seems entirely appropriate for a text which resists the conclusion
that embodied identity and sinfulness go inevitably together. Methodius
is not willing to banish the real world of human bodily needs and human
emotions entirely.
community
Of course Methodius offers us not just a fantasy of idealised space, but also
a fantasy of community. Like Plato and Plutarch and others, he allows us to
project ourselves in our imagination into the company of the symposiasts,
to join in with their conversation. It is, however, a very peculiar version of
sympotic community. Most obviously, this is a gathering of women. In the
classical symposium, women were traditionally present only as courtesans.
In Platos Symposium and indeed in Xenophon and Plutarch and Athenaeus
women are entirely absent, though often talked about: sympotic philoso-
phy is presented overwhelmingly as an activity for men. Some scholars have
suggested that Methodius was writing for a small community of female
ascetics in Asia Minor. Whether that is right or not, the text offers us a
,:
In that respect I disagree with Bril (:cco) ,cc.
:oc Saints and Symposiasts
fascinating reection of the new roles which had opened up for women
in the Christian church. The intrusion of these virgins into a traditionally
masculine space is explicable partly by Methodius interest in promoting
the idea that women are to be praised especially for their command over
masculine virtues, embodied in particular in the gure of Thekla.
,,
There
is a sense, too, that we are being offered imaginary access to great gures
from the past history of the church. Here again Thekla is important, as the
companion of St Paul and famous Christian martyr, whose cult was, at the
time Methodius was writing, just beginning to attain the enormous pop-
ularity it held from the fourth century ce onwards.
,
Methodius conjures
up her voice before our ears, representing her leading the singing of the
nal hymn in praise of the great virgins of the past, and implicitly inviting
his readers to join with her in the hymns repeated chorus, as the other
virgins do.
More remarkable, however, and less immediately obvious, is the fact that
this is a community of the chaste, united by shared devotion to the difcult
path of virginity. When Arete welcomes them to the garden, she stresses the
homogeneity of the group who will dine together: Come then and recline
here next to these women who are so similar to you (cuc:pctcu, ouv)
(pr. ;). That word similar (cuc:pctcu,) implies a likeness of lifestyle and
habits. It suggests a very different kind of community from the professional
diversity we see in the guest lists of Plutarch and Athenaeus. The qualica-
tions for this community of the chaste are then addressed more explicitly
in the opening speech, by Marcella, who makes it clear that this is above
all a community of virtue, united by the strenuous exercise of self-control,
which is represented as an almost heroic achievement. It is an exclusive
community: we hear that many who set out on the road to chastity fall
short (:.:, ::); that those women who are not willing to submit to religious
instruction (literally who think that listening is useless) or who think that
it is acceptable to listen just a little, should be excluded (:.:, :, a veiled
warning for the reader: those who do not read closely will fall short); and
that the number of virgins has been restricted by God to :,ccc, whereas
the number of other saints cannot be counted (:.,, :;). It is also a relatively
new community: Marcella explains in the rst speech that chastity is a
relatively late development in human history, not possible in the early days
when the needs of population growth were paramount (:.:, :o:). The
scene of harmonious hymn-singing at the end of the dialogue picks up
,,
See Aspegren (:,,c) :o, with critique by Patterson (:,,;) :::, n. ,.
,
See Johnson (:cco) :o for an overview, mentioning Methodius (,) as an early source for devotion
to Thekla.
Methodius :o:
and literalises Marcellas image of the choir of virgins singing under the
direction of the Lord (:.,, :o).
And yet, for all this sense of a tight-knit, exclusive company of virginal
symposiasts, it is clear that the togetherness of the sympotic gathering is
only a preparation for the perfect unity each soul must seek with Christ.
This banquet is only a taster for the higher, metaphorical wedding banquet
where each of these chaste women will be married to Christ, to whom
they are betrothed. The work draws attention to that anticipated union
repeatedly through its allusions to the Song of Songs
,,
and the parable of
the wise and foolish virgins of Matthew :,.
,o
Both are prominent reference-
points for Theklas nal hymn, which makes that aspiration to a higher
relationship clear: Longing for Your grace I have forgotten my native land,
O Word, I have forgotten the choruses (ycpc,) of the maidens of my
own age (cuniscv), and the pride I used to take in my mother and my
family; for You Yourself are everything to me, O Christ (Hymn ,, :o);
and then the chorus: I keep myself chaste for You, and I go forth to
meet You, carrying light-bearing torches, my bridegroom.
,;
For Plato and
Plutarch and their classical counterparts, the sympotic community often
seems like an end in itself, a space for the celebration of human sociability.
Admittedly they sometimes show an interest in the progress of the soul to
higher things, especially in Socrates own speech in Platos Symposium. But
there is nothing to match this intense longing for a more elevated version
of feasting with the divine, which overrides the mortal feasting community
of the present. In that sense Methodius vision of sympotic community is
a highly unusual and defamiliarising one.
Once again, however, we need to recognise in conclusion that the real
world is not wiped away from view entirely: if anything it is striking
how human the virginal symposiasts are. They are also, when we look
closely, very different from each other, despite Aretes initial claim about
their homogeneity: each of them is characterised briey and separately at
the beginning of her own speech, in much the same way as the speakers
of Plutarchs Sympotic Questions. As M. Benedetta Zorzi has shown,
,
they
joke, they argue, they experience emotion determination, shyness, shame,
relief and anxiety the last of those not least in the memorable image of
the hostess Arete gazing down from her vertiginous vantage-point at her
guests coming uphill. The virgins are also curious, and their curiosity
is phrased repeatedly with the language of desire. In the very nal lines
,,
See esp. Speech ;, with Patterson (:,,;) ,:,.
,o
See esp. Speech o, with Patterson (:,,;) ,::.
,;
See Musurillo (:,,) :,o,; Patterson (:,,;) :::c and :c.
,
See Zorzi (:cc:a).
:o: Saints and Symposiasts
of the work, for example, Gregorion speaks as follows: You speak the
truth, and I will desire (ttiuunoc) in the future to converse with you
in still more detail on this subject (Epilogue ,c:). The appropriateness of
Gregorions nal expression of passion for knowledge, at the end of the
exchange with Euboulion, who has tried to persuade her that it is better
to desire and keep ones desires under control than not to desire at all,
is clear.
,,
Their emotional responses are also often experienced in bodily
fashion. At the beginning of Speech :c, for example, after Arete has invited
Domnina to come forward to speak, the young virgin is almost overcome,
before nding strength in divine inspiration: Domnina blushed deeply
and became short of breath, and then standing up and turning to pray,
she called on Wisdom to stand by her as a helper (:c.:, :,;). Once again
the signicance for Methodius anti-encratist views should be obvious:
the body cannot be sidelined completely. These are not disembodied,
ethereal, allegorical gures: this is a real community made up of real bodies,
consistent with traditions of the symposium as a place for corporeal and
emotional, as well as intellectual, experience. We shall see more examples
of the intrusion of passion competitive passion into their debate in a
moment.
content
Methodius thus adapts Platonic conventions of sympotic setting and sym-
potic community. How does he adapt the traditional content of sympotic
dialogue?
c
For one thing he engages very closely with the Socratic view of
Eros, reinterpreting it so that it serves as a framework for his view of the
progress of the soul through chastity. Much of the best recent scholarship
on the text has been preoccupied with that relationship.
:
,,
See Zorzi (:cc:a).
c
Bril (:cco) addresses similar questions, but with different answers from my own. He argues that
Methodius has little understanding of the genre he is working with, so much so that his Symposium
should not qualify as a genuine sympotic work, and that his absolute failure in artistic and literary
terms is painfully obvious by comparison with Plato (:,,). He may well be right that Methodius has
little knowledge of the symposium as an institution, but to my mind, he greatly underestimates the
intelligence and complexity of Methodius appropriation of the sympotic form, and the adaptability
and exibility of the Platonic symposium tradition. That is not to say that I want to make claims here
for Methodius Symposium as a literary masterpiece; my point is rather that Brils interest in judging
the relative quality of Plato and Methodius leads him to neglect the challenge of understanding on
Methodius own terms what the text aims to achieve. Voss (:,;c) ,::, offers a similarly negative
view of Methodius as a poor imitator of Plato.
:
See Tibiletti (:,;); Zorzi (:cc:b) and (:cc,); see also Relihan (:,,:) :,o; Patterson (:,,;)
o; on Origens comparison of the Song of Songs with Platos Symposium as an important prece-
dent for Methodius; Zorzi (:cco) ,c: on Alexandrian precedents for Methodius adaptation of
Methodius :o,
In addition, however, Methodius is clearly engaging with the miscel-
lanistic traditions of symposium writing represented by Plutarch and
Athenaeus.
:
Methodius Symposium combines erudite discussion on a
huge variety of different subjects. One might even see it as a compendium
of Christian views on desire, approached from many different angles, and
with quotation from a wide range of authorities. It also includes regular
passages of exegesis where speakers offer allegorical interpretations of par-
ticular passages of scripture in ways which invite the admiration of their
fellow symposiasts, prompting them to see familiar stories in new ways.
,
To take just one example, Theopatras allegorical explanation of Psalm
:,o has an ingenuity which seems entirely appropriate to the inventive
traditions of the symposium:
Come, let us take this psalm in our hands and explain it, the one which the pure
and unblemished souls sing to God: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
and wept in remembering Sion; on the willows in the middle of the river, there
we hung up our instruments. In this lamentation, what they call instruments are
clearly the bodies they inhabit, which they have hung from the cables of chastity,
fastening them to the wood so that they cannot be snatched away again and swept
away in the stream of incontinence. For Babylon, which means disturbance or
confusion, signies this life which is beset by waves, in the middle of which we sit
and are washed for as long as we are on the earth . . . And as for the willow tree,
the sacred scriptures everywhere take it as a symbol of chastity, because the ower
of the willow tree steeped in water, when drunk, extinguishes all those impulses
which arouse our lusts and passions, even to the point that it completely deprives
us of them and makes every effort at child-bearing sterile; as even Homer tells us,
for this reason calling willows fruit-destroying. (.,, ,,)
An obsession with allegory was one of the things which set Christian
argumentation apart from Greco-Roman philosophy, which demanded
rational proof; critics often mocked Christians for their irrational depen-
dence on allegorical analysis of sacred scripture.

In the playful space of

the symposium, however, where the requirements for strict logical demon-
stration tend to be relaxed, allegorical styles of explanation seem more at
home.
Platonic Eros; Tibiletti (:,,) for comparison of Neoplatonic views on asceticism with those of
Methodius.
:
On the miscellanistic character of the text, see Musurillo (:,,) :: and :o:; and (:,o,) :,; Patterson
(:,,;) o,o; Pellegrino (:,o,) argues that Musurillo overstates this element.
,
Cf. n. :: above for bibliography on Methodius engagement with the allegorising interpretations of
Origen.

See Lim (:,,,) :,, citing Origen, Contra Celsum ., and .,:.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
The text is also packed with christological, eschatological, numerolog-
ical and anthropological analysis, and even contains sections of scientic
discussion, for example in Theklas lengthy denunciation of astrology,
,
or
in passages which draw on contemporary medical thinking to deal with
the bodily workings of human desire and human procreation (or even
in the detail of the willow just quoted, which implies a fascination with
an intriguing natural phenomenon why does water infused with willow
ower quench desire? even if in this case no attempt is made to explain the
phenomenon). In :.:, for example, Theophila draws on medical language
in order to describe the physiology of sex:
o
The harmony of bodies is disturbed by the stimulations of intercourse as those
who have gone through the rite of marriage inform us and the whole marrow-like
and most generative part of the blood, which is liquid bone, gathered together from
all the parts of the body, foaming and curdled, rushes out through the generative
organs into the living soil of the woman. (:.:, ,:)
One might wonder at rst sight whether this is really a suitable topic for
a gathering of virgins to talk about. Theophilas aside, disclaiming direct
knowledge, is hard to read: it is clearly intended to suppress any hint of
impropriety in this topic, although in a sense it also draws attention to that
impropriety, and in a different context one might even see playful, comic
overtones. But the important point is surely that the sympotic setting makes
it acceptable. Plutarch in Sympotic Questions ,.o records a discussion where
a number of young men launch an attack on Epicurus on the grounds that
he had included in his Symposium a discussion, which was neither good
nor necessary, about the right time for sex, saying that for an older man
to make reference to sex at dinner with young boys present and to raise
the question of whether it is better to have sex before dinner or after, was
the height of indecency (,.o.:, o,,bc). The other guests reassure them,
however, explaining that Epicurus aim was to urge the young men to
moderation, and then proceeding to examine precisely the same question
themselves in considerable physiological detail.
;
Once again, we can see
here how the symposium is an ideal format for an author like Methodius
who, for all the intensity of his devotion to chastity, nevertheless has a
,
On Methodius engagement with astrology, see Macas and Gonz alez (:cc,).
o
On Methodius innovative engagement with Aristotelian ideas about conception in this passage, and
in particular his resistance to the idea that the female body acts simply as a vessel within generation,
see Prinzivalli (:,,:) ;,.
;
Cf. Teodorsson (:,,,o) vol. i, ,, for evidence from Athenaeus for Stoic approval of the practice
of discussing sex in the symposium.
Methodius :o,
slightly less uncompromising view of the sinfulness of the human body
than some of his Christian contemporaries.
Sympotic dialogue with its traditional love of variety, poikilia is thus
in many ways an entirely appropriate frame for the rich mixture of material
Methodius sets out to present. However, as soon as we look more closely
at the form in which that material is presented the conversational and
citational strategies Methodius and his characters use in order to present
their material it becomes clear, once again, that things are more com-
plicated. Methodius opportunistic use of the sympotic tradition distorts
and defamiliarises, suppressing some features and adding others in order to
articulate a distinctively Christian model of how to think and how to talk.
That topic Methodius rather anxious, ambivalent engagement with the
techniques of sympotic conversation and debate is the main focus for the
rest of this chapter.
quotation: many voices and one voice
Methodius strategies of quotation have a certain amount in common with
Clement. He offers a rich mixture of classical and Christian quotations. His
commonest classical source is Plato: the dialogue is saturated with phrases
adapted from the Platonic dialogues, especially so in the preface, as we
have already seen, and in the opening paragraphs of many of the speeches.
Homer is also regularly quoted. His Christian sources are chosen widely
from the Old and New Testaments. Paul and the Old Testament prophets
feature with particular frequency along with the gospels. It is important
to stress, however, that the mixture between classical and Christian is not
at all an even one: ultimately, and not surprisingly, the Christian sources
are given far more weight. The classical reminiscences tend to drop away
when the speakers get into the theological detail of their contributions.
As in the case of Clement, the authors who are named are nearly always
Christian authors: Platonic and Homeric language tends, though with a
few exceptions like the Homeric quotation on willows mentioned above,
to be used without explicit identication, to provide colour.
Those patterns are explicable partly by the new importance of scriptural
authority in early Christian culture.

For Greco-Roman philosophers,

quoting from earlier authorities was important, but there was usually an
expectation that their arguments should be open to dispute. For Christian

See Lim (:,,,), esp. :o; and see also Patterson (:,,;) ::, on the importance for Methodius of
Origens view on the role of scriptural study in spiritual progress.
:oo Saints and Symposiasts
argument, quotation from scripture seems often to have been viewed as
sufcient in its own right. Methodius or at least his speakers accordingly
often seem anxious to secure scriptural authority for their views. They
regularly use the phrase in the scriptures or the scriptures tell us. Christian
catechesis, the process of instruction given to new converts, could involve,
among other things, memorisation and recitation of key doctrines and
the scriptural authority behind them. In Methodius work, the sympotic
problem-solving of the Plutarchan symposium is overlaid and combined
with this very different kind of catechetical question-and-answer practice.
,
The result, for all its supercial similarities, is a very different conception
of what counts as a good answer to a sympotic question. It is striking, too,
that non-scriptural Christian authorities are rarely mentioned. As we have
already seen, engagement with earlier theological writers is an important
feature of much early Christian writing and it seems all the more odd,
then, that this process is not made explicit: it is as if conict with ones
predecessors must remain implicit, submerged beneath a surface impression
of unanimity. It is the voices of scripture which take centre-stage.
In :.,, for example, Marcella backs up her view of the increasing impor-
tance of chastity in human society as follows: But in case anyone should
dare to criticise my discussion (:cv c,cv) for not being based on the
testimony of the scriptures (up:upcv :cv ,pcqcv), come, let us bring
forward also the words of the prophets and so show all the more clearly the
truth of what I have said (:.,, :,). From there she launches into an alle-
gorical account of the story of Abrahams circumcision: Abrahams cutting
off of his foreskin, she suggests, signies the need to abstain from incest,
cutting oneself off from intercourse with esh made of the same blood just
as one literally cuts oneself off from a part of ones own esh. A little later
she deals with the problem of why her views are not fully anticipated in
the Old Testament: The rst question to be addressed is this: of the many
prophets and just men who taught and did so many good things, why is it
that none of them either praised virginity or chose it. The answer is that it
was reserved for the Lord (i.e. Christ) alone to be the rst to communicate
this lesson to us (:., ::,).
The second speech, by Theophila, similarly gives a prominent role to
scriptural knowledge: For I think I see clearly from the scriptures that
the Word did not completely abolish child-bearing with the arrival of
virginity . . . Let us begin with Genesis, so that we give scripture the rst
place (:.:, :,). Later in her speech she uses non-scriptural argument, but
,
Musurillo (:,o,) :, points in passing to the catechetical character of the work.
Methodius :o;
it is right, she suggests, to set out the scriptural backing for her claims rst,
as her highest priority. Several speakers use the imagery of listening to the
voices of the prophets
,c
or calling on them as witnesses.
,:
Neither of these
images is unusual in Greco-Roman citational practice, as we saw in chapter
, for Plutarchs Sympotic Questions, but here they are overlaid with an
impression of reverence, and an urgent concern for precise interpretation,
which never involves challenging the source text, only letting it speak. In
,.:, at the end of her speech, and after a long exposition of the views
of Paul on chastity and the validity of marriage, Thaleia challenges her
reader as follows: Let anyone who wishes take in her hands the Epistle to
the Corinthians and give attention (cuinoc,) one by one to the things
which are written there, and then let her examine the things I have said,
comparing the two, and see if they do not have a complete harmony and
correspondence with each other (,.:, ,:). Exact adherence is valued highly
here, so much so that Thaleia resorts to an appeal to the written text, in a
way which is alien to the oral traditions of sympotic recall, and surprisingly
hard to parallel within Plutarch and Athenaeus
,:
(although even in Thaleias
speech the attraction of oral language for describing sympotic recall of
texts is not lost from view entirely: the word cuinoc, can mean not
only giving attention to but also conversing with or spending time
with).
,,
Important also for Methodius, as for Clement, is the sense that all
the many different speakers and source texts of sympotic dialogue spring
ultimately from the single source of divine inspiration. He engages with the
polyvocal nature of the sympotic tradition which is so often interested in
images of variety (poikilia), applied not only to food and drink and subject
matter, but also to the notionof a variety of speakers and sources while also
adapting it to stress its compatibility with Christian doctrinal conviction.
Methodius makes it clear, for example, that the various speeches, with
their different approaches, all contain elements of the same truth,
,
all of
them made possible by the same divine inspiration. In .:, for example,
Theopatra explains the varied nature of Gods inspiration:
My dear virgins, if rhetorical skill always followed the same path and always
travelled the same road, there would not be any means to avoid irritating you
with arguments which have already been used. But if it is the case that there are
tens of thousands of impulses and paths for speech for God gives us inspiration
,c
E.g. :.,, :c.
,:
E.g. ,.,, o:.
,:
However, see Gellius, NA :.: for a parallel.
,,
Cf. above, ch. ,, for a similar image in Plutarch, QC.
,
See Bracht (:,,,) :: for a contrast in this respect with Platos Symposium.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
in many ways and of many kinds what an absurdity it would be to cover ones
face and be afraid. (.:, ,,)
,,
That quotation, taken from Hebrews :.:, is appropriate for Methodius
theme of unity through diversity, describing as it does the way in which
Gods early, fragmented communication with the prophets has now been
claried through the words of his Son. Plutarchs sympotic miscellany
is unied, as we have seen, by the empowering skills of philosophical
argumentation. Methodius work similarly brings unity from diversity,
but it does so within a pointedly Christian framework, not only in the
sense that the whole miscellaneous treatise is united by the overarching
theological perspective and message of the work, but also in the sense
that the utterances of the virgins are made under the unifying direction
of divine Logos, in much the same way as Clements instructions in the
Educator. For these Christian authors, the chaotic, many-voiced character
of sympotic discourse is channelled and constrained by divine inspiration.
The nal image of the choir of virgins singing together is an emblem of
that ultimate single-voicedeness.
,o
Communal hymn-singing has plenty of
parallels within the Greco-Roman symposium tradition,
,;
but it tends to
precede drinking and conversation rather than following them, so in that
sense at least Methodius hymn is a slightly intrusive presence within the
works Platonic frame.
,
competition and consensus
That notion of submission to authority, and of multiplicity resolving itself
nally into consensus, governs not just the citational strategies of the text,
but also the symposiasts interactions with each other. The text is satu-
rated with anxiety about excessive ingenuity, of the kind which leads to
an endless proliferation of solutions, and excessively competitive or rival-
rous speech. That is not to say that these aspects of sympotic tradition are
straightforwardly suppressed or banished from the dialogue. What I want
to stress instead is the way in which Methodius self-consciously parades his
,,
See ;.:, : for another example, drawing on Ephesians ,.:c (which mentions the varied wisdom of
God but also suggests that the time is now right for clearer revelation, in this case through Pauls
own prophetic voice).
,o
For a similar image the choir of apostles singing in harmony see the opening speech of Methodius
partially surviving work Concerning Free Will.
,;
E.g. Plato, Symposium :;oa; Xenophon, Symposium :.:; Plutarch, QC ,.:, ;,c.
,
Cf. Taussig (:cc,) :c:: on the way in which hymn singing at Christian meals allowed the diners
to imagine a space set apart from the culture around them.
Methodius :o,
ambivalence about those phenomena, showing ingenuity and competitive-
ness in action and dramatising their advantages and disadvantages. That
dramatisation evolves as the dialogue goes on: the opening scenes are full of
traditional Greco-Roman language of competition and disagreement, and
structured around a vehement debate between the rst two speakers, but
increasingly as the text proceeds it becomes imbued with an atmosphere of
consensus, and those same agonistic images come to be deployed for very
different purposes, in order to describe the individuals struggle for virtue.
The language of debate and dialogue is conspicuous from the start.
In the opening paragraph of the work, for example, Euboulion describes
what she has heard of the banquet: they tell me that the women competed
(n,cvioci) so magnicently (ut,cctpttc,) and vigorously (ioypc,)
that they missed out nothing of what needed to be said on the topic
(c, unotvc, tvci :cv ti, :c tpcstiutvcv vc,scicv tvott,) (pr. :).
Here the agonistic nature of the conversation is immediately given promi-
nence in a way which seems perfectly tting for the sympotic context,
given the traditions of agonistic speech we have seen in the Platonic and
Plutarchan symposia, among others.
,,
At the end of the framing conver-
sation the agonistic language then recurs, as we hear Gregorion compli-
menting Euboulion: You are always brilliant in discussions (otivn tv :c,
cuiici,) and exceedingly (oqcopc) fond of enquiry, refuting (tytt,-
ycuoc) everyone completely (pr. ). Next comes Euboulions reply: do
not be contentious (qicvtistv) about that subject now (pr. ).
oc
Those
phrases between them suggest that the two interlocutors share the ten
virgins appetite for debate.
On closer inspection, however, we might feel that some of the details
even in this relatively competitive beginning are curiously out of step with
sympotic norms, although as yet that disjunction is only hinted at. For one
thing, Euboulions preference for avoiding rivalry (qicvtistv) anticipates
the move towards increasing consensus in the later sections of the work.
Meanwhile, adverbs like ioypc, (strongly or vigorously) perhaps hint
at a sense of determination and strain which is at odds with conventions of
sympotic playfulness. Moreover, the claimthat their conversation left noth-
ing out (unotvc, tvci :cv ti, :c tpcstiutvcv vc,scicv tvott,), that
it was somehow complete, is a peculiarly unsympotic one. The idea that
sympotic discussion of a topic might ever be complete, as if there is a clearly
,,
This passage in fact closely echoes Plato, Symposium :,a and :,,d, as Musurillo (:,o,) ,, n. ,
points out.
oc
That expression adapts almost identical phrasing at the end of the framing conversation in Plato,
Symposium :;,e.
:;c Saints and Symposiasts
dened series of issues which need to be covered, is a preliminary sign of
the importance for Methodius of a coherent moral and theological view-
point lying beneath the divergent viewpoints of his speakers. Admittedly
Methodius follows Plato in making Euboulion and Gregorion insist that
the conversation which follows is a full account. For example, Euboulions
request that Gregorion should tell me everything in order (sccc,
nuv ctcv:c oittv) (pr. :) echoes Plato, Phaedo e. The phrase from
the beginning (t py,) is repeated three times in pr. ,; Plato uses it
once at the end of the introductory conversation at Symposium :;,e. How-
ever, Methodius use of the framing conversation has quite an unPlatonic
feel in some respects. Most strikingly, he goes much further than Plato in
resisting the impression that the second-hand report of the conversation
may be unreliable, for example by returning, unlike Platos Symposium, to
the frame conversation between Gregorion and Euboulion at the end of
the dialogue and allowing them to summarise what they have heard.
o:
Methodius thus seems more interested than Plato in banishing an air of
indeterminacy from his dialogue. In what follows, however, the language of
playful ingenuity and speculation is not completely absent. Some speakers
in Platonic or Plutarchan fashion use the language of improvisation,
o:
or
contribution
o,
to describe their own speeches. And Theopatra at the end
of her speech (.o, :c) claims in traditionally sympotic style that her
speech has been a mixture of entertainment (tcioic,)
o
and seriousness
(otcuo,). Admittedly, there is not much sign of laughter in the text:
Clement would presumably have approved. Admittedly, too, Domnina,
in :c.:, :oc, expresses her eagerness to avoid the impression of being
sophistical and arguing from what is likely and babbling, and Gregorion
accuses Euboulion, in outraged tones, of joking and teasing before their
o:
Gregorion and Euboulion also explain in that nal conversation that Methodius has himself ques-
tioned Arete on the conversation, as if to stress the reliability of the text (ep. :,,). See Bracht (:,,,)
:;, for comparison between the frames of Plato and Methodius, esp. :;, for the point that the
conversation in Methodius is very recent, in contrast with Plato, where it took place many years
before; also Goldhill (:,,,) ,; and Halperin (:,,:) and Hunter (:cc) :c, for discussion of the
framing of Platos Symposium.
o:
E.g. Thallousa in ,. (:,:): ts :c0 tcpcypuc; cf. discussion of similar phrases in Plutarch above,
p. o,.
o,
E.g. Theophila in :. (,c): ouucuci; Thallousa in ,. (:,:): ouucuci; Agathe in o.: (:,:):
tiotvt,scoci; cf. discussion on similar phrases in Plutarch on p. o,, above; and Martin (:,,:) :o
for other examples and parallels from Platos Symposium.
o
Some manuscripts give the alternative reading erudition (tciotic,): see Musurillo (:,o,) :c. If
that were Methodius original usage it would constitute (for a sympotically literate reader used to
the idea of seriocomic speech to spoudogeloion) a self-conscious and deliberately witty agging of
his departure from sympotic norms; it seems more likely, however, to be a later editorial addition,
picking up on the works ambivalent attitude to frivolous argumentation.
Methodius :;:
nal Socratic discussion in the epilogue (:,,), passages which at rst sight
suggest that Methodius is keen to police his work carefully, so that sympotic
frivolity is kept at arms length. However, these passages are not in fact
enough to separate Methodius work fromPlutarchs, since Plutarchs guests
too often stress the importance of avoiding excessive ingenuity.
o,
To see how Methodius problematises sympotic conversation, we need to
look instead to his representation of the processes of debate, and especially
to the phenomenon of direct disagreement and contradiction between
speakers. The fascination with ideas of contest which we have glimpsed in
the prologue intensies in the opening two speeches of the discussion. Arete
invites Marcella to speak rst, in a sentence which very closely imitates the
language of Plato, Symposium :;;d, but she then rounds her invitation
off with an additional sentence not drawn from Plato comparing
the coming discussion to an athletic contest, offering to crown the one
who competes successfully (:nv scc, ,cviocutvnv, pr. ,:c) with the
crown of wisdom, an image which combines the sympotic garland with the
traditional crown of athletic victory. Once again, Methodius is going out of
his way to stress the agonistic nature of the conversation, which at rst sight
seems appropriately sympotic, more so even than Plato, who does not use
this additional image of the crowns. And there are indeed moments when
Marcellas language looks as though it would be at home in the context of
the Plutarchan symposium. In :., ::, for example, she uses the language
of speculation in attempting to unravel the question of why the prophets of
the Old Testament never spoke about virginity, implicitly acknowledging
that others might answer in different ways: As far as possible, we must try
to explain, or rst, we must test out the question of why.
On closer inspection, however, Methodius version of competitive dis-
pute risks violating the Plutarchan friend-making characteristics of the
symposium precisely through its vehemence. That danger becomes clear
when Marcella is contradicted by Theophila: it appears that Marcella has
been arguing that in this later stage of human history only those who are
chaste can call themselves true disciples of Christ; Theophila argues vehe-
mently against that view with a passionate defence of marriage which is
anti-encratist in tone.
oo
Her speech begins (:.:, :) in almost identical lan-
guage to the claim of Eryximachus in Plato, Symposium :oa, that he needs
o,
Cf. pp. o,, above.
oo
For summary, see Patterson (:,,;) ;:o and Zorzi (:cc,) esp. :,,o, who stresses the anti-encratist
connotations of Theophilas response. As Musurillo (:,o,) :,,, n. : points out, Marcella nowhere
states any explicit opposition to procreation in the part of her speech which survives; he suggests
that the text of her speech may have been altered by a later editor.
:;: Saints and Symposiasts
to bring the speech of his predecessor Pausanias, to completion (:tc,
ttitvci). However, Theophilas addition turns out to be focused more
on refutation than on supplementation. Not far into Theophilas speech,
Marcella interrupts and contradicts her in turn, and we hear the language
of the wrestling ring: Theophila feels dizzy, like one who is grasped around
the midriff by a formidable opponent (:., ,;), a phrase which imitates
Plato, Protagoras ,,,de. Here, once again, Methodius reminds us of the
bodiliness of his symposiasts. This is not just a detached, abstract discus-
sion: there is an air of violence and vehemence here so strong that it seems
to have corporeal effects.
o;
Far from downplaying conict in these opening
speeches, then, Methodius goes out of his way to draw attention to it. It is
hard to avoid the impression that it is difcult for Methodius to envisage
a productive, playful role for disagreement and competition. For Method-
ius, Christian doctrinal debate is always a serious and risky business. But
it is not for that reason completely suppressed; rather the problem of its
suitability is dramatised and made open to question.
o
This odd combination of consensus-seeking and vehemence continues
at the beginning of the speech following, where Thaleia praises Theophilas
speech extravagantly, describing her as superior to all in both word and
deed, and coming second to none in wisdom (ocqic, :c ot:tpc
qtptoci cootvc,) (,.:, ,:), claiming that it is almost impossible that
anyone would be able to criticise what she said. Just a moment later, how-
ever, she does exactly that, claiming that there is one thing which worries
(:cp::tiv) and distresses (viv) her, namely Theophilas interpretation
of Pauls discussion of the union of Adam and Eve, which then forms the
subject of Thaleias speech. Thaleia seems to be pulled in both directions:
reluctant to contradict Theophila, but also at the same time compelled to
do so, and that tension is manifested in the excessive lengths she goes to in
order to excuse her own critical response.
As we move into the second half of the work, the atmosphere of rivalry
drops away, and we are left more and more with obsessive avoidance of
conict. That tendency has of course been prominent throughout the work,
but the difference now is that it no longer shows signs of the paradoxical
admixture of combativeness which is present in the rst three speeches.
o;
Zorzi (:cc:a) sees this encounter as a good example of Methodius portrayal of the virgins as
passionate and human gures.
o
Musurillo (:,o,) : describes this disagreement between the rst two speakers as a faible tentative
de conit dialectique, and views the nal eight speeches as little more than a string of homiletic
instructions; to my mind he misses the complexity of Methodius exploration of the value of
competitiveness, as does Hoffmann (:,oo), esp. ::,c.
Methodius :;,
The later speakers tend to become more and more self-deprecating, more
and more keen to stress the fact that their own contributions can only
be footnotes to the points already made. For example in o.:, :,:, we
hear Agathes exceptionally tentative claim that she would deserve the
reproach of foolishness if I was so rash as to emulate my superiors in their
wisdom. Domnina in :c.:, :,; blushes and becomes short of breath, as we
have already seen, but eventually, like her fellow speakers, nds condence
in divine inspiration. The contrast with the adversarial attitude Plutarch
approves of in young dinner guests is striking.
o,
There is if anything an
increasing sense of the importance of divine inspiration as the work goes
on, which goes hand in hand with the decreasing interest in individual
rivalry between speakers, and which acts out Methodius interest in the
importance of free will, showing in practice how divine guidance can be
combined with individual idiosyncracies and emotions. The dangers of
anger, which hover in the background to the dispute between Marcella
and Theophila, increasingly drop away from view. The rivalry (zelos) and
anger (orge) which accompany wine drinking are denounced explicitly
at ,.,, ::,.
Some commentators have rebuked Methodius for his failure to attempt
anything close to the Platonic idea of dialectical progress, and for run-
ning out of steam and drifting into what they view as lazy sermonising
after his initial attempt in the conict between the rst two speakers.
;c
But it seems to me that Methodius is being more self-conscious in his
change of approach than those views acknowledge. One of the striking
developments, for example, is the way in which the language of compe-
tition tends to be redirected, rather than dropping away entirely.
;:
There
is an increasing sense that the true struggle is against oneself, rather than
against rivals in conversation, with virginity and the nearness to God it
provides, as the prize.
;:
Prokilla, for example, speaks in ;.,, :,o of the
Olympic contest of chastity. That theme culminates in another wrestling
image in the works nal lines (ep. ,cc), where Euboulion suggests that
the best wrestler is the one who is being constantly tested against difcult
opponents in competition, just as the most valuable type of virginity is
the one which is constantly being tested against temptation. I suggested
earlier that Plutarch in his Sympotic Questions appropriates the language of
agonistic competition and festival participation as an image for his own
o,
For another good example, see ,.:, :,, where Tusiane asks Arete to stand beside her and make sure
she is not at a loss for words.
;c
See above, n. o.
;:
For brief comment along similar lines, see Relihan (:,,:) :,,.
;:
For early use of that image, see :.,, ::, quoting from Wisdom .:.
:; Saints and Symposiasts
philosophical conversations, representing those conversations as elevated
equivalents of common civic activities. Methodius reshapes those same
images in line with widespread Christian fascination with the language
of athletics
;,
to rather different purposes.
The most striking example is the speech of Thekla (speech ) which is
saturated with agonistic language. Her speech opens immediately with the
imagery of athletic contest: it is my lot to contest in turn after her (i.e. the
previous speaker, .:, :o,). There is immediately an air of condence here
in the fact that Arete in response praises her immediately for being second
to none (.:, :;c) in philosophy and general education; and the reminder
that Thekla knew St Paul and received instruction from him promises to
give her words a special authority. At the same time, however, there are
factors which mitigate that sense of competitive individual prominence,
not least Theklas claim that she is like a lyre, a mouthpiece for divine voice
(.:, :o,), reinforced by her later request for assistance, directed to Arete,
who is addressed as an inspiring Muse gure (.:, :;:,). Once again,
unlike Athenaeus Deipnosophists, where each speakers voice is constantly
in danger of being taken over by the clamouring of the sources he quotes,
Methodius, like Clement, shows us how the different voices of his dialogue
are in the end homogenised by their status as mouthpieces for the single
voice of the divine Logos.
This tendency to redirect the idea of conict away from individual
rivalry between speakers and towards the triumph of Gods word, and the
triumph of individuals over their passions, continues in what follows. For
example, we nd the imagery of crowning at the conclusion of a contest
applied several times in the rest of the speech to the rewards and struggles of
virginity, which is above all victory over oneself: in .:, :;, we hear of virgins
crowned, as a result of their contests, with the blossoms of immortality; and
in .:,, :c, Thekla talks of the need for contest against the seven-headed
beast of Revelation, where the virgin can win the seven crowns of virtue
from the seven contests of chastity. After all the virgins have spoken (::,
:,), it is Thekla who is awarded the crown of wisdom, fullling Aretes
promise in the preface. That act echoes Alcibiades crowning of Socrates
in Plato, Symposium :::d::,e for being the cleverest and most beautiful,
although Methodius irons out that passages irreverent overtones. For a
moment it looks as though we are seeing a return to the motivations of
contest between speakers which were made so prominent in the opening
section. On closer inspection, however, and in the light of Theklas repeated
;,
See Ptzner (:,o;) on athletic imagery in Paul.
Methodius :;,
use of crowning imagery in her speech, it becomes clear that Theklas real
achievement is not her struggle against the other speakers, but rather her
struggle against herself. Arete anyway awards crowns to all, not only to
Thekla the only difference is that Theklas is larger. In Theklas case that
sense of self-conquest is overlaid with additional overtones of the struggles
of martyrdom for which she was so famous. In .:;, :,:, for example,
Euboulion and Gregorion, summing up Theklas contribution, praise her
for her triumph in the contests of the martyrs.
conclusion
Traditionally, Methodius scholarship has focused primarily on his theol-
ogy, with a particular interest in his debts to earlier gures like Origen
and Clement, and indeed Plato. What I have tried to show here is that
we might read Methodius for other reasons and from other perspectives
too. His work offers us a fascinating glimpse of the processes by which
early Christian culture carved out new spaces for itself in relation to the
Greco-Roman past, grappling to reconcile new attitudes to authority and
consensus with older modes of narrative and debate, and creating new
and unfamiliar fantasies of idealised community from ancient resources.
Methodius draws on many common features of Greco-Roman sympotic
writing. His anti-encratist perspective may be one reason why he was
attracted to the symposium form in the rst place: it is an obvious space
within which to showthat the needs of the human body cannot be sidelined
entirely (although pleasure-seeking is of course still severely circumscribed
in the text, much more so than for Plato or Plutarch). Methodius also
intensies the traditional sympotic interest in the metaphors of food and
drink, in his allegorical interpretations of scripture. Most importantly of
all for this book he adapts traditional techniques of sympotic argumenta-
tion. His has a tendency towards miscellanism; it quotes obsessively from
earlier authorities; and it is fascinated by the language of competition and
debate. But here in particular, his engagement with that tradition is not an
entirely comfortable engagement. Methodius feels the need to negotiate a
new relationship with traditional Greco-Roman ideas of sympotic playful-
ness and sympotic contest. He does not simply reject these phenomena.
Instead, he and his characters feel their way towards new uses of them as the
dialogue progresses: they often irt with Plutarchan language of specula-
tion and adversarial speech, but they also increasingly move away from it,
towards an assumption that the important contest is the contest against
:;o Saints and Symposiasts
oneself. Ultimately they seem much less comfortable than Plutarchs char-
acters with dispute and dissent: both more determined to avoid it, on the
grounds that they are all speaking from the same source, under the guid-
ance of divine inspiration, and more vehement in their practice of it when
they come up against arguments they see as wrong, less willing to allow
divergent explanations to stand side-by-side. The literary symposium, in
Methodius hands, is a fertile space for acting out new Christian attitudes
to disputation and consensus.
chapter 7
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature
in late antiquity
introduction
In ,::, only a few decades after the Symposium was written, perhaps less
and immediately after the period of persecution during which Methodius is
said by Jerome (perhaps not reliably) to have been martyred
:
Constantine
was converted to Christianity. That event was to change irrevocably the role
of Christianity in the culture of the Roman empire. Christianity became
increasingly institutionalised as the establishment religion, with imperial
authority on its side; the elites of the Roman empire increasingly converted
to Christianity over the next hundred years or more. It becomes even
more difcult from then on to study Christian and traditional Greco-
Roman culture separately from each other, given the high degree of mutual
interaction and overlap between them in the fourth century ce. For that
reason my overview of post-Constantinian sympotica in this chapter deals
with pagan and Christian texts and practices together.
Before I turn to some specic case studies, I want to offer a preliminary
sketch of the way in which Christian, and indeed pagan ambivalence about
the practices and literature of the symposium took on new contours in this
period. I draw attention to three factors in particular. My rst point is that
the fourth century ce saw in some quarters an increasing acceptance of
the idea that Christian identity was compatible with devotion to Greco-
Roman traditions and Greco-Roman education; but also at the same time
an intensication of the opposite viewpoint, which attempted to separate
Christianity utterly from the secular world.
:
The rst of those developments was closely linked with the changing
social level of Christianity in the fourth century ce. Christianity spread
more widely within the upper ranks of the Greco-Roman elite than it had
:
See above, p. :,:.
:
Cf. Kaster (:,) ;c,, on the wide range of Christian views on traditional literary education in this
period.
:;;
:; Saints and Symposiasts
done before. The process of conversion was a gradual one. Many new
converts continued to value elements of their pagan heritage even as they
expressed commitment to the new religion. It is tempting for us to imagine
a clear-cut distinction between pagans and Christians in the fourth
century, but in practice, for many, religious afliations would have been
viewed as more exible and combinable than that distinction implies. Even
those who viewed their Christian identity as incompatible with devotion
to the old Olympian gods would in some cases have been quite happy to
be involved with practices ultimately derived from pagan tradition. In the
right contexts, continuing devotion to those traditions would have been
viewed as compatible with Christian identity, partly no doubt because they
could be reconceptualised as secular rather than religious traditions, and
so as less threatening to Christian culture.
,
For example, some Christians wrote mythological poetry with little or
no reference to Christianity: this seems to have been a context in which the
use of Greco-Roman mythological material was not seen as threatening.

The most startling example is the fth-century poet Nonnus, who is now
widely thought to have been Christian. His Paraphrase of St Johns Gospel
rewrites Christ as an epic hero in Homeric hexameters. The description
of the wedding at Cana in that text is saturated with sympotic language.
,
And his massive -book epic, the Dionysiaka, describes Dionysus con-
quest of India, and his bringing of wine to mankind. The text shows an
intricate knowledge of the epic tradition, especially of Homer, and stands
as a celebration of the old imagery of drinking and excess,
o
with no explicit
mention of Christ or Christianity. We need to be cautious here. It would
,
On the gradual conversion of the elite, see Hedrick (:ccc), esp. ,;, following Brown (:,o:). On
the uid and improvisational character of religious identity in the fourth century ce, see Sandwell
(:cc;), discussed further below. Markus (:,,c) argues that pagan heritage could be made safe by
being secularised (however, see also below on his discussion of later reaction against that approach);
Hedrick (:ccc), esp. ,, accepts Markus basic model, but prefers to see the assimilation of pre-
Christian survivals as a more uneasy process. See also Averil Cameron (:,,,a) ;c and (:,,,b)
:: for useful brief discussion of cross-fertilisation between Christian and pagan identity.

On classicising literary activity and its compatibility with Christianity in late antiquity, see Alan
Cameron (:,;;), (:,) and (:cc); Hedrick (:ccc) ,; suggests that the acceptance of classicising
literary activity was sometimes more uncomfortable for Christians than Cameron implies. For outline
discussion see also Averil Cameron (:,,,a) :,:o,, (:,,,b) :,:: and (:,,); Clark (:cc) ::,.
,
The consensus is now to see Nonnus as the author of both Paraphrase and Dionysiaka: see Shorrock
(:c::) ,;, who sets out many close similarities between the Dionysiac language of the Paraphrase
and of the Dionysiaka (cf. Cameron (:ccc) :;,, with reference to Livrea (:ccc)); for earlier arguments
attributing the Paraphrase to Nonnus, see Golega (:,,c) :o:; for the argument that the Paraphrase
is the work of an early imitator of Nonnus, see Sherry (:,,:), esp. ::o, and (:,,o).
o
Oddly, however, for all his love of describing wine and intoxication, and for reasons which are not
clear to me, Nonnus has very few scenes set in symposia or drawing on the motifs of the literary
symposium.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :;,
be wrong to assume that the classicising nature of Nonnus poetry would
have been viewed as entirely irrelevant to the Christian faith. The Dionysiac
language of the Paraphrase must have had, for many readers, an oddly defa-
miliarising effect on the Christian narrative it treats, especially for those
who were also familiar with the Dionysiaka. And it must surely be the case
that the presence of Christian resonances within the scandalous mythi-
cal narrative of Dionysus epic would have had a deliberately surprising,
unsettling effect on many Christian readers.
;
Nevertheless, the broad point
remains, that this text and others like it appealed to Christian readers who
had a classical education, and that that appeal would not have been viewed
by most Christian readers as problematic.

Learned literary composition

seems to have been one context where elite Christians could celebrate their
Greco-Roman heritage without feeling any irreconcilable threat to their
Christian identity.
We see a similar picture of cross-fertilisation in looking at practices of
consumption and commensality. Eucharistic ritual, of course, continued
to be a vehicle for Christian self-differentiation.
,
Participation in the kinds
of sacricial feasting which had traditionally accompanied festivals in hon-
our of the Olympian gods was on the whole viewed as unacceptable for
Christians. Successive legislators attempted to stamp out pagan sacrice
on the grounds that it was incompatible with the Roman empires new
Christian culture, although many people continued to defy that legislation
even into the fth century ce.
:c
However, traditional habits of small-scale
;
See Shorrock (:c::) ;,::,.

On the compatibility of classicising composition with Christian identity in Nonnus see, most
recently, Shorrock (:c::); also (among many others) Chuvin (:,o) and (:,,:); Vian (:,,;); Cameron
(:ccc) :;,:; see also Bowersock (:,,c) :,, on the continuing vitality of pagan worship of
Dionysus existing side-by-side with Christian observance.
,
See Sandwell (:cc;) :,; on eucharistic ritual, and John Chrysostoms attempts to use it as a
vehicle for communal Christian identity. She also points out, however, that his congregations would
have included many worshippers who were unbaptised and did not participate in the eucharist
regularly.
:c
For general discussion of late antique sacrice, see Stroumsa (:cc,); and see further below on
Libanius and Julian and their attitudes to sacrice in fourth-century ce Antioch. For the argument
that Constantine banned pagan sacrice, see Barnes (:,), in response to Drake (:,:), who in
turn responds to Barnes (:,:), esp. ::c::; also Bradbury (:,,); and for discussion of banning of
sacrice by other emperors of the fourth century too, along with other measures against pagan cult,
see the brief accounts of Clark (:cc) ::::, and Geffcken (:,;) ::;:, with further bibliography.
However, the fact that these bans had to be introduced at all is a sign of the stubbornness of the
traditions they were aimed at: see Beard, North and Price (:,,) ,o;; Harl (:,,c), esp. ::,;
Geffcken (:,;) ::,,. At times they seem to have been enforced rather half-heartedly, and there are
many examples of concessions given to both Christians and non-Christians who wished to continue
with sacrice: for an overview of enforcement of the laws on sacrice, see Trombley (:,,,) :,;.
Even when sacrice itself was suppressed, some of the traditions of communal dining continued,
converted into a secularised form which made them acceptable to Christian legislation (see Bowder
:c Saints and Symposiasts
elite dining seem to have been viewed by many as entirely consistent with
Christian identity. The increasing acceptance of Christianity higher up the
social scale must have meant that more Christians than ever before regularly
engaged in the kinds of traditional, archaising convivial activities which
for centuries had oiled the wheels of elite interaction. No doubt the ban-
queting habits of the elites of this period would have seemed in many ways
alien to an Athenian transported into the future from the fourth century
bce, but the point remains that many people, Christians included, drew
explicit links between their own convivial activities and the old sympotic
traditions which stretched back to classical and archaic Greece.
That kind of connection clearly manifested itself, for some, in an interest
in traditional forms of sympotic conversation and sympotic literature. The
Christian Sidonius Apollinaris, for example, writing to a friend in the
mid-fth century ce, gives the following advice:
Whenever you are enjoying yourself at a luxurious feast, occupy yourself with
religious stories that is what I advise; let the conversation be taken up with
telling them, let an attentive audience encourage their repetition. But if, as one
might expect in someone who is still a young man, you feel lukewarm about these
benecial diversions, at least borrow from the Platonist of Madaura his patterns of
sympotic questioning, and in order to make yourself better educated, solve them
when they are put forward, and put them forward to be solved, and train yourself
in these topics even when you are at leisure. (Letters ,.:,.,)
For Sidonius, the Sympotic Questions of Apuleius of Madaura may not
be quite as good as religious discussion, but the two are clearly quite
compatible with each other.
::
The desire to draw links with the classical past is even more obvi-
ous in the lavish banqueting art of the fourth and fth centuries ce,
much of which draws on Greco-Roman mythological imagery with little
or no specic reference to Christian iconography, despite the fact that
much of it presumably had Christian owners.
::
To take just one example,
(:,;) :,,;), or even in some cases incorporated as integral features of Christian life, for example
in feasts celebrating the lives of the martyrs (see further below on John Chrysostoms anxiety about
drunken behaviour on these occasions); cf. Cameron (:,,,a) :;,o on public banquets held to
celebrate the dedication of new churches in the sixth century ce, described by Choricius of Gaza.
More generally Chuvin (:,,c), Lane Fox (:,o) (esp. o,;: on sacrice), and MacMullen (:,:)
have all shed light on the continuing vitality of pagan cult into the Christian era.
::
Cf. Letters :.,.o for another brief mention of sympotic conversation.
::
See Dunbabin (:cc,a) ::;, esp. : and :o, on the difculty of distinguishing between pagan
and Christian uses of banqueting themes in art; Dunbabin (:cc,b) and DArms (:cc) ,,c
on the increased lavishness of banqueting art from the fourth century ce onwards; Leader-Newby
(:cc) ::,;: on mythological scenes on fourth- and fth-century domestic silver plate, much of
it for use in banqueting contexts, and their function as signs of an elite paideia entirely compatible
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity ::
Figure ;.: Mildenhall Treasure: Great Dish; fourth century ce.
the massive Great Dish of the Mildenhall collection of silver vessels
(gure ;.:) not only shows the astonishing luxury and expense of some
of these late-antique dining objects (it weighs over kg), but also illustrates
precisely this compatibility of pagan and Christian. A small number of the
items from the Mildenhall Treasure, which comprises : items overall, are
clearly marked with Christian symbols the chi-rho symbol and the alpha
and omega; but the bulk of the material is covered with pagan mythological
images without any sign of Christian markings. In that respect it has much
in common with Nonnus Dionysiaka, with which it has striking overlaps
with Christian afliation; esp. ::, for criticism of Bowersocks (:,,c) assumption that pagan
mythological motifs imply involvement in pagan cult; Elsner (:,,) :c:o for lavish late antique
dining art with little or no use of Christian motifs; and more generally :c;:, on the continued
display of Greco-Roman paideia in the late antique world; cf. Elsner (:,,,) :,:;c for discussion
along similar lines.
:: Saints and Symposiasts
of subject matter. In the Great Dish, for example, we see Dionysus with
all his usual companions: Pan, a drunken Herakles, satyrs and nymphs
dancing in swirling patterns across the smooth surface of the silver. The
dish like Nonnus poem functions to display wealth and investment in
a common system of education, rather than as a statement about religious
afliation.
:,
By the fourth century ce, then, the idea that Christianitys sub-elite bias
led to wariness of the traditionally elitist culture of the symposium is less
universally applicable. That is not to say, however, that Christianitys aim
of appealing to a non-elite audience drops away. If anything, at least in
some contexts, it intensies, through the increasingly high value attached
to sermo humilis (humble style) in preaching, designed to reach out to
a wide audience. One consequence is that the symposium as a literary
form and especially as a form for communicating Christian doctrine
continues to be treated very warily by some authors, in part because of
its elitist connotations.
:
At least some of the learned Christian authors
of this period would presumably have been quite willing to participate in
the kind of elite commensality just described, but to use the elitist literary
symposium as a framework for articulating matters of Christian belief
would presumably have been viewed as a mistake of context.
Moreover, it is crucial to stress that there were many who vehemently
opposed any kind of cross-fertilisation between Christian and Greco-
Roman culture. That opposition gained more and more momentum as
the fourth century ce went on. It led in the end to a widespread deseculari-
sation of the pagan heritage precisely the opposite of the process described
above, whereby pagan practices could be secularised and therefore viewed
as acceptable. Many Christian preachers and writers presented their audi-
ences with a stark choice: all choices of lifestyle which were not rmly
within the Christian fold must be rejected wholesale.
:,
The pagan heritage,
in other words, increasingly had to be either adapted and Christianised, or
else discarded as idolatrous: no compromise position was acceptable. There
was considerable tension, then, between different views on the desirability
of cross-fertilisation between pagan and Christian. We shall see more of
those tensions in looking at Libanius and Julian and John Chrysostom,
whose different reactions to convivial culture in fourth-century ce Antioch
are partly due to their different approaches to those questions.
:,
See Leader-Newby (:cc) :.
:
Cf. Lim (:cc) :oo.
:,
See Markus (:,,) and (:,,c), e.g. :,:o for summary; Sandwell (:cc;) on John Chrysostom,
esp. ::,,,.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,
My second point, more briey, is that the growth of asceticism which
led some Christians to adopt an even more uncompromising rejection of
bodily pleasures than anything that had been familiar before made a major
contribution to continuing Christian ambivalence about the symposium,
both as practice and as literary form.
:o
In a sense this point is hard to
separate from the issues of social status and Christian sectarianism already
addressed. Many monks were uneducated people of low social status. The
most extreme and most famous ascetics were self-consciously marginal
gures even within Christianity, as we shall see further in the nal two
chapters of this book. They stood outside the institutionalised structures
of the Christian church, aiming for a way of life utterly apart from the
traditional practices of the Greco-Roman city. That marginality did not
diminish their hold over the Christian imagination; if anything, it made
it stronger. It is hard to imagine individuals less suited to participation in
the dignied elite conventions of sympotic conversation. The gulf between
ascetic practice and traditional conviviality is far wider, by the fourth
century ce, than it had been in the second and third: there is nothing here
to match Clements uneasy compromise between the two in his Educator.
The third and nal factor I want to draw attention to is the further
development of Christian (and indeed pagan) attitudes to dispute and
consensus. Even in the second and third centuries ce, as we have seen
for Clement and Methodius, Christian culture tended to value consensus,
stressing the idea of a single truth inspired by divine Logos. Through the
fourth and fth centuries, as Richard Lim has shown,
:;
those inclinations
were intensied: public debate was increasingly sidelined; many Christian
teachers expressed suspicion of Aristotelian dialectic; and there was a shift
(also within pagan philosophy) towards the gure of the authoritative and
divinely inspired teacher whose teachings were to be absorbed rather than
debated. Increasingly, the philosophical dialogue form came to be used,
when it was used at all, to articulate clear-cut doctrinal messages rather than
to dramatise the processes of debate.
:
It is important to acknowledge the
fact that these were complex developments. Many Christians continued to
:o
The literature on asceticism is enormous (further discussion in ch. :: and ::); on food and fasting,
see esp. Grimm (:,,o); more generally see Finn (:cc,). On asceticisms opposition to dialectic, see
Lim (:,,,) :.
:;
Lim (:,,,); cf. Brown (:,;) :;,,; also Boyarin (:cc) for similar shifts in Jewish culture.
:
See Goldhill (:cc), although many of the essays in that volume (including K onig (:ccb), which
covers much of the same ground as Part i of this book) stress the dangers of overstating Christian
neglect of dialogue. For similar changes in question-and-answer literature in late antiquity, which
increasingly connes itself to providing single answers rather than provoking a range of responses,
see Papadoyonnakis (:cco).
: Saints and Symposiasts
espouse dialectical techniques. Disputation certainly did not disappear: in
a sense, the pressures towards consensus were a reaction against the dangers
of internal dissension within Christianity; and some of the deprecation of
dialectic was a reaction against the habit of attempting to trip up public
speakers by throwing out theological questions for discussion, and also
against the increasing popularisation of theological debate, which was felt to
threaten social order. Members of the Christian elite must have continued
to muse amongst themselves in an open-minded way on philosophical and
theological questions which puzzled them. Lim himself suggests, in a more
recent publication, that some of those impulses may have been displaced
away from the dialogue form and on to epistolary exchanges between elite
Christans.
:,
Nevertheless, the increasing suspicion of competitive speech
seems to have been deep-rooted enough to exert continued pressure on
the literary symposium: both Christian and pagan authors seem reluctant
to depict agonistic conversation in the symposium, or else, when they do
depict it, anxious to suppress its more worrying, combative aspects. In the
rest of this chapter I want to look briey at the work of Augustine, in order
to illustrate that last point in particular, before moving on to a selection of
authors from fourth-century ce Antioch in the nal section.
augustine
Augustine in his writing tends to avoid the dialogue form, and when he
does use it he is often reluctant to exploit its potential for open-endedness.
The only Platonic-style dialogues he wrote were composed in the few years
between his conversion in ,o ce and his ordination in ,,:. Even these
dialogues increasingly move away from the kind of detailed scene-setting
and characterisation which is a feature of his very earliest works
:c
towards
impersonal argument and nally to monologue.
::
And increasingly, they
aim to make it crystal clear what is the correct answer to the questions
under discussion.
Michael Prince, writing about the dialogue form in the British Enlight-
enment, identies two models of dialogue whichhe suggests standinuneasy
tension with each other as far back as Plato.
::
The rst model (type a) sees
dialogue as dialectic, i.e., as the division of an argument into two parts
which eventually come together in the harmony of nal resolution, with
an authoritative correct solution: a discourse between two speakers leading
:,
Lim (:cc).
:c
See Conybeare (:cco) :;,.
::
Clark (:cc) ::,.
::
Prince (:,,o), esp. :, for initial denition of that distinction; see also Cox (:,,:), esp. :, for a
similar distinction within Italian Renaissance dialogue.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,
to a synthesis of viewpoints not mere eristic, but the purposeful discovery
of truth.
:,
The second model (type b) is a less dogmatic form involving
any verbal interaction among two or more voices, leading to no necessary
resolution.
:
He sees a move from type b) in the early works of Plato to
type a) in the late works.
:,
And he sees type a) as a form central to Christian
writing from its very beginning: From the beginning of the Christian era
until the middle of the :th century, dialectic became one of the dominant
methods of argument for Christian theology.
:o
The Enlightenment, he
suggests, sees a battle between these two modes of dialogue. We hear, for
example, of Floyer Sydenham, an eighteenth-century type-a) interpreter of
Plato, criticising Platos blunder of allowing the drunken Alcibiades to spoil
the carefully crafted metaphysical structure of the Symposium: we cannot
altogether justify and consequently ought not to follow our author [Plato]
in introducing to his Banquet the thorowly debauched Alcibiades.
:;
Most importantly for now, Prince categorises Augustine as one of the
most important gures for type-a) dialogue in the history of Christian
thought (although he also acknowledges that Augustine has some degree
of ambivalence about his commitment to dialectic), and that assessment is
broadly convincing.
:
Later in his career, from the moment of his ordina-
tion in ,,:, to his death in ,c, Augustine went further, abandoning the
philosophical dialogue form entirely
:,
(at least dialogues in the conven-
tional, Platonic form),
,c
favouring clear promulgation of a single viewpoint
rather than a range of possible approaches, in line with the idioms of theo-
logical debate which were widespread at the time. Gillian Clark has recently
charted that suspicion of dialogue in Augustines work, although in doing
so she also stresses that we should not oversimplify, arguing that this avoid-
ance of dialogue may be above all a matter of context, due to his role
:,
Prince (:,,o) :.
:
Prince (:,,o) :.
:,
Prince (:,,o) ,.
:o
Prince (:,,o) ,.
:;
See Prince (:,,o) :;,, quoting from The Dialogues of Plato (trans. Floyer Sydenham, : vols., London,
:;o;) :;.
:
See Prince (:,,o) o.
:,
See Clark (:cc) :::,; however see Harrison (:cco) for the argument that Augustine scholarship
has systematically overestimated the idea (following Brown (:,o;)) that there was a major break in
Augustines thinking in the ,,cs.
,c
Admittedly some of Augustines later works against the Manichees (e.g., Contra Faustum
Manichaeum) and the Donatists (e.g., Contra Litteras Petiliani, Gesta cum Emerito) do have dialogic
elements, in the sense that they purport to record verbatim extracts from debates in which Augustine
has participated, or in the sense that they reproduce extracts from letters which are then refuted
point-by-point, leaving the impression of a dialogue unfolding on the page. It may well be the
case that Augustine chose this dialogic approach partly in order to emphasise the rational and non-
dogmatic character of his opposition to these rival groups; however they are not counter-examples
to the claim that Augustine was reluctant to exploit dialogues potential for indeterminacy: in all
cases Augustine makes clear what the right answer is.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
as a bishop, with his obligations to preach the Christian truth to a wide
audience. He may have been quite happy to participate in person, at the
right time, in open-ended discussion.
,:
Within that context it is hardly surprising that there are no examples
of specically sympotic dialogue anywhere in Augustines work. Presum-
ably sympotic dialogue traditions would have been even more at odds
with Augustines aims than other types of dialogue writing, given their
open-ended, competitive character, lying closer to the type-b end of the
spectrum in Princes terms. In the context of communicating Christian
doctrine, dramatisation of playful sympotic discussion would presumably
have seemed to him to be profoundly irresponsible. Clark herself help-
fully draws attention to the incompatibility of Augustines approach to the
written word with the kind of relaxed convivial setting he must have been
perfectly familiar with in person:
He could have presented a brotherly disputation over a not too frugal meal in the
clergy house at Hippo, on the great questions of how people can be good, whether
sin comes with conception, and why the grace of God seems not to reach some
people. Instead, there are letters and treatises, embassies to Italy and manoeuvres
at Synods, and all the depressing history of the Pelagian controversy. He could
have presented a courteous discussion, over a grander meal in Carthage, on what
is really at issue between Christians and philosophically minded adherents of the
traditional religion. Instead, there are the twenty-two books of City of God, which
from the outset oppose their authors to our scriptures.
,:
That incompatibility of Augustines later oeuvre with the open-ended
characteristics of sympotic dialogue is all the more striking given that many
features of Augustines very earliest dialogues Contra Academicos, De Beata
Vita, De Ordine look at rst sight as if they would have been quite well
suited to a sympotic setting. They date from ,o ce, when Augustine was
in his early thirties, shortly after his conversion to Christianity and to
Platonism, which he viewed at that time as inextricable from each other,
based on a Neoplatonic understanding of God and the soul.
,,
During that
year Augustine was living a life of philosophical retirement in a villa (in
Cassiciacum, outside Milan) borrowed froma friend, together with a group
of companions, including his mother and some of his students and other
relatives. These three dialogues purport to be an accurate record of their
conversations.
,
Catherine Conybeare has recently argued that they are
,:
See Clark (:cc).
,:
Clark (:cc) ::,.
,,
See Brown (:,o;) ::; Mourant (:,;c), arguing that the Neoplatonic character of the dialogues
has sometimes been overemphasised; Stock (:,,o) o,;; Harrison (:cco) :c;,.
,
See Brown (:,o;) ::,:; for a vivid sketch; also Harrison (:cco) :c.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :;
striking for their interest in welcoming indeterminacy, leaving problems
unsolved for us as readers to engage with.
,,
Admittedly the dialogues have
a school atmosphere: some of the interlocutors are Augustines pupils, and
Augustine is clearly represented as the leader of these discussions, often
adopting a didactic tone.
,o
As Conybeare shows, however, he is also keen to
show his authority being challenged.
,;
They are also remarkable for their
willingness to welcome contest into the arena of philosophical debate,
although Augustine draws attention every so often to the problems of
excessive disputatiousness and competition for its own sake.
,
One passage
in particular, De Ordine :.:c.:,, a complaint by Augustine against two
of his interlocutors about the competitive, glory-seeking quality of their
speech, is so vehement and so strongly worded that it would surely have
been out of place in the playful, convivial world of Plutarch and his fellow
symposiasts.
On the whole, though, these early dialogues are not so far removed from
the ethos of the philosophical symposium tradition. However, there are
some details which rather undermine that impression. Two issues stand
out in particular. The rst is simply the fact that Augustines community
of interlocutors is very mixed in terms of social and educational levels,
,,
and so might easily have seemed at odds with the elitist character of the
Greco-Roman symposium and its various literary incarnations. The second
point is that these dialogues rely heavily on the power of the written word.
Augustine is quite explicit about the importance of writing in assisting
the memory.
c
There are repeated references to the fact that secretaries are
,,
Conybeare (:cco); e.g. ,: again and again, through the course of these dialogues, Augustine seems
purposely to be favouring exibility, to be bringing into the foreground the indeterminate or the
unanswerable; and ,c on Augustines preference for open endings in these texts (in contrast
with Ciceros practice of providing a clear conclusion and peroration).
,o
See Mourant (:,;c) ,: Even at their best the Augustinian dialogues are never conversations between
equals but exhibit always the relation of student and master; and cf. , for the argument that
Augustines Soliloquies, dialogues with himself, or rather with the internalised voice of Reason,
which were also written during his stay at Cassiciacum, show Augustines increasing suspicion of
Platonic dialectic: they stand, he suggests, as a kind of dividing point between the earlier dialogues,
dominated by youthful debate and the exposition of diverse philosophical positions, and the later
dialogues which take a more serious turn and in which Augustine dominates the discussion and
offers more denitive solutions to the problems at issue (,). See also Conybeare (:cco) :,o on
the school atmosphere of the text.
,;
See Conybeare (:cco) ,, on Augustines attempts to divest himself of the role of authoritative leader
of the discussions.
,
See Conybeare (:cco) ,c,.
,,
See Brown (:,o;) ::c; Conybeare (:cco) ,; Clark (:cc) ::c.
c
On the importance of writing in these dialogues, see Stock (:,,o) :,:, who makes explicit comparison
with Plato: De Beata Vita can be described as a Platonic banquet, but one which takes place in a
library; also Conybeare (:cco) :;,,.
: Saints and Symposiasts
taking down the conversations. On a number of occasions the dialogue has
to be broken off in the evening because there is no longer light for them
to write by.
:
In this Augustine is very much of his time: transcription
was an increasingly common feature of public debate through the fourth
and fth centuries.
:
That practice stands at odds with the ethos of Platos
Symposium, where the conversation takes place at night, and is reported
orally many years later in such a way as to call the texts reliability into
doubt, a move repeated by many of Platos sympotic imitators.
I should stress that I am not arguing that this dialogue or any of Augus-
tines other works engages closely with Platos Symposium, or that he draws
attention in a sustained way to his own rewriting and avoidance of sym-
potic tradition. My point is rather that the attitudes to dialogue are not
straightforwardly compatible with sympotic dialogue traditions: it is not
difcult to see, even in these early Cassiciacum dialogues, let alone in his
later work, why Augustine might have been wary of using the sympotic
form as a basis for his own work, had he ever contemplated such a thing.
,
There is no specic evidence that he ever did. Apart from anything else,
we know that he did not have a detailed knowledge of Greek literature,
and despite the important inuence of Neoplatonic thinking on his early
work, he probably did not know Platos work at rst hand

(although the
prevalence of Greek sympotic motifs in Latin literature makes it certain
that he would have been familiar with the idea of philosophical table-talk).
His most important model for dialogue writing was Cicero,
,
who shows
no interest in convivial settings in his own dialogue writing. As we saw in
chapter ,, it is important not to assume that the avoidance of sympotic
dialogue is an exclusively Christian phenomenon: it is paralleled in some of
the Greco-Roman philosophical writing which inuenced early Christian
writers.
o
That said, it is striking that Augustine often seems to be going out
of his way to avoid combining conversation and commensality in these
dialogues. In one of the three dialogues, the De Beata Vita, that avoidance
is particularly prominent.
;
After a long preface the dialogue opens as
:
E.g., Contra Academicos :.:,, :.:,.:, and ,.:c..
:
On Augustines use of stenography, in the wider context of the increasing role played by writing in
the rise of religious authoritarianism, see Lim (:,,,) :c.
,
Trout (:,) argues that Augustines Cassiciacum dialogues show signs of unease about the suitability
of elitist, Greco-Roman traditions of philosophical retirement for Christian commitment; that
unease may conceivably have been another factor in Augustines wariness about some features of the
philosophical dialogue tradition.

See Conybeare (:cco) :,.

,
See M. P. Foley (:,,,).
o
See above, pp. :,,.
;
See Contra Academicos :.,.:, for another good example, discussed by Conybeare (:cco) ;c: there,
discussion is broken off because Augustines mother calls them to come and eat lunch.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,
follows: My birthday was on the Ides of November. After a lunch which
was light enoughthat it would not impede our thinking inany way, I invited
all of us who used to eat together (convivabamur), not only on that day
but on every day, to come and sit together in the baths (:.o). The dialogue
thus offers us a version of post-consumption philosophy, but without
wine and in the middle of the day rather than the evening. Moreover,
Augustines mother, who participates in the dialogue, draws attention not
long afterwards to Augustines lack of interest in food, reminding them
that Augustine himself had mentioned at one point over lunch that he
had not been aware of what he was eating, so distracted had he been
by his reections. Not only does Augustine parade this indifference to
culinary pleasure, however, he also portrays the conversation in which
they are engaged as a feast, of which he is himself the host.

At :.,, for
example, Augustine uses that image as follows in introducing the subject for
discussion:
I think that on my birthday since we have agreed that there are two components
in man, namely body and soul I should serve a rather sumptuous meal not
only for our bodies but also for our souls . . . All declared by the expressions on
their faces and by their spoken consent that they were willing to take and devour
whatever I had prepared.
That comparison resurfaces repeatedly in similar terms through the dia-
logue, with their discussion referred to a number of times as a convivium.
,
Here, then, Augustine seems to be going out of his way to avoid a convivial
setting for conversation, displacing the imagery of conviviality on to their
conversation. Plato and Plutarch and other sympotic writers had of course
used culinary metaphors for conversation in similar terms, but without
at the same time going to the same lengths to avoid actual conviviality.
One of the things motivating Augustine here is his determination to stress
the moderation of his community, happy, as philosophers and Christians
should be, with frugal food. But it is not impossible that he is also motivated
by wariness of the frivolity that convivial speech is traditionally associated
with.
Inconclusion, then, Augustines later writings showclearly why sympotic
dialogue would generally have seemed incompatible with the requirements
of Christian theological writing in the late fourth and early fth centuries
ce. Even in his early dialogues, I have suggested, we see some rst traces of
that later incompatibility.

See Conybeare (:cco) o,c on that imagery.

,
E.g. at .:, and .,o.
:,c Saints and Symposiasts
fourth-century antioch
I want to turn now to the city of Antioch in the second half of the fourth
century ce. Here we move away from issues of consensus and disputation
to look in more depth at the rst two factors I mentioned earlier: changing
views about the validity of cross-fertilisation between pagan and Christian
culture, and, connected with that, the growing importance of Christian
asceticism.
Antioch is an ideal place to view the interaction between pagan and
Christian culture. It produced a number of prolic writers in the fourth
century, both pagan and Christian, whose work allows us to reconstruct a
vivid picture of many areas of the citys culture. It was a very cosmopolitan
city: known for its large pagan population and its educational traditions,
but at the same time, home to a ourishing Christian community and
inuential Christian leaders, as well as to a substantial number of Jewish
inhabitants.
,c
Its population was known for its devotion to festival life, not
just to Christianevents like the feast days of the martyrs, but also to the citys
old pagan festival traditions: for example, the Antioch Olympic festival
seems to have continued into the fth century ce.
,:
The evidence we have
suggests a certain amount of indiscriminacy on the part of the population
in their participation, an eagerness to celebrate festivals whatever their
precise religious connotations.
,:
Between them, all of our sources point to a rich and varied cul-
ture of feasting within the city. For example, excavations have revealed
a large amount of classicising banqueting art in the dining rooms of
Antioch, including a number of impressive mosaics most of which date
from the second and third centuries ce, but which would presumably
still have been open to view for diners in the second half of the fourth
century.
,,
It seems likely that some of the houses containing these mosaics,
,c
See Wallace-Hadrill (:,:), esp. ::o: it is a complex picture of developing religions, sometimes
in conict with each other, sometimes overlapping, sometimes merging at the edges (:); also
Sandwell (:cc;) ,,; for useful summary; cf. Meeks and Wilken (:,;) on intertwined Jewish
and Christian background.
,:
See Downey (:,,,); Millon and Schouler (:,); Liebeschuetz (:,;:) :,o.
,:
On the citys mixed festival life, see Soler (:cco), e.g. :c: beaucoup dAntiochiens navaient pas
une mais plusieurs religions et, sans les confondre, sans d emarche ` a proprement parler syncr etiste,
ils participaient ` a leurs rites, surtout aux grandes c el ebrations cultuelles, ` a leur f etes, dans le but
davoir plus de moyens et de chances datteindre ce ` a quoi ils aspiraient par-dessus tout, le salut;
he also charts the gradual move towards successful christianisation of this festival culture in the late
fourth century ce.
,,
On triclinium mosaics from Antioch depicting theatrical and mythological scenes, see Kondoleon
(:ccc); Huskinson (:cc:,) and (:cc); and see also Dobbins (:ccc) on triclinium architecture;
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,:
Figure ;.: Antioch, Atrium House, triclinium, mosaic panel of the drinking contest of
Herakles and Dionysus; early second century ce.
and others like them, would have been owned by members of the wealthy
Christian elite, although that is impossible to demonstrate. Figure ;.: is
a famous image of a drinking contest of Herakles and Dionysus, dating
probably from the early second century ce. It was the rst image diners
would see on entering the dining room of the so-called Atrium House.
,
Images of Dionysus were also common in the later Antioch mosaics of the
fourth century, partly designed to appeal, no doubt, to Neoplatonic alle-
gorical readings of Dionysus myth, but not necessarily intended exclusively
Knudsen (:ccc) on tableware; and Brinkerhoff (:,;c), esp. o,, on mythological sculpture in
Antioch, arguing that its subject matter does not imply pagan religious afliations.
,
See Kondoleon (:ccc) oo;:; also catalogue no. ,, on pp. :;c:.
:,: Saints and Symposiasts
in those terms.
,,
We know, moreover, that worship of Dionysus had long
been a prominent feature of Antiochene religious life, and that the theatres
and traditional festivals of the fourth century, which must in some cases
have attracted those with Christian sympathies, continued to be widely
linked with Dionysus.
,o
This was a city immersed in old-fashioned images
and traditions of conviviality, whose interest would not have been conned
to the citys pagan inhabitants.
We also catch some similar glimpses of old-fashioned devotion to clas-
sicising commensality in the writings of the great pagan rhetorician and
teacher Libanius, whose work spans most of the second half of the fourth
century ce. Libanius is particularly interested in the idea of traditional
community expressed in convivial contexts, and in the maintenance of the
citys old traditions. For example, he has two works describing the New
Year festival of the Kalends,
,;
and one rhetorical exercise describing a fes-
tival in generalising terms,
,
all of which give a powerful if conventional
fantasy image of the whole of the city participating together in feasts. More
often in his work we see an emphasis on more elitist forms of conviviality.
For example, his Oration ,,, On Invitations to the Festivals, is on the subject
of the banquets at the Antioch Olympic games. He argues there against
changes in the practice of issuing invitations, which have made it more
common for young boys to be brought along to dinner with their fathers.
He emphasises throughout the importance of maintaining tradition,
,,
and
the importance of having the right kind of guest-list and the right kind
of convivial community, warning rather melodramatically in ,,.:, that the
end result will be the issuing of invitations to women, slaves and mill-
workers. Similarly in Oration :c, On the Plethron, he complains about the
way in which the Olympic games at Antioch have been made more acces-
sible to the masses, and about the way in which the Olympic dinners have
been moved from the evening to less dignied lunch-time occasions, which
leaves Olympic ofcials wandering home in the middle of the afternoon
showing their intoxication in public (:c.:,).
oc
In both cases his ideal dining
group is a highly exclusive one. He also uses traditional sympotic images
elsewhere in rather more frivolous ways: for example his Declamation : is a
,,
See Soler (:cco) ;;:.
,o
See Soler (:cco) :,c.
,;
Oration , and Descriptio ,: see Gleason (:,o) ::: and Sandwell (:cc;) :o;. On the continu-
ing importance of the Kalends within Antiochs festival calendar, see Soler (:cco) :,;; and for
reconstruction, Gleason (:,o) :c:,.
,
Descriptio :,.
,,
See esp. ,,.::, :, and :;.
oc
For translation, see Downey (:,o:) o,. On both of these speeches, see Swain (:cc) ,o;,
who sets them in the context of Libanius worries over the encroachment of both mediocrity and
Christianity, which he represents as connected with each other.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,,
rhetorical exercise in the mouth of a parasite, who is imagined denouncing
himself for gluttony.
o:
Libanius thus to some extent conrms the picture offered by the citys
banqueting art, of continued interest in Greco-Roman sympotic commen-
sality. Even for Libanius, however, it is striking that his interest in the
sympotic side of Antiochene life is relatively muted: there are relatively few
moments like these in his enormous corpus of work, and relatively few
mentions of dining with friends in his Autobiography and his Letters. He
seems to put most of his energies into the virtual community he constructs
through his letter-writing to his peers in Antioch and beyond, rather than
into the personal exchanges of the symposium.
o:
He also says little or
nothing about sympotic talk: the kind of words which matter, and which
can be used most effectively for the preservation of the Greek traditions
he holds dear, in competition with Christian preaching, are the public
words of the orator. His reticence on the subject of convivial activity may
be partly due to a sense of resignation, a feeling that this is one aspect of
traditional culture being more and more diluted and undermined by the
kind of Christian views we shall see more of below: certainly his vision of
the symposium, when it emerges, tends to be a backward-looking, nostalgic
one.
o,
We have to look elsewhere, however, for more vehement rejection of
classical traditions of commensality. Here we turn to Libanius pupil, the
great Christian preacher John Chrysostom, who was active in Antioch
from the ,cs ce. His denunciations of luxury are powerful and seductive
to read even today, and they must have been all the more so for his original
audiences. His attitude to pagan conviviality is one of fairly consistent
opposition. He dreams, it is true, of a world where Christianity is har-
monised with the life of the city, but only if this can be on Christianitys
terms.
o
For example, a recurring theme of his sermons is the danger of
pagan spectacle: he denounces the institutions of theatre and circus which
keep his ock from church on Sundays. Similarly, he shows great concern
both about the debauchery of traditional pagan festivals like the festival of
o:
For translation and brief comment, see Russell (:,,o) :,c; cf. Descriptio o for a description of a
man going home drunk from a symposium.
o:
See Sandwell (:cc;) :,,.
o,
Some of Libanius relative lack of interest in the citys sympotic culture may also be due to the need
he felt to give public support to Julians reforms, even though he seems to have felt very ambivalent
about them in many ways: e.g. Sandwell (:cc;) ,; on the repeated mention of blood sacrice in
his Julianic orations; Autobiography ::, for one of many examples of his praise of Julians sacricial
policy; also Swain (:cc) ,,;cc on Libanius discomfort with some aspects of Julians reforms.
o
See Hartney (:cc); Sandwell (:cc).
:, Saints and Symposiasts
the Kalends, in his sermon On the Kalends,
o,
and about those Christians
who use the feasts of the martyrs as opportunities for drunkenness, for
example in his brief Homily on the Martyrs.
oo
In both cases he contrasts the
loneliness of pagan self-indulgence with true Christian community, and
with the banquet Christ lays out for his followers.
o;
And in both cases there
is an implication that those who fall short are drifting away from proper
Christian behaviour, being infected by the lax pagan culture around them:
In order that we may maintain this ame of devotion not just now but always,
even once this spiritual spectacle is over, let us return home with the same rever-
ence, rather than giving ourselves over to taverns and brothels and drunkenness
and revelling. You made the night into day through your holy vigils. Do not
in turn make the day into night through drinking and intoxication and erotic
songs. (Homily on the Martyrs, PG ,c.oo,)
That passage is typical of Chrysostoms worries about contamination of his
congregation with pagan indulgence.
Isabella Sandwell has recently argued that Libanius and Chrysostom
stand at opposite poles of the spectrum I outlined at the beginning of this
chapter: Libanius pragmatic and exible view of religious allegiance stands
in complete contrast to Chrysostoms uncompromising sectarianism, and
his commitment to separating Christian and pagan culture completely and
christianising all aspects of Antiochene life.
o
That commitment goes a
long way towards explaining his outright opposition to traditional festive
conviviality. From that perspective it is no surprise to nd that there is no
sign of anything remotely related to the literary symposium tradition in
his surviving works.
Chrysostoms views are also informed by his own asceticism, and, con-
nected with that, his hostility to the use of wealth for luxury.
o,
He was
o,
See Sandwell (:cc) ,: and (:cc;) :o;; and on his attempts to prevent his congregation from
taking part in Jewish feasting and fasting, see Kelly (:,,,) o:, and Sandwell (:cc;) .
oo
Text in PG ,c.oo:o; translation and short discussion in Mayer and Allen (:ccc) ,,;; cf. Leemans,
Mayer, Allen and Dehandschutter (:cc,) :::o: for translation of other homilies by Chrysostom,
with brief discussion. For expression of anxiety by other Christian authors about the possibility
that feasts in honour of martyrs would attract drunken and immoral behaviour, see Poque (:,o);
Dunbabin (:cc,a) :;, with reference to a variety of passages from Augustine and Ambrose.
o;
For good parallels for this use of metaphors of feasting, see the repeated imagery of the spiritual
table in Concerning Blessed Philogonius (PG .;;,o; translation and comment in Mayer and Allen
(:ccc) :,,), esp. ;,,o; and the imagery of spiritual drunkenness in the opening lines (o;) of
Johns Homily after the Remains of the Martyrs (PG o,.o;;:; translation and comment in Mayer
and Allen (:ccc) ,,:).
o
See Sandwell (:cc;), esp. :,::: on Chrysostoms attempts to prevent fraternisation between
Christians and non-Christians.
o,
See Leyerle (:,,); and Kelly (:,,,) ,; for several examples of Chrysostoms indignation at the
culinary luxury of the rich.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,,
renowned for the disciplines of fasting he had imposed on himself during a
period of monastic devotion in early adulthood.
;c
Palladius Dialogue Con-
cerning the Life of Chrysostom, probably written soon after Chrysostoms
death, describes that period of his life only briey (,), but then goes on (in
section ::) to give a lengthy justication of his habit of dining alone (an
archetypally uncivilised habit by the standards of sympotic tradition):
He did eat alone, and it was, as far as I know, partly for the following reasons.
First, he did not drink wine because it made his head hot, although occasionally in
hot weather he made use of wine made from roses. Second, because his stomach
was disordered from some illness, so that he often found the things which had
been prepared for him unpleasant and asked for something not on the table. Next,
he sometimes forgot his meals, putting them off till the evening, either because
he was preoccupied with ecclesiastical worries, or because he was distracted by
spiritual contemplation . . . In general, however, in my opinion the more accurate
explanation for his action is that he was parsimonious in the extreme in his relations
with those who were devoted to luxury, regarding any expenditure of money on
such people as sacrilegious.
Here the anti-sympotic qualities of Chrysostom himself are unhesitatingly
defended. As Palladius makes clear, Chrysostoms erce devotion to the
suppression of bodily appetites and the misuse of wealth cannot have made
him any more sympathetic to the delicate pleasures of elite conviviality. He
also suggests that gossip about Chrysostoms unsociable dining habits arose
in part because of his refusal to participate in the indulgence of his peers.
There may be a reference here to the events described earlier in section , of
Palladius work, where he is said to have looked into the churchs accounts
soon after his ordination, restricting the extravagant expenditure he found
there, not least in the accounts of the bishop, and diverting the money to
the poor.
It may be the case, then, that some Christians were happier, by the
fourth century ce, to see themselves as inheritors of the dining habits
of their classical ancestors, but others, if John Chrysostoms sermons are
anything to go by, were very much less so. No doubt few would have
lived up to his instructions in full, but ascetic practices of a rather less
extreme kind would nevertheless have been a common part of the rhythms
of the religious life of Chrysostoms congregations, for example through
the fasting which was required during Lent.
;:
;c
See Kelly (:,,,), esp. :,,.
;:
See van de Paverd (:,,:), esp. :o::c: for a painstaking reconstruction of Lenten fasting practices
and their relation to the standard meal habits and meal times within fourth-century ce Antioch,
with reference to John Chrysostoms Homilies on the Statues, delivered during Lent of ,;.
:,o Saints and Symposiasts
There are even parallels for this kind of rejection of traditional elite
conviviality and old-fashioned images of the literary symposium within
pagan writing. To illustrate that, I want to turn nally to the emperor
Julian. He spent a large proportion of his short reign in Antioch in the
early ,ocs, using the city as a major focus for his unsuccessful attempts to
reconvert the empire to paganism. It is hard to imagine two men further
apart in terms of religious outlook than Julian and John Chrysostom, and
indeed Chrysostom mocks Julian a number of times in his preaching, two
decades or more later.
;:
But for all those differences, they did have certain
fundamental things in common. Julian, like Chrysostom (and very much
unlike Libanius), was committed to a strongly separatist view of religious
identity, positing clear boundaries between pagan and Christian. He was
also committed to a frugal lifestyle, priding himself on the suppression of
his physical appetites. In this respect he drew on philosophical traditions
of moderation, of the kind we have seen especially for Plutarch, but he was
also clearly inuenced by, and in rivalry with, Christian asceticism.
;,
These
factors between them go a long way towards explaining why Julian makes
little mention of sympotic conviviality in all his surviving writings.
;
Of course one could, in principle, imagine a strongly separatist version
of pagan religion which would use traditional civic feasting and traditional
sympotic commensality to create a sense of community in opposition to
Christianity. Julian, however, took a very different direction. The element
of pagan tradition he was most interested in, and which took up most of
his energies, was sacrice.
;,
His obsession with his own status as priest and
emperor, communicating with the gods on behalf of his subjects through
;:
For a good example, see Homily on St Babylas (PG ,c.,,,;:), partially translated with analysis in
Lieu (:,o) :o; discussion in Schatkin (:,,c) :,oc. Swain (:cc) ,,,cc suggests that the
Homily was a response to Libanius pro-Julianic work On Avenging Julian (Oration :), delivered
before the new emperor Theodosius in ,;,; see also Sandwell (:cc;) ;o;.
;,
On Julians frugality, see Claudius Mamertinus, Speech of Thanks to Julian ::::; Libanius ::.,,,
:o.: and :.:,c; and in Julians own writing: Misopogon ,cbc; To the Uneducated Cynics :,oc;
Ammianus Marcellinus ::. on his sacking of large numbers of cooks who had served his predecessor,
Constantius.
;
That is not to say that Julian completely neglects the institutions of elite commensality: e.g.
Julian, Letter : (Bidez and Cumont (:,::)), an invitation to dinner to a learned friend Eustochius
(numbered as Letter , in Wrights (:,:,) Loeb translation); also two letters where Libanius writes
to one of Julians priestly representatives, Bacchius, praising Bacchius organisation of several days
of eating and drinking as part of a festival of Artemis, with the implication that Julian will approve:
Letter ;:c in Foersters (:,c,:;) Teubner edition (numbered as Letter , in Normans (:,,:) Loeb
translation); Letter ;:: (translated with brief comment by Bradbury (:cc) :::,); discussed briey
by Goldhill (:cco) :::c.
;,
On the nickname of victimarius (butcher), applied to him because of his many sacrices, see
Ammianus Marcellinus ::.:.,; and cf. ::.::.o and :,..:; for a much more disparaging view of
Julians repeated sacrices than the one Libanius gives, discussed by Geffcken (:,;) :,c; on Julians
personal appearance, especially mockery of his beard, see Ephraem the Syrian, Hymns against Julian
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,;
the rite of sacrice, seems to have preoccupied him at the expense of other
kinds of traditional behaviour precisely because blood sacrice was viewed
as incompatible with Christianity, and so more likely to provoke confronta-
tion with the empires Christian population.
;o
Julian sacriced repeatedly
and obsessively, basing his practice not only on traditional rationales for
blood sacrice, but also on Neoplatonic beliefs about the way in which sac-
rice achieved direct communication with the divine sphere, an idea which
was linked with the contemporary Neoplatonic practice of theurgy.
;;
In
doing so he showed almost no interest in personal participation in the civic
feasting which traditionally followed. In this he seems to have misjudged
the preferences of his Antiochene subjects, who might well have warmed
to a vast imperial investment in occasions of public feasting, but took no
interest in Julians more austere version of sacricial communion with the
Olympian deities.
;
Julian, like John Chrysostom, was a very unconvivial
gure.
There is one obvious exception, and that is Julians peculiar work, the
Symposium or Caesars, written probably in December ,o: ce in Antioch.
;,
:., (see Lieu (:,o) ::: for translation), who describes how the beard is saturated with the smoke of
sacrice; and for Julians self-mockery, see Misopogon, esp. ,,b,,,c, with Gleason (:,o), esp. ::,
and Lieu (:,o) ,,.
;o
See Bradbury (:,,,) ,,; for that argument.
;;
On the inuence of Neoplatonic thinking, especially that of Iamblichus, over Julians ideas about the
emperor as priest, and the priest as intermediary with the gods, see Geffcken (:,;) :,c; Bowersock
(:,;) o; Athanassiadi-Fowden (:,:) ::,; Harl (:,,c) :::,; Bradbury (:,,,) ,,::, emphasising
that the value of blood sacrice was much debated within Neoplatonism; and for a good example
of explicit expression of a Neoplatonic view of sacrice in Julians work, see Letter :, (Bidez and
Cumont (:,::), numbered as Letter :c in Wrights (:,:,) Loeb translation), discussed by Harl (:,,c)
::. On Julians representation of his own actions as traditional, see Smith (:,,,) :o;c; Geffcken
(:,;) :,c; however, Julians willingness to sacrice alone so often suggests that he may be departing
a little from classical precedents (although the practice of sacricing alone was not unprecedented in
earlier Greek or Roman culture: see Bowie (:,,,) ;, on individual sacrice in Greek culture; Parker
(:cc,) oo;, ,,; on the practice of an ofcial sacricing on behalf of a polis or other community):
for vivid description of Julian sacricing alone, see Libanius :.::o; and ::.:; also Harl (:,,c)
:::: on a more general shift towards the belief that an individual could sacrice on behalf of a
community. See also Harl (:,,c) :: on Julians habit of offering clandestine sacrices to secure victory
while commander of the western army in Gaul (with reference to Ammianus Marcellinus ::.:., and
others); Smith (:,,,) :o;c on Julians self-image as high-priest and commander-in-chief of the
Roman empire, safeguarding its security by his continual communication with the gods.
;
He complains repeatedly about their failure to support his campaign of pagan revival: e.g. Misopogon
,oc, ,,cbc, ,o:d,o,c; on the declining interest in blood sacrice within late-antique paganism,
see Bradbury (:,,,); see also Smith (:,,,) :o, on one further reason for the disapproval of the
Antiochenes: the sight of soldiers gorged on sacricial meats was not likely to please the inhabitants
of a city in the grip of a corn shortage.
;,
See Martin (:,,:) :,;c; Lacombrade (:,o:) and (:,o) ,,: (the latter for Greek text); Alonso-
Nu nez (:,;); Baldwin (:,;); Bowersock (:,:); Relihan (:,,:) :,o, (:,,,) ::,, and (:,,,)
:::o; M uller (:,,) for German commentary (also on Julians Misopogon) with introduction;
Sardiello (:ccc), for commentary with introduction in Italian, esp. viiiix for this dating; Weinbrot
:, Saints and Symposiasts
The Caesars is a debate, set in heaven during the festival of the Saturnalia,
between the former emperors of Rome. The rst half is taken up with a
lengthy catalogue of the various emperors arriving at the banquet, with
irreverent description of the physical appearance and character of each.
Following on from that, a number of the emperors are chosen: Julius
Caesar, Alexander the Great, who has won a special dispensation from
Zeus to be present, Octavian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius and Constantine,
who has been brought in at the last minute and told to stand at the door
without entering on the grounds that the banquet requires the presence
of a lover of pleasure, in the interests of completeness. Each speaks in
turn in praise of himself, and is then cross-examined. Marcus Aurelius
is proclaimed winner. Constantine leaves in the closing pages with the
goddesses Pleasure and Proigacy, and with Jesus, who is described as their
companion.
Here, then, we seem to have a work which contradicts the picture of
Julians lack of convivial interests I have sketched above. However that
impression does not stand up to closer scrutiny. For one thing, it would be
hard to see this as evidence for any serious interest in elite conviviality on
Julians part: this is so far removed from a realistic occasion as to be almost
irrelevant to the question of Julians own views on convivial practice. Nor
does it prove any particular fascination for the symposium as a literary
form. Apart from anything else, the work is not so sympotic as it initially
looks. The text makes almost no reference to the convivial context of the
work after the debate begins in ,:ob. And it owes more to the conventions
of Menippean satire especially Latin texts like Senecas Apocolocyntosis,
but also the work of Lucian in Greek than to the Platonic symposium
tradition.
c
More importantly, when elements familiar from that Platonic sympo-
sium tradition do come into view, it often seems that Julian is expressing
his contempt for them. The work indulges in the common sympotic
fantasy of creating an imagined community bringing together gures from
different periods of the past. Julian allows us to eavesdrop on his most
famous predecessors as emperor, raising questions in the process about
his own relationship with them. It is striking, however, that the work
(:cc,) ,co:. The work was written during Julians reign, though not necessarily during his time in
Antioch.
c
Relihan (:,,,) :,o, n. : argues that the work does not t into the symposium genre proper and
prefers to view it as an example of Menippean satire, the subject of his book; however, in an earlier
publication (Relihan (:,,:) :,o), he is happier to accept links with earlier sympotic texts; and see
also Sardiello (:ccc) x and xiiixiv for suggestive discussion of Julians adaptation of elements of
Platos Symposium.
Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in late antiquity :,,
presents us with a highly negative depiction of that community, as Joel
Relihan has shown.
:
All of the various emperors are mocked in turn by
Silenus as they enter the dining room, in ways which are appropriate to
the works setting at the festival of the Saturnalia, which was traditionally
an occasion for overturning hierarchies.
:
The six speakers are allowed to
speak in praise of their own achievements, but three of them are again
mocked immediately after they nish speaking; and then in the second
round of interrogation which follows, all of them are subjected to mockery
yet again. That repeated, comical denigration of them, focused especially
on their devotion to pleasure, sexual pleasure in particular, paints them
as parasites, the gluttonous gures from comedy whose main function in
sympotic contexts was to be the butt of jokes (as we shall see further in
chapter ,, below). Those parasitical connotations contaminate their status
as dignied, debating symposiasts. Not only that, but the gods themselves
are treated as absurd: they seem happy to let all of the emperors into
Olympus, even the debauched Christian emperor Constantine; and they
choose not to acknowledge the victory of Marcus Aurelius, whose moral
superiority is made clear. Julian makes it clear in the nal lines of the work,
which mention his own devotion to Mithras, that he himself will not be
joining his predecessors in this absurd parody of a pagan heaven: his own
destiny lies elsewhere.
,
His ascetic qualities also set him apart from them:
the description of Marcus Aurelius philosophical virtues is clearly meant
to remind us of Julians own reputation for philosophical moderation.

There are, to be sure, echoes of Julians beliefs about sacrice in the open-
ing lines of the work: Sacricing for the festival of the Kronia, Romulus
invited all the gods and indeed the emperors (,c;b). It is as though that
opening word sacricing magically opens up a new fantasy world
of communication with the heavens, just as the rituals of sacrice do in
Julians view. But what we see perhaps with a hint of self-mockery on
Julians part
,
is an absurd parody of those beliefs, opening a path not
:
See Relihan (:,,,) ::,, and (:,,,) :::o.
:
See Relihan (:,,,) ::: on this and other appropriately Saturnalian features of the work.
,
For that point, see Relihan (:,,,) ::o; and see also ::,: The Caesars makes fun of all Julians
predecessors and separates him from them and the silly heaven in which they are to be found.

See Caesars ,,,b,,a where Marcus Aurelius represents his own frugality and his desires to be close
to the gods in terms very similar to Julians own, even mentioning his belief in the need for the gods
to be nourished by sacrice; on the links with Marcus Aurelius, see Bowersock (:,;) :,:o and
:c::, pointing out that Julian also implies a link between himself and Alexander the Great, who
like him is said to have attached a high value to closeness to the gods; Athanassiadi-Fowden (:,:)
:cc; Relihan (:,,:) :,; and (:,,,) ::;; Sardiello (:ccc) xixxxii.
,
However, see Relihan (:,,,) on the relative lack of self-parody in this work, by comparison with the
Misopogon, on which see Gleason (:,o).
:cc Saints and Symposiasts
to the real, Neoplatonic heaven, but instead to a comical quasi-Homeric
travesty of it.
o
Julians own practice, by implication, is on a higher plane.
He is not, after all, present at the banquet he describes. His own vision
of pagan religion and imperial virtue is very far removed from the absurd
version he offers us here. In reaching for a framework for mockery of his
predecessors, then, Julian turns naturally to an image of elite, sympotic
community.
Julian was, to be sure, a very peculiar and idiosyncratic representative of
pagan religious belief. Nevertheless his writings offer us a vivid illustration
of the way in which Christian suspicion of sympotic practice and sympotic
literature could be to some extent shared by pagan authors. Antiochs
traditions of festive and sympotic commensality continued to ourish. But
for some authors a set of distinctive pressures especially new attitudes to
asceticism and to religious difference combined to produce very negative
attitudes to those same traditions. The Caesars is at rst sight a prominent
exception to Julians lack of interest elsewhere in elite conviviality. On closer
inspection, however, it is consistent with that impression. Julian constructs
a fantasy sympotic community of his great predecessors only to express his
contempt for that community and distance himself from it, stressing his
own philosophical moderation in contrast with their debauchery.
o
The fantasy of dining with the gods is far from unique: for example Lucian several times indulges in
it, e.g. in Icaromenippus :;. In Julians case, however, that fantasy image takes on extra signicance
in the light of his Neoplatonic theorisation of the theurgic workings of sacrice. Relihan (:,,,) :,o,
n. , rightly refutes Packs suggestion (:,o) that the heaven of the Caesars is like that of Julians
serious Neoplatonic works.
chapter 8
Macrobius
introduction
In the last chapter, the literary symposium was remarkable above all for its
absence or more accurately for the fact that its inuence is often restricted
within early Christian and late antique culture, diluted or drowned out by
new priorities. In this chapter it returns more clearly to view, as we turn to
the last great sympotic miscellany of the classical world, the Saturnalia of
Macrobius.
:
This long text (in seven books, which stretch over three volumes in
the Loeb Classical Library series) purports to record a single conversation
spread over the three days of the festival of the Saturnalia. The twelve
guests include some of the most famous literary and political gures of late
fourth-century ce Rome, among themVettius Praetextatus (in whose house
the conversation is set) and Symmachus, both of whom were prominent
members of the pagan aristocracy; also Servius, the famous grammarian
and commentator on Virgil.
:
The conversation ranges over a wide variety
of subjects, but the biggest single topic is the poetry of Virgil, which
occupies the whole of Books , , and o. For a long time the Saturnalia
was identied as a text written in the last decades of the fourth century
ce, soon after the conversations dramatic date (probably ,, or ,:),
,
as
part of the movement for pagan revival, but it now seems likely that it
was written much later, probably in the ,cs. Macrobius, whose full name
was Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, seems to have served as praetorian
prefect of Italy in ,c. With that redating in mind, the Saturnalia has come
to be viewed not so much as a militant intervention into current religious
:
For text and translation, see Kaster (:c::); also available is the older translation by Davies (:,o,); as
much as c per cent of the work has been lost: see Kaster (:c::) liv, n. ,;.
:
For the guests, see Kaster (:c::) xxvxxxvi.
,
See Cameron (:c::) :,o; Kaster (:c::) xxivv.
:c:
:c: Saints and Symposiasts
controversies, but instead as a less confrontational celebration of traditional
culture.

It may even be the case that Macrobius was himself Christian.

,
Whether
that is right or not, it seems likely that many features of Macrobius treat-
ment of the classical past would have appealed to educated Christians
as well as to those who still had some religious commitment to the old
Olympian gods. This is a very different text from the works of Augus-
tine or John Chrysostom. It is, one might say, the literary equivalent of
the classicising banqueting art of late antiquity, or the sympotic equiva-
lent of the classicising poetry of Nonnus and others like him, devoted to
celebration of the classical past. Moreover, the new attitudes to author-
ity which Macrobius uses the symposium format to explore were shared
by pagans and Christians alike. Like the Christian authors of chapter ;,
he shows a wariness of excessive disputatiousness, as we shall see in what
follows. I should stress again that this is not a uniquely late-antique trait:
Plutarch too had worried about symposiasts who carry competitiveness
too far; Lucians Symposium presents us with a comically exaggerated image
of the same worries, in its portrayal of brawling philosophers. I want
to suggest, however, that Macrobius work embodies those anxieties to
a much greater degree. That is obvious above all in Saturnalia Book ;,
where Macrobius rewrites or in some cases translates verbatim scenes
from Plutarchs Sympotic Questions. In doing so he cuts out many of
the portrayals of competitive speech which were so central to Plutarchs
original.
That rewriting of Plutarch is the subject of the nal and longest
section of this chapter. Before we turn to Book ;, however, I discuss
two other features of the text: rst, its use of the multivocal traditions
of the literary symposium; and second, its construction of an idealised
Roman version of sympotic community. Both of these features, too, are
heavily marked by Macrobius commitment to ideals of consensus and
harmony.

For the old view, see Bloch (:,o,) :c;,; for redating, and for the identity of Macrobius, see
Cameron (:,oo), with further consideration in (:c::) :,:;:; and D opp (:,;) for objections; and
for further discussion, see (among others) Kaster (:,ca) ::,; de Paolis (:,;); Hedrick (:ccc)
;,, who argues against the idea that the Saturnalia is a nostalgic text whose pagan content is
entirely domesticated and unthreatening to Christianity.
,
See Hedrick (:ccc) ;,c; Cameron (:c::) :o,;:; Kaster (:c::) xxixxiv. Some scholars take the
opposite view, thanks to the sheer volume of his celebration of the religious heritage of the pagan
past: for an eloquent recent statement of that position, see Goldlust (:cc,); cf. Frateantonio (:cc;);
and for detailed discussion of the theology of Saturnalia Book :, see Syska (:,,,).
Macrobius :c,
many voices and one voice in the saturnalia
Macrobius shares with Plutarch and Athenaeus a fascination with bringing
to life the voices of the past. That fact goes a long way towards explaining the
attraction Macrobius might have had for his contemporary readers (some-
thing modern commentators have not always found easy to understand).
o
There was a great deal of continuity in the prestige of encyclopaedic and
miscellanistic culture in the rst ve centuries ce and even beyond. That
said, some features of Macrobius citational strategy are very different from
what we nd in Plutarch and Athenaeus and other earlier authors. Most
strikingly, Macrobius relies much more often on unattributed verbatim
quotation, and with the idea that a word-for-word translation or quotation
can take on a new character when recontextualised and spoken in a new
voice. I amnot referring here to the practice of peppering ones conversation
with brief allusions to famous texts, but rather to Macrobius practice of
using much longer verbatim quotations, which sometimes occupy whole
paragraphs or pages (as we shall see in looking at Book ; below). There
are obvious parallels in the long quotations in Athenaeus.
;
The difference
is that Athenaeus long quotations are nearly always attributed, even if
we sometimes lose sight of who is speaking. Macrobius are usually not.
What does Macrobius aim to achieve by that style of quotation? On
one level he is using that technique in order to celebrate the Romanness of
his own work. From its earliest days in the republic, Roman literature had
been heavily dependent on translation of Greek originals. Macrobius in this
work celebrates the way in which Virgil translates verbatim from Homer,
while also in the process creating something fresh and new in his own
voice. His Saturnalia is itself an embodiment of those particularly Roman
ways of doing literature. The closest parallel, within the miscellanistic
tradition, for Macrobius verbatim styles of quotation is Aulus Gellius,
who is similarly concerned with Romanising Greek ways of speaking and
learning. Macrobius regularly reproduces sections of Gellius own work
almost word for word.

o
Renaissance readers seem to have found that easier than we do, although his work was also denigrated
by some: see Lecompte (:cc,), esp. :;: on Renaissance interest in his views on allegory, on the value
of poetry, and on the processes of literary imitation (on which see further below); cf. Kelly (:,,,)
for similar observations on medieval interest in Macrobius. Macrobius allegorising commentary on
Ciceros Dream of Scipio was also much read in the medieval west.
;
On the likely inuence of Athenaeus over Macrobius, see Cameron (:,oo) :, n. ,,.

On Macrobius use of Gellius, see L ogdberg (:,,o) :;; Tuerk (:,o,); Flamant (:,;;) ::;
Gunderson (:cc,) :,,o,, with particular reference to Macrobius (Gellian) lifting of passages from
Gellius; Goldlust (:cc;) ,:,.
:c Saints and Symposiasts
However, we also need to take account of Macrobius late antique con-
text, which is crucial to his very consensual, respectful attitude to the texts
he quotes. One particularly important landmark here is the work of Robert
Kaster, who has done more than anyone over the last few decades to make
sense of Macrobius text and the way in which it reects the world in which
Macrobius was living. For example his pioneering work on grammatical
knowledge in late antiquity has revealed how the grammarian, with his
intricate knowledge of Latin and Greek language and of the canonical
texts of classical literature, and his ability to quote from them at length,
stood as a guardian of the cultural and literary heritage. Mastery of that
heritage continued to act as a passport to social distinction even in the
post-Constantinian era.
,
Grammarians were sometimes criticised, as they
had been also in Plutarchs work,
:c
for the narrowness of their engagement
with texts. Macrobius himself offers a negative portrayal of that narrow-
ness of vision.
::
However, he also draws on grammatical techniques heavily
throughout the Saturnalia,
::
and in the gure of Servius he goes out of his
way to offer us an idealised image of what a grammarian should ideally
be, as someone who can open a channel of communication between past
and present.
:,
Kaster stresses, too, the importance for Macrobius contem-
poraries of creating a harmonious interpretative community, appropriately
reverent towards the texts of the past, and committed to consensual dis-
cussion in the present.
:
Others have made important strides in showing that many of these
features of Macrobius work have resonances even with Christian authors
from the same period. For example Catherine Chin has written about the
association between reading and piety both in Macrobius and in fourth-
and fth-century Christian literature.
:,
Sabine MacCormack has shown the
close similarity between Macrobius and Augustine in their fascination with
knowing and quoting Virgil, reusing his words as their own. She also stresses
the fact that both Christian and pagan literary tradition relied on devotion
to a single work: Just as in Augustines world, the books of Christian
scriptures somehow enshrined all that was worth saying and moreover
,
See esp. Kaster (:,).
:c
See pp. o,o, above.
::
See Kaster (:,cb) :,,.
::
See Flamant (:,;;) :,,,:; Kaster (:,ca) and (:,cb).
:,
Kaster (:,ca) and (:,cb) ::;:: (::: and again :,, for that quotation), pointing out that Mac-
robius idealised Servius is at odds with the picture which emerges from Servius own writing; also,
more briey, Kaster (:,) oc:, :;::.
:
See esp. Kaster (:,cb) :c; for a more general account of the way in which an interest in the history
and writings of the Roman past was a key component of elite identity for many Latin readers in late
antiquity, see Eigler (:cc), esp. :,o, on the role of the grammarian as the guardian of tradition.
:,
See Chin (:cc) ,oc on Macrobius.
Macrobius :c,
formed the speech and collective imagination of a Mediterranean-wide
community, so in the world of Macrobius did Vergil and some of the
Latin classics.
:o
Macrobius commitment to the idea of many voices being
channelled through the single voice of the symposiast, who is himself seen
as a representative of a harmonious wider community, is closer in many
ways to what we have seen in Clement and Methodius than it is to Plutarch
and Athenaeus.
Macrobius is very much of his time, then, in the techniques he uses for
preserving and exploring the classical past, with their stress on reverence
and harmony. His own distinctive vision of harmonious speech, based on
quotation and absorption of source texts, is laid out memorably in his
preface.
:;
The work is addressed to his son, Eustathius. After an opening
claim about the importance parents attach to their childrens education,
Macrobius launches into a description of how the Saturnalia aims to full
that goal for Eustathius. He explains rst of all that his intention has been
to put his own reading at his sons disposal:
I make a point of reading myself on your behalf, and whatever I have toiled
through in various volumes, both Greek and Latin, whether after your birth or
before, let all of this be a resource of knowledge for you, and if you ever need some
point of history, which lies hidden out of sight of most people in a mass of books,
or if you need to recall some memorable deed or saying, it will be easy for you to
nd and extract it (facile id tibi inventu atque depromptu sit), as if from a kind of
literary storehouse (quasi de quodam litterarum peno). (Sat. :. pr. :)
It is clear immediately that Macrobius is offering a rather different kind
of educational benet from that which we saw in Plutarchs Sympotic
Questions, which takes a more dynamic view of the processes of citation.
The last two phrases are taken with only minimal adjustment from the
opening of Aulus Gellius Attic Nights (preface :), which, like Macrobius,
offers (albeit very disingenuously) a relatively simple picture of his works
usefulness as a compilation to be mined for quotations.
:
:o
See MacCormack (:,,) , (;, for that quotation); also Lim (:cc) on Virgil in Augustines
early writings.
:;
On Macrobian concepts of imitation in the preface, see (among others) Long (:,,,:ccc) ,,c;
Gunderson (:cc,) :,,o; Lecompte (:cc,) ,c:,; see also Chin (:cc) ,,o on the language of
obligation in these sections.
:
On Gellius use of that language, see Vessey (:,,) :,c:,:. In practice Gellius approach to
the compilation of knowledge is not so purely functional as he claims: the Attic Nights is a
challenging text, which constantly provokes us as readers to think about what are the right
principles for interpretation, and offers us a wide range of different models for reading. I have
learned a great deal from Joe Howleys as yet unpublished doctoral work on that aspect of Gellius
work.
:co Saints and Symposiasts
From there Macrobius introduces some rather un-Gellian ideas about
the way in which source texts can be brought to life through the process of
quotation. The main point he makes, through a long stream of different
images, is that a diverse range of quoted texts will resolve themselves into
a kind of unity when combined with each other. He makes the point rst
of all for the text of the Saturnalia: a combination of different topics,
diverse in their authors and mixed together in their chronology has been
arranged in a kind of body, in such a way that things which I had noted
down indiscriminately and without distinction in support of my mem-
ory might come together in harmonious order in the manner of limbs
(:. pr. ,). Macrobius seems to be talking here about the way in which indi-
viduals absorb many different sources before reproducing them as integral
parts of a single, coherent voice within the kind of conversation which
we will see in the rest of the work. He then moves from discussion of the
composition of his own work into a more generalised set of recommen-
dations. For example he suggests that we should act like bees gathering
together wisdom from many owers and transforming it to a single avour
of honey (:. pr. ,); or like a choir whose diverse voices are resolved into a
single sound (:. pr. ,). The process of transformation is an organic one,
he suggests, like the bodys digestion of food: Let us do the same in the
case of the knowledge by which our intellects are nourished, in order that
whatever we imbibe should not be allowed to remain intact and therefore
foreign from us, but should instead be digested; otherwise these things can
enter our memories but not our minds (:. pr. ;). Macrobius in fact acts
out these principles of digestion even in stating them, since much of :. pr.
,, is lifted almost verbatim from Seneca (Ep. .::c), and ingeniously
made compatible with the rather different Gellian passages used earlier in
the preface, making both of them into an organic part of his own voice.
:,
Immediately after that address to Eustathius, Macrobius explores those
ideas of imitation further through his rewriting of the framing conversation
of Platos Symposium (Sat. :.:.::). We hear a speaker called Decius, asking
his friend Postumanius for anaccount of the banquet inthe expectationthat
Postumianus had been there himself: I have recently spent time with others
who expressed amazement at the strength of your memory, which often
:,
On this use of Seneca, see Gunderson (:cc,) :o:,, and more generally :,o; and :oc on the
way in which Macrobius departs from Gellius through this idea of unity through digestion, which
unites Gellius fragments of knowledge into a single conversation in the Saturnalia; cf. Flamant
(:,;;) :;:; Long (:,,,:ccc) ,,,c; and for debate about the difference between Macrobius
concept of imitation and Senecas, with reference to this passage, see Pigman (:,c) ,o and De
Rentiis (:,,).
Macrobius :c;
recites in order all that was said there (:.:.:). Postumianus explains that
he was not present, but that he managed to persuade his friend Eusebius,
who was present himself for some of the banquet, to tell the story:
I will do, he [i.e. Eusebius] said, as you wish. I will not tell you about the food
and the drink even though these were provided abundantly yet temperately
but I will recall, to the best of my ability, the things which were said by them at
table and especially what was said when they were not dining during those days.
As I listened I felt that I was entering the life of those who are called blessed by
wise men, for I also discovered, from the information given by Avienus, the things
which were said on the day before he arrived, and all of this I have committed to
writing, to prevent it from being undermined by forgetfulness. (Sat. :.:.:::,)
Postumianus than undertakes to repeat the whole account to Decius in
turn. The narrative layering which in Plato raises questions about the
degree to which the reported speeches are verbatim reections of the orig-
inal conversation
:c
is here rewritten to t Macrobius preoccupations
with verbatim imitation. In other words, Postumianus accurate repetition
of Eusebius own accurate repetition of the conversation, some of which is
itself repeated from Avienus, is an example of precisely the principles laid
out in the preface (and precisely the principles of which Virgil is shown
to be the supreme practitioner in the bulk of the text which follows),
::
of
faithful quotation which is moulded to the idiom of the new speaker, but
without ever losing its original character. And Macrobius goes out of his
way to stress the accuracy of these reports, accuracy which is partly due to
oral transmission but also, like his own work, to the technologies of written
record keeping.
For all its appreciation of faithful quotation, however, Macrobius model
of interaction with the learning of the past is not by any means a passive
one. He is fascinated by the way in which verbatim quotations can be
woven together to make something fresh, as constituent parts of a new
and coherent voice. Macrobius Saturnalia is a work which exemplies and
even draws attention to the dialogic quality of human utterance as Bakhtin
describes it, in other words the way in which speech always carries the traces
of earlier uses of language. As Sabine MacCormack has put it (though not
with explicit reference to Bakhtin): Language, for Macrobius, was what the
present user made of it, even though the thoughts and expressions of the
:c
Cf. above, p. :;c.
::
See ,.::: on Virgils borrowings from Greek authors and o.:, on his borrowings from old Latin
poets. On Macrobius representation of the relations between Virgil and his models, with special
reference to the inuence of Macrobius on poetic practice in the Middle Ages, see Kelly (:,,,)
,o;.
:c Saints and Symposiasts
present were inseparable fromwhat had been thought and written earlier by
others.
::
As Erik Gunderson has suggested, in relation to both Gellius and
Macrobius, there is a space for doing ones own reading and making ones
own remarks, but this species of originality and authenticity occurs
within the horizon of a circumscribed universe of citations.
:,
Macrobius,
perhaps more so than for any of the other authors we have looked at, is com-
mitted to the idea that the voices of the past can speak through the speaker
of the present, inextricably mingling with his or her words and thoughts.
At the same time, however, as we shall see in a moment, Macrobius resists
the stronger version of Bakhtinian dialogism, much more so than earlier
sympotic works in the Greco-Roman tradition: as the dominant prefatory
metaphors of blending and harmony suggest, this is a text that tends to
suppress the unresolved dramatisation of alternative viewpoints.
roman community, roman past, roman present
The community of Macrobius Saturnalia is strongly marked as a Roman
community. The massive compendium of knowledge which follows on
from the preface is difcult to summarise,
:
but one thing which is imme-
diately clear is the depth of its engagement with subjects specic to the city
of Rome: its history, ritual, language, and the founding texts of writers like
Varro and (especially) Virgil. These things still mattered for Macrobius
contemporaries. Some scholars, in response to the works redating to the
,cs ce, have viewed it as a nostalgic work, looking back not only to the
culture of the late republic and early empire, but also to the last golden
age of the pagan aristocracy of Rome. Macrobius does indeed present us
with an idealised image of late fourth-century elite community, drawing
on the sympotic privilege of anachronistically bringing together guests who
could not in practice have met (as he tells us explicitly in Saturnalia :.:.,).
:,
But seeing this as a work of elegy for a lost past underestimates, as Kaster
has shown, the way in which Macrobius provides his readers with models
and ideals which are still powerful for their own present-day world.
:o
We
saw in chapters : how the symposium in the classical world could be
viewed as a place for displaying social status and enacting ones afliation
to Greek tradition. Macrobius rewrites those traditions through the lens of
classicising Roman identity.
::
MacCormack (:,,) :.
:,
Gunderson (:cc,) :,.
:
For a summary of the works structure, see Kaster (:c::) xlvliii; cf. Flamant (:,;;), who analyses
in turn a number of different aspects of Macrobius erudition.
:,
Cf. Goldlust (:cc) :,,.
:o
See Kaster (:,ca) :oc, with reference to Matthews (:,o;).
Macrobius :c,
For example, he situates himself in a long Roman tradition of using
grammatical and literary knowledge in the service of social differentiation,
creating a fantasy community of the erudite, united by their shared under-
standing of correct usage and of the history of the Latin language.
:;
Like so
many of the sympotic communities of earlier Greek tradition, the guests at
the house of Praetextatus (and by implication also the works readers) are
united by their commitment (despite occasional disagreements) to shared
standards of literary judgement. These standards are never stated explicitly;
presumably they can be assimilated and internalised only by constant expo-
sure. An obvious example is Macrobius use of literary-critical terminology,
especially in relation to Virgil. In Saturnalia ,.:, for example, he lists in
turn what he presents as the four main types of Latin style and argues that
Virgil was the supreme exponent of all:
There are, said Eusebius, four types of style: the copious, in which Cicero is
master; the concise, in which Sallust reigns; the dry, which is attributed to
Fronto; the rich and orid in which Pliny the Younger used to indulge, and now,
no less than any of the ancients, our own Symmachus. But it is only in Maro [i.e.
Virgil] that you will nd all four of these types. (Sat. ,.:.;)
He proceeds to give examples of all four, and of a number of other styles
from Virgils work, but without any detailed explanation of what each
of these terms refers to or why each of these passages has been chosen.
Most modern readers will be left a little bewildered. Macrobius seems to
be appealing to an audience whose lifelong exposure to rhetorical and
literary-critical terminology allows them a kind of effortless appreciation.
:
In order to illustrate further the Romanness of Macrobius imagined
community, I want to turn now to the very opening pages of his Satur-
nalian conversation. The opening passages after the preface (and before
the framing conversation between Decius and Postumianus) emphasise
strongly the conversations Roman setting. Macrobius opens his account of
:;
See Chin (:cc) ; for suggestive comments along similar lines (with reference to Bourdieu (:,,:)):
I use Bourdieus basic insight, that standardized language teaching tends to produce and reproduce
class boundaries, to illuminate the production of imaginative boundaries through language teaching
in the Roman empire. The practice of grammar formed a technology of the imagination that allowed
its users to understand themselves as part of a coherent cultural system, one specically oriented
toward the valorization of an idealized past; and cf. Bloomer (:,,;) for similar insights into the
Latin literature of the republic and the early empire; above p. :c, on Kasters work on the cultural
authority of the grammarian; Chahoud (:cc;) on the Latin grammarian Nonius, who was probably
roughly contemporary with Macrobius, and who shows similar attitudes to the value of correct
Latin usage, grounded in the authority of the Latin writers of the republic, for asserting a Roman
identity in the present.
:
That said, these styles are slightly unconventional adaptations of the styles usually mentioned in
ancient rhetorical theory: see Kaster (:c::) vol. ii, ::o:;, n. , for brief analysis.
::c Saints and Symposiasts
it as follows: During the Saturnalia, at the house of Vettius Praetextatus,
the leading gures of the Roman nobility (Romanae nobilitatis proceres)
along with other learned men (doctique alii) gather together and assign this
traditional festival time to cultured conversation; they also share convivia
with each other with mutual friendliness, not separating from each other
until their night-time rest (Sat. :.:.:). Just as Plutarchs philosophical con-
versations in the Sympotic Questions are set within the context of local and
Panhellenic festival celebration, and presented as elevated equivalents of
festival activity, so the conversation Macrobius reports is embedded within
the rhythms of the Roman festival calendar.
:,
That implication recurs
repeatedly later. In :.;., for example, Praetextatus, speaking in response to
the teasing of the gatecrasher Evangelus who accuses them all of meeting
for the celebration of mysteries (secreta, :.;.) asks: Why should it not
be thought of as a mark of the honour given to religious feeling if we ded-
icate our sacred study of literature to these sacred days? Here Macrobius
draws on the traditional assumption that the practice of discussing Roman
ritual and religion within a literary context can itself be an act of religious
observance and a performance of Roman identity.
,c
We also see in the passage quoted above a picture of an elite community
parallel to the community of Plutarchs Sympotic Questions whose mem-
bers share common interests and are familiar with each others company.
,:
The difference is that in Macrobius case, despite the presence of some
non-Roman guests, including the Greeks Eustathius and Dysarius, who
are much maligned for their Hellenic ingenuity more on them in the
section following that community seems to be more tightly knit, con-
ned to the city of Rome itself, and incapable of matching the geographical
scope of Plutarchs conversations, with their many different locations.
For Macrobius, moreover, there is a link between erudite convivial con-
versation and political or legal activity which is perhaps meant to have
distinctively Roman overtones (although it does have some parallels in the
Sympotic Questions).
,:
We are reminded of that by Macrobius distinction
:,
The decision to set dialogue during festival time (discussed above for Plutarch, as well as Plato
and Xenophon, pp. ,), takes on additional associations within a Roman context, used in order
to press home the point that the men engaging in such conversations were making use of the
otium associated with the observance of particular religious festivals . . . Setting Latin dialogues in
festival-time thus helped deect a potential charge against Roman men of affairs for preferring
philosophising in the manner of the Greeks to the conduct of serious public business (Lim (:cc)
:,o;).
,c
See esp. Feeney (:,,); and Chin (:cc) ,oc, already discussed above.
,:
On the creation of an image of elite community in this opening section, see Goldlust (:cc).
,:
Not least in the gure of Plutarchs addressee, Sosius Senecio; on Senecios political role, see above,
p. ,c, n. ,.
Macrobius :::
between the proceres (leading gures) and the docti alii (other learned
men), the former being those who combine their erudition with active
involvement in public life. Some of the guests, for example Symmachus
,,
and the host Vettius Praetextatus, had inuential careers in Roman politics
over many decades. One of the speakers, Avienus, draws attention to this
political dimension explicitly in the opening of Book : in making known
his preference for this banquet ahead of Platos Symposium: for the ruler of
our table himself is not morally inferior to Socrates, and is at the same time
more effective than the philosopher in public life (nam ipse rex mensae nec
in moribus Socrate minor, et in re publica efcacior) (:.:.,). The speakers
whose analytical skills are on show in the Saturnalia by implication use dif-
ferent versions of those skills at other times, within the specically Roman
arenas of political and also religious life.
,
In much the same way, Virgil is
represented later in the work not only as a great poet, but also as an expert
in pontical and augural law, and in oratory.
,,
The conversation itself then begins (Sat. :.:.:,:,), immediately after
the framing exchange between Decius and Postumianus, with a discussion,
held on the eve of the Saturnalia, about when exactly the festival should
be said to begin. The speakers then separate for the evening, agreeing to
meet again, along with others, the next day. It is this second discussion,
on the rst morning of the Saturnalia, that I wish to focus on in the rest
of this section, in order to show how Macrobius begins to articulate his
own particular vision of the Romanness of the Saturnalian conversation he
presents to us.
Caecina Albinus is the speaker who takes up the challenge of explaining
the divisions of the Roman day, their rst topic of discussion on day two, in
:.,. His answer is on the surface a simple one: he argues clearly and unhesi-
tatingly for dividing the day on a midnight-to-midnight basis, in contrast
with the Athenians, who divide it from sunset to sunset, the Babyloni-
ans, from sunrise to sunrise, and the Umbrians, from midday to midday.
However, it becomes increasingly clear as he speaks in much the same
way as for Plutarchs sympotic discussions that this supercially simple
question opens up a wealth of examples and additional problems which
between them lead us deeper and deeper into the citys tangled antiquarian
heritage. The comparison with the Athenians and others derives, Caecina
,,
On the relationship between Macrobius Saturnalia and the correspondence of Symmachus
including their shared project of evoking a network of elite sociability see Guittard (:cc:).
,
Cf. Goldlust (:cc).
,,
On pontical law, see Sat. :.:.:o and ,.:::; on augural law, see :.:.:; (the later discussion of this
has not survived); on oratory, see :.:.,: and Book (of which only .:o survives).
::: Saints and Symposiasts
tells us, from Varro: Marcus Varro, in his work on Human Antiquities,
where he writes about days, says People who are born in the twenty-four
hours between the middle of one night and the middle of the next are said
to have been born on a single day (:.,.:). The fact that Varro is cited as
the very rst authority in the very rst extended contribution to the rst
of the Saturnalias conversations (both in that quotation and in a series of
others in the lines following) suggests that Macrobius may be signalling in
programmatic fashion his own alignment with Varros antiquarian project.
The second quoted author, not surprisingly, is Virgil, Macrobius other
great hero and model:
Virgil too shows the same thing, although as bets a man dealing in poetry, he
does it by an obscure and concealed mention of an ancient ritual: The damp
night wheels round the middle of its course / And the cruel dawn has blown on
me with its panting horses. For with these words he tells us that the day which
the Romans called the civil day begins in the sixth hour of the night. (Sat. :.,.:c)
Here Virgil is represented, with an ingenuity which is entirely typical of
Macrobius and indeed many of his contemporaries, as an expert in Roman
chronography equal to Varro.
In between these two quotations in Saturnalia :.,.,,, Albinus illustrates
his argument from three different areas of Roman life: religious ritual (the
magistrates take auspices before sunrise, and perform the act in relation to
which the auspices are taken after sunset, in order to full the requirement
that the two must be carried out on the same day); politics (the tribunes
can satisfy the requirement of not being absent from the city for more than
a day by leaving at rst light and returning before midnight); and law (a
woman who cohabits with a man will be deemed to have married him
if they cohabit for a whole year, unless there is at least one interruption
of three consecutive nights or more; if the woman departs from home
for three nights on the twenty-seventh of Decembers twenty-nine days,
according to Quintus Mucius the jurist, this will not count as the necessary
period of interruption, because the second half of the night of the twenty-
ninth of December will count as being in the following year). These three
examples show how the act of exploring even a relatively straightforward
question the passing of time is, after all, a thing which looks like a
self-evident part of universal human experience can lead one into a
labyrinth of erudition which not only reveals what is distinctive in Roman
perceptions of the world, as opposed to those of others, but can also
potentially touch on almost any area of Roman life, just as analysis of
Virgil can lead one into study of oratory or pontical law, or a whole
Macrobius ::,
wealth of other subjects. Roman identity like the text of Virgil is
so rich that it can be viewed from a great variety of different angles. And
within that labyrinth, we can very easily nd ourselves moving from simple
questions to new and increasingly complex ones. That happens in :.,.:::,,
immediately following this passage: there Caecina introduces an additional
set of problems about the different divisions of the day and the origins of
the words used to describe them.
One of the most consistent features of these techniques is the fact that
they involve excavating and engaging with the past. Understanding Roman
culture, for Macrobius speakers, involves looking beneath the surface of
everyday customs and everyday language to see the history which lies
beneath them. One of the places where those processes are most obvious
is in their etymologising analysis of the Latin language, where individual
words are assumed to carry traces of their original meanings and their
original use.
,o
The speakers debates over proper usage similarly involve
them in mapping out large numbers of previous examples of a particular
word or phrase in order to track its development over time. Both of those
techniques owe a great deal, once again, to Latin predecessors like Varro
and Gellius.
That ideal of close attention to the past articulated through discussion
of language becomes particularly clear in the chapter following (:.). At
the end of Caecinas speech, Avienus, one of the relatively few characters in
the Saturnalia with an instinct for disruptiveness, asks for an explanation
of some of the odd, archaic-sounding language Caecina has used. Here,
characteristically, new problems proliferate out of those just dealt with.
Caecina himself prefers not to answer, and the task of exposition is passed
across to Servius, who explains, with a wide array of examples, some
from quite obscure sources, why (among other examples) Caecina might
have been justied in using the genitive form Saturnaliorum, instead of the
regular Saturnalium. The unfamiliarity of even these most erudite of guests
with features of their own language is in its way quite startling, implying
as it does that their apparently effortless display of familiarity with sources
and traditions is in tension with a profound sense of the distance of the
past, and the language of the past, from the present.
,;
Nevertheless Servius
,o
Cf. MacCormack (:,,) ;,; on the theoretical foundations for Macrobius etymologising habit.
,;
For a passage which explores that tension between closeness and distance through the exercise of
comparison, see the long discussion of lavish republican dining habits in Book ,, which is several
times compared with present-day practice: see esp. Sat. ,.:,.:o; ,.:.:; ,.:.; cf. Purcell (:cc,) on the
way in which discussion of food was often a vehicle in Roman culture for exploring links between
past and present; and cf. further discussion below of the pontical banquet of Metellus in ,.:,.
:: Saints and Symposiasts
is able to bridge that gap. It is clear that his knowledge of the texts of the
past very much in line with what we see from Plutarchs symposiasts or
Athenaeus deipnosophists is in fact the product of enormous effort and
not available to all. His contribution stands as a triumphant monument
to the grammarians ability to preserve and reactivate Romes linguistic
heritage.
The following paragraphs issue a challenge to that ideal of engagement
with the past, before nally reasserting its value. First Avienus, in response
to Servius, expresses scepticism, recommending that they should imitate
history not through archaic styles of speech, but rather through their
behaviour.
,
In the process he sheds doubt specically on the value of
entering into dialogue with the past: you want to call back into use for
us words which were consigned to oblivion many centuries ago, almost as
if you were trying to talk with the mother of Evander [the mythical rst
settler of Rome] (Sat. :.,.:). Praetextatus reply to Avienus, which follows
immediately, is a remarkable reassertion not just of the validity of Servius
project of seeking to understand archaic language, but also of the specically
Macrobian principles of reusing the words of the past, which have been
outlined in the preface: Let us not arrogantly chastise the reverence of
antiquity, which is the parent of the arts; indeed you have betrayed your
love of antiquity even in attempting to disguise it (:.,.). Avienus, he
explains, has used, in the course of his criticism, the archaic phrase a
thousand of words (mille verborum), whereas the word thousand would
more usually be used, as in English, without the genitive. Praetextatus
demonstrates, in a passage which itself imitates Gellius, Attic Nights :.:o,
the archaic quality of Avienus usage, with a string of quotations fromVarro,
Cicero, Quadrigarius and Lucilius. Avienus intervention about Evanders
mother reminds us that the Roman past is very distant, for all the erudition
of these speakers. At the same time, however, his thousand of words, as
elucidated by Praetextatus, illustrates the way in which the past can speak
through us almost whether we know it or not. An alert reader might note,
moreover, that Avienus sarcastic comment about Evanders mother is itself
a more or less verbatim quotation from the words of Favorinus as reported
by Aulus Gellius in Attic Nights :.:c.:. Avienus words are marked by the
Roman literary heritage and the Roman past even as he criticises those who
give too much attention to it.
,
On this conversation see Kaster (:,ca) :o and (:c::) xl, who also shows how Avienus develops
in the course of the work towards a more nuanced understanding of the past, and moves away
from his initial brashness; cf. MacCormack (:,,) ;,c; Long (:,,,:ccc) on Avienus in Book
:, discussed further below.
Macrobius ::,
sympotic argument: macrobius and plutarch
What, though, does all of this have to do with the symposium?
,,
How does
the sympotic or rather convivial setting of the work make a difference
to our encounter with the Roman literary heritage, and the Roman inter-
pretive community constituted by Praetextatus guests? How, in particular
does Macrobius deal with traditions of sympotic argumentation, with its
tendency towards indeterminacy and disorder?
The rst thing to note is that some parts of the conversation are set in the
evening, as is traditional for the symposium, while others recount daytime
conversation. There are moments where Macrobius stresses the difference
between the serious conversation of the day and its more relaxed equivalent
in the evening,
c
but others where he stresses instead their similarity, in
claiming that the evening conversation will continue with the learned
enquiries of the day, avoiding gluttony and frivolity.
:
Should we conne
our analysis of sympotic tradition to the sympotic books? Or should we
see the spirit of Macrobius sympotic models spreading out beyond the
bounds of the evening?
Clearly there are differences. The rst days conversation in :.o: is
followed by evening discussion in :.:, the second half of which does
not survive. It is immediately clear that Book : has certain distinctively
sympotic qualities which are not present in Book :. Perhaps most obvious
is its subject matter. Book :, as we have seen already, focuses on questions
of ritual and language, arising from examination of the origins of the
Saturnalia, whereas Book : is mainly devoted to recounting jokes made by
famous people from the Roman past (including among others Cicero, and
the emperor Augustus and his daughter Julia). That topic is proposed in
response to Avienus call for more entertaining conversation: he reminds
his fellow guests that even Platos Symposium had musical entertainment
(Sat. :.:.,), and complains that we are not enriching with any admixture of
pleasure our reverence for the god whose festival this is (:.:.o). The jokes
of Book : follow the lead of Athenaeus in particular, who spends long
sections recording the humorous comments of famous symposiasts, for
example in his long account of famously witty parasites in Deipnosophists,
,,
On Macrobius use of the traditions of sympotic literature, see also Martin (:,,:) :co; Flamant
(:,o) and (:,;;) :;::,:; Relihan (:,,:) :,,; Petrovcov a (:cc) :, and (:cc;); Goldlust
(:cc;), esp. c:, who sees Macrobius use of a sympotic frame as relatively supercial.
c
E.g. Sat. :.:.; also :.:.:, where Praetextatus announces that their plan of praising Virgil in turn
(which is modelled on the successive praise of Eros in Platos Symposium), must wait until a better
time of day (meliorem partem diei), presumably because it is too serious for evening discussion.
:
E.g. Sat. :.,.::.
::o Saints and Symposiasts
Book o. In that sense the jokes offer us a rather different, more humorous
and in that sense more sympotic model of the interaction between
past and present than the more serious version we have seen already in
Servius speech in :..
:
We see a similar contrast for days two and three
of the festival. Daytime conversation in both cases is devoted to analysis
of Virgil (,.::: and Books ,o). The evening conversation on day two
(,.:,:c) is about gluttony, much of it with lengthy displays of obscure
gastronomic knowledge. The evening of day three (Book ;) deals with a
selection of sympotic topics, many of them scientic, in close imitation
of Plutarchs Sympotic Questions.
,
In addition we see repeated use of the
sympotic marker of spoudogeloion (seriocomic) in repeated claims that the
evening conversations paradoxically combine relaxation with sobriety and
seriousness.

On the whole, then, the distinction between sympotic and non-sympotic

periods in the gathering is strongly marked. That said, there are elements
of the daytime conversations which seem to have been affected by the
sympotic atmosphere of the evening ones. Virgil is presented, for example,
as an expert on sacricial practice and feasting (,.,o). He is also presented
as an expert on the archetypally Athenaean subject of different varieties
of drinking cups: For the most part Virgil gives Greek names to drinking
cups, such as carchesia, cymbia, canthari, scyphi. On carchesia he says the
following: Take carchesia of Maeonian wine, and let us pour a libation to
Ocean [Georgics .,c] and elsewhere Here duly pouring out as a libation
two carchesia with unmixed wine [Aeneid ,.;;] (Sat. ,.::.:). The speaker,
Eustathius, then spends several pages quoting, in highly deipnosophistic
style, mentions of these four types of cup from other authors in order to
work out more clearly exactly what each of them is. In these passages the
guests sympotic fascinations, and the convivial assumptions which under-
lie their Saturnalian community, ow out into the daytime conversations,
prompting them to co-opt Virgil as a fellow-guest who shares their culi-
nary or gastronomic interests. Conversely, as we shall see, there are ways
in which the evening conversations, like the daytime ones, do often hold
back from the frivolity one might expect at sympotic occasions.
There is thus no shortage of traditionally sympotic subject matter, both
in the evening conversations and also occasionally outside them. But how
:
See Long (:,,,:ccc) for that argument.
,
Cf. Flamant (:,o) ,:o; and see ;..: for Praetextatus explicit claim that the physiological topics
under discussion are suitable to the convivial context.

See :.:.: and :.:.:o for convivial cheerfulness combined with sobriety; also Flamant (:,o) ,:::,
and (:,;;) :,,:.
Macrobius ::;
do the Saturnalias techniques of argumentation and exposition compare
with what we nd in its Greco-Roman predecessors? There is plenty of
Athenaeus-style listing. For example, the evening conversation of day two
(Sat. ,.:,:c) imitates Athenaeus in weaving together a wide range of quo-
tations and anecdotes on particular foodstuffs (for example, long lists of
different types of nuts, apples and pears, gs, grapes in ,.::c) and on
the subject of gluttony more generally. There is one immediately strik-
ing difference, however, and that is simply the Romanness of Macrobius
account: the sources he quotes are almost exclusively Roman ones, in con-
trast with the predominant (though not exclusive) use of Greek examples
in Athenaeus. One particularly famous example comes in ,.:,.:c:::
Understand that luxury was not absent even among the most serious people. For I
remind you of that very ancient pontical dinner which is recorded in the fourth
digest [i.e. record of the fourth year of service] of the pontifex maximus Metellus:
On the ninth day before the Kalends of September, the day on which Lentulus
was inaugurated as amen of Mars, the house was decorated, the dining rooms
were spread with couches made of ivory. The pontiffs reclined in two dining
rooms: namely Quintus Catulus, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Decimus Silanus,
Gaius Caesar . . . [et al.] . . . They were served as appetisers sea urchins, as many
raw oysters as they wanted, mussels, cockles, thrushes with asparagus, fattened
fowls, a dish of baked oysters and mussels, acorn shellsh (both black and white);
then cockles again, clams, jellysh, gpeckers, loins of roe-deer and boar
and so on. This extravagant description, which offers a window on to
an earlier age, is a Roman version of the various accounts of extravagant
banquets we nd in Athenaeus (for example in Deipnosophists Book ,).
The way in which it is mapped on to the Roman religious calendar, with
a long list of distinguished public gures, equates Metellus account with
the conversation at the house of Praetextatus which the Saturnalia itself is
dedicated to recording. And the pontical character of the banquet suggests
a link with the daytime conversation of day two, as recounted in the rst
half of Book ,, where the speakers attempt to show Virgils expertise in the
eld of pontical law.
In the rest of this section, however, I want to compare Macrobius
at length not with Athenaeus but instead with Plutarch, especially in
relation to the nal surviving book of the Saturnalia, Book ;, which
quotes from the Sympotic Questions repeatedly. That relationship has been
largely neglected in scholarship on Macrobius,
,
which has generally been
,
The obvious exceptions are Flamant (:,;;) :c:, and more recently Brechet (:cc,), who sets out
Macrobius borrowings from the QC clearly, acknowledging their complexity, and even suggests
that the gure of Eustathius may be meant as a double for Plutarch himself (:,o).
:: Saints and Symposiasts
preoccupied instead with his use of Gellius.
o
A close inspection reveals
some very stark differences of approach. All sympotic works of course
enact a balance between harmony and chaos, between competition and
consensus, but in Macrobius case the ideal of harmony seems to take on
a much more prominent importance, playing a role which goes much fur-
ther than Plutarchs interest in maintaining polite and friendly relations
between guests, and forging a sense of community through discussion of
shared literary reference-points. Even within his more frivolous evening
conversations, Macrobius is careful to keep disagreements very much in
check. It is also striking that there is relatively little interest in spontaneous,
improvised argumentation, which acts in the Sympotic Questions as one
of the hallmarks of Plutarchan conviviality. And it is relatively rare for
the guests to challenge each others explanations. Plutarch regularly shows
several guests answering a question in turn with very different approaches,
whereas Macrobian speakers more often choose to treat a different topic
from that of the previous speaker although usually a topic which arises
from the previous contribution. Often they make up for that lack of dis-
pute by anticipating possible objections in advance. In the Saturnalia it is
questions, not answers, which proliferate, as the answer to each enquiry is
accepted without challenge and the next enquiry immediately introduced.
This ideal of consensus between the guests looks back to the imagery of
organic combination in the prologue, for example the choir whose many
voices sound together in a single unity (:. pr. ,).
As I have already noted, Robert Kaster has linked Macrobius obsession
with harmony and consensus to the authoritarian impulses of late antique
society.
;
He stresses the way in which the guests feel themselves to be part
of a clearly dened order, speaking in turn, and with a sense that all are
contributing to a common enterprise, each from his own different area of
expertise; and he points to the way in which that impression of unity is
facilitated by the dialogue form, which makes a virtue of the fragmenta-
tion of specialisation typical (in some accounts) of late antique society.

The obligation to maintain harmony is expressed in moral terms. Within

that atmosphere there is no place for competition. Moreover, harmony in
conversation stands as an equivalent to harmony between different ages:
literary borrowing conceived of as the preservation of and expression of
respect for the societas et rerum communio, the unied community of the
shared culture extending into the past, just as the intellectual borrowing
o
See above, n. .
;
Kaster (:,ca) and now (:c::) xxxviiixlv.

Kaster (:,ca) :,c. That effect is of course related to the motif we see in Plutarchs work of bringing
together guests from many different professions: see Hardie (:,,:) ;,o.
Macrobius ::,
among the participants in the symposium is a means of recognising and
afrming the order of the unied community of the present.
,
Dispute
is mocked or stamped out. Kaster even speaks of the way in which the char-
acters occasionally lapse into language of brute certainty which is utterly
alien to Plutarch.
,c
He has also shown how the work is conspicuously
lacking in laughter, drawing a contrast with Ciceros dialogues, where the
smile is an instrument of amused debate and rejoinder or accompanies
ironic banter; in Macrobius work, by contrast, the smile (which recurs
repeatedly as a motif ) is a signal that debate is being shut off.
,:
Plutarchan ingenuity is reshaped, then often via verbatim translation
from the Sympotic Questions, as we shall see in a moment for Book ;
as Macrobian consensus, in a way which seems strangely at odds with
the works setting, given the Saturnalias traditional association with the
overturning of hierarchies. Macrobius seeks a qualied, paradoxical ver-
sion of Saturnalian festival time which shuts out the idea of debunking
authority which is usually taken as one of the key qualities of Saturnalian
celebration.
,:
There are, admittedly, some places where Macrobius allows
his characters to irt a little more determinedly with styles of argumenta-
tion which break away from these images of consensus, but the challenge
to consensus is always ultimately suppressed (in much the same way as
Avienus argumentativeness is suppressed in his exchange with Servius and
Praetextatus in :.,, discussed above). The most striking examples of all
come in Book ;, whose ambivalent and self-conscious engagement with
Plutarchan speculativeness is in itself a fascinating example of Macrobius
techniques of verbatim imitation, which nevertheless manage to create a
nal product which feels immensely different from its model.
It is worth pausing for a little at this stage to set out at least some of the
ways in which that engagement with Plutarch develops in the course of the
,
Kaster (:,ca) :,,; cf. (:c::) xliiiv.
,c
Kaster (:,ca) ::.
,:
Kaster (:,ca) :,,. The smiles of Plutarchs dialogues do often have a certain amount in common
with those in the Saturnalia, in the sense that they tend to act as inward-looking expressions of
intellectual superiority and self-condence: for good sympotic examples, see Sympotic Questions ,.,,
o;oe and ;.:c, ;:,b and Artaxerxes :,; cf. (outside the symposium) Oracles at Delphi ;, ,,;b and
:,, c:b. Admittedly these Plutarchan smiles tend to be more playful and friendly than those in
Macrobius, even where they do have a note of superciliousness; nevertheless if Kaster had taken
Plutarch rather than Cicero as his main point of comparison he might have chosen to qualify
his claims about the oddity of Macrobius smiles in relation to earlier dialogue literature. See also
Halliwell (:cc) for earlier precedents, esp. o; on similar connotations of superiority for the
smiles of Zeus and Hera in the Iliad; and ; the smiles of Odysseus and Telemachus, which stand
in contrast with the insolent, ignorant laughter of the suitors, esp. n. , on Odysseus sympotic
smile in Odyssey :c.,c::.
,:
See Guittard (:cc,) :: on the absence of Saturnalian motifs of liberation for slaves in the works
setting; and cf. above, p. :,, on Saturnalian mockery in Julians Caesars.
::c Saints and Symposiasts
book, within the recurring rhythms of discussion.
,,
The book immedi-
ately signals its allegiance to Plutarch in the opening chapter by choosing
the subject of whether philosophical discussion should be allowed in a
convivial context, which is also the rst discussion of the Sympotic Ques-
tions. The chapter feels very similar to Plutarchs opening: in both cases,
after a brief initial suggestion that philosophy is better kept away from
dinner parties, a single character (Plutarch himself in the Sympotic Ques-
tions, Eustathius in the Saturnalia) argues against that proposition with
a long string of examples. If anything, in this rst chapter, Macrobius
comes closer to introducing genuine adversarial debate than Plutarch does:
Symmachus seems to be sincere in his opening suggestion that philosophy
should be kept away from the convivium, whereas the guest who voices
that opinion in the Sympotic Questions is reporting it only as an opinion
to be mocked. It looks at this point as though Macrobius gathering may
in fact be quite comfortable with Plutarchan styles of adversarial argumen-
tation. We might feel, moreover, that it is no accident that a Greek guest,
Eustathius, is leading the way in this: what we have here, it seems, is Prae-
textatus and his fellow-guests showing that they can switch from a Virgilian
approach to a more Hellenic, Plutarchan one in the different context of
after-dinner conversation, even if they need a Greek guest to show them
the way.
Saturnalia ;.: and ;., are similar in structure: here again Eustathius
follows Plutarchs example, in Sympotic Questions :.:, by speaking at length
on types of teasing and criticism which are appropriate to the symposium.
It is striking here that so many of his examples are drawn from Roman
history: examples of mocking comments by Cicero and Caesar and many
others. He is careful, too, to discuss the different ways in which one
might translate into Latin the Greek vocabulary of mockery. This is Greek
knowledge rephrased as Roman, transformed into a new and coherent
vision. It is striking, however, that while Macrobius guests report examples
of teasing, they rarely tease each other.
,
For all their willingness to think
about the theory of teasing, they seem highly reluctant to put it into
practice. That makes Macrobius gathering extremely odd by the standards
of earlier sympotic practice. We have seen already what a distinctive role
teasing played in the earlier sympotic tradition, and even in Plutarchs own
work, as a way of testing but also enhancing the sympotic community.
,,
Admittedly, Plutarch is aware that teasing can go wrong. At Sympotic
,,
For a useful catalogue of all Macrobius borrowings from Plutarch, see Frateantonio (:cc;) ,o;,
n. ::.
,
See Flamant (:,o) ,:.
,,
See above, pp. ;, on teasing in QC Book :.
Macrobius :::
Questions :.:. (o,:c), for example, he suggests that anyone who is unable
to use mockery at the right time, with care and skill, should discard
it altogether. Despite that risk, however, he clearly sees teasing as an
integral part of sympotic practice. For Macrobius characters, by contrast,
the harmony of the sympotic community is apparently so fragile, or so
crucial, that the risk is not worth taking. In the context of late antique
anxiety about authority and consensus, mockery, it seems, is a dangerous
and worrying force. And when Macrobius guests do come into conict
with each other, as we shall see below, they seem incapable of doing
it in the kind of moderate and good-natured way Plutarch would have
approved.
It is in ;., that the distinctiveness of Macrobius attitudes to com-
petitive speech really becomes clear. Here, his speakers discomfort with
debate begins to emerge more clearly, and the adversarial character of
his Plutarchan model is increasingly suppressed. It is perhaps no acci-
dent that the rst two Plutarchan conversations he chooses to imitate (i.e.
philosophising inthe symposium, and teasing) have beenones where debate
between successive speakers is unusually absent in the original Plutarchan
versions. Macrobius makes those chapters, in his translation, more adver-
sarial than his Plutarchan model, rather than less. To begin with, in other
words, Macrobius guests seem comfortable with friendly disagreement. In
Saturnalia ;., however, everything becomes more complicated. The topic
(introduced briey by Praetextatus) is the question of whether a mixed or
simple diet is best, in imitation of Sympotic Questions .:. The Greek doctor
Dysarius responds by arguing that diversity of food leads to difculty in
digesting. His contribution is greeted at the beginning of ;., with the kind
of harmonious acclaim which so often in the Saturnalia signals the end of
one topic and the introduction of another, and which often occupies the
opening sentence of a chapter.
,o
Here we are told that the listeners give
their approval with eager assent (prona adsensione).
At this point, however, the troublemaker Evangelus decides to encourage
a more thorough debate, by asking Eustathius to present the opposing
argument. It is as if Evangelus is keen at this point to halt the works
slide away from its Plutarchan model, although in making his intervention
he also mocks precisely the kind of adversarial speech he is trying to
encourage. Symmachus then intervenes warily in turn, reminding them
that any response to Dysarius speech must be respectful:
,o
For other examples of this kind of acclaim in the opening sentences of chapters, see Sat. ;.,.:, ;.;.:;
also ;.:,.:, discussed further below.
::: Saints and Symposiasts
The thing you have demanded, Evangelus, is pleasing, even if your demand
itself was rather acrimonious. For launching an attack against ideas which have
been presented in so much depth and so elegantly is a thing that could be use-
ful and enjoyable, but we should pursue that aim not as it were setting traps
for the minds of our opponents, nor out of envy at other peoples brilliant
discussions. (Sat. ;.,.,)
Clearly Symmachus is a little uneasy with the adversarial turn the con-
versation is taking. Having made that caveat, however, he then adds his
voice to Evangelus in requesting a response from Eustathius. Like Evan-
gelus, he mentions the fact that this style of argument may be particularly
appropriate to a Greek.
Eustathius too is very wary:
For a long time Eustathius tried to excuse himself from that duty, but then nally
succumbed to the insistent persuasion of so many distinguished men, who could
not be resisted. I am being compelled, he said, to declare war (bellum indicere)
on two things which are very dear to me, Dysarius and moderation; but having
gained indulgence by your authority, as if by a praetors edict, I shall present myself
as the advocate of appetite, since it is necessary to do so. First, as will become clear,
the examples with which the cleverness of our friend Dysarius nearly won us over
are outwardly impressive rather than true. (Sat. ;.,.,o)
Even for the Greek Eustathius, then, the act of debate is apparently not to be
taken lightly. For example the military vocabulary Eustathius reluctance
to declare war (bellum indicere, ;.,.,) suggests that he nds it hard to
conceive of debate as something which can be constructive, and which can
avoid the extremes of belligerent disputation.
,;
The Saturnalia thus reveals
its own unPlutarchan character precisely in the process of describing the
agonised decision to follow Plutarchs agonistic lead.
For many of the chapters following with the exception of ;.;, where
we do see some adversarial but constructive debate between Symmachus
and Horus the Saturnalia gives up on its attempt to match Plutarchs
technique of alternative explanation. All of the questions posed by each
guest in turn are directed at the doctor Dysarius, whose medical expertise
apparently gives him unchallenged authority in the physiological matters
they are discussing. The other guests re their queries at him (some of
them taken from Plutarch) one after another, and he seems equal to all of
,;
There are several passages inPlutarchs Sympotic Questions where guests similarly need to be persuaded
to speak: e.g. .:, oo:ab (the Plutarchan chapter on which this section of the Saturnalia is based)
and :., o:cab. In these cases, however, reluctance to speak seems to be primarily a matter of polite
self-deprecation, whereas in Macrobius case the language of warfare conjures up a more violent
picture of what is at stake.
Macrobius ::,
them: Why do women rarely become drunk whereas old men do so often?
Why is mincemeat difcult to digest? Why do mustard and pepper cause
sores when applied to the skin but do no harm when ingested? Why does
running in a circle make people fall over?
The impulse to debate has not been fully submerged, however. But when
it does reappear at the moment when Eustathius decides to rejoin the
conversation its difference from anything we nd in Plutarch is even
clearer than before. It comes close to degenerating into vicious dispute, as
if fullling the language of warfare which Eustathius had earlier reached
for in describing his anxiety. The crucial point comes in ;.:. Eustathius
asks Dysarius why it is that objects look bigger when they are immersed in
water. Dysarius, citing Epicurus, replies that water slows down the progress
of the rays of vision and makes them spread out so that the object appears
larger. At this point, in ;.:.,, Eustathius, as if emboldened by his earlier
experience of debating with Dysarius, and as if temporarily letting down
his guard, which had kept him from offensive behaviour before, expresses
his disagreement with Epicurus at length. At the end of his speech, in
;.:,.:, the other guests offer their congratulations in customary fashion: at
these words approval rose up from all of them, marvelling at the solidity of
his arguments (his dictis favor ab omnibus exortus est admirantibus dictorum
soliditatem), so much so that even Evangelus himself was not unhappy to
add his own conrmation. According to the by-now familiar pattern we
expect the discussion to move on at this point to another question. It seems,
however, that Eustathius intervention into Dysarius response has brought
him more than he bargained for. Dysarius cannot resist contributing again.
This time he speaks in highly scathing terms:
It is this kind of applause which provokes philosophy to lay claim to subjects alien
to its expertise, with the result that it often runs into obvious errors. For example,
when your Plato did not hold back from dealing with anatomical subjects, which
belong to the eld of medicine, he handed on to later generations the opportunity
to laugh at him. For he said that there are separate routes for the swallowing of food
and of drink, the food indeed being drawn through the stomach, but the drink
slipping down through the arteria [windpipe] which is called tracheia [rough]
into the lobes of the lung. (Sat. ;.:,.::)
Dysarius criticism is remarkable. He attacks his fellow-guests for their
applause, throwing doubt on precisely the atmosphere of harmony and
reverence which is one of the key planks of their communal coherence.
He also attacks Plato, violating the reverence for great writers of the past
which is the dominant approach throughout the work. In doing so, he
:: Saints and Symposiasts
is vehemently protecting the disciplinary divisions which were so deeply
entrenched within late antique society, at least as Macrobius represents
it. In that sense his work reveals the alienness of this discussion to what
we see in Plutarchs Sympotic Questions, where the divergent perspectives
of different professionals on the same questions are repeatedly welcomed
(although not without light-hearted rivalry on occasions). In Sympotic
Questions ;.:, in fact, precisely this question on Platos views about the
passage of drink through the lungs is discussed in a vigorous but friendly
and good-natured exchange of opposing views. Eustathius, nally, replies,
in similarly offended language, putting Dysarius rmly in his place, and
once again using very violent imagery to describe the debate: medicine is
now attacking philosophy with the recklessness of a parricide (Sat. ;.:,.:).
There is surely a note of humour in Macrobius portrayal of this absurdly
overstated parody of disciplinary defensiveness, but that does not mean that
these are trivial issues for himand for his contemporaries. Kaster sees this is a
highly signicant moment, a moment when the mask of consensus cracks,
when it becomes clear that the alternative to harmony and hierarchical
respect is a descent into vicious dispute.
,
The comparison with Plutarch,
not made by Kaster at any length, makes that point all the more vivid.
Eustathius and Dysarius seem to realise the problem themselves in the
chapter which follows the last surviving chapter of the work and they
draw back from their dispute. Here Evangelus, despite being scornful of
their debate, nevertheless urges them to continue, asking them to discuss
the question of whether the chicken or the egg came rst. Dysarius is the
only one to reply, summing up both sides of the argument, and telling
Evangelus that he can choose between them for himself (in contrast with
Sympotic Questions :.,, where two speakers answer that same question
with opposing arguments). Evangelus tries another question at ;.:o.:,,
asking (in imitation of Sympotic Questions ,.:c) why moonlight causes
meat to decompose more quickly than sunlight. In this case Eustathius does
supplement Dysarius reply, but he is very careful to signal his agreement
clearly before doing so: all of these things have been excellently and truly
spoken by Dysarius (omnia . . . a Dysario et luculente et ex vero dicta sunt,
;.:o.:c). In both of these closing instances in the work (as it survives),
Eustathius and Dysarius seem to have regained their earlier wariness of
disputation.
The irritable gure of Evangelus just mentioned plays a key role in artic-
ulating Macrobius ambivalent relation with Plutarch. There are moments
,
See Kaster (:,ca) :c:.
Macrobius ::,
when he looks like a character more at home than some of the others with
Plutarchan styles of open debate. For example, it is his suggestion that
Eustathius and Dysarius should have their initial debate in ;.,. Often he
seems impatient with the attitudes of consensus he sees around him, and
keen to disrupt them. Worries about disruptiveness run right through the
sympotic tradition, and Evangelus is himself one of a long line of disruptive
guests, stretching right back to Alcibiades.
,,
Nevertheless it is hard to avoid
the impression that the language used to describe his disruption and the
other guests reaction to it is more violent and more urgent than in those
earlier precedents. We hear several times that the other guests shudder
in horror when he intervenes.
oc
In that sense he is a foil by contrast with
whom Macrobius denes the dominant atmosphere of pious harmony in
the work. Evangelus in fact violates principles of correct behaviour which
are explicitly stated at various times by the other speakers of Book ;. For
example, his interruptions violate the Macrobian principle stated by Sym-
machus (Sat. ;.,.,) that disagreement should never involve laying traps
for ones interlocutor (at ;.,. he openly exults about the fact that he has
trapped Dysarius through his question about dizziness); and also the prin-
ciple, articulated by Eustathius in ;.:.::, that the true philosopher will
deliver rebukes only in ways which are not openly critical.
Evangelus thus represents indeterminacy and disruption of consensus.
At the same time, however, it is quite clear, that even he is very far from
being an unequivocal apostle of Plutarchan debate, not least because his
calls for more debate from the Greek characters, far from being meant
to commend Hellenic ingenuity, are frequently phrased as expressions
of scorn. At Saturnalia ;.,, for example, in the course of encouraging
Eustathius and Dysarius to debate with each other, he predicts that in
this way their violent language will yield to its own weapons, and one
Greek will steal applause from the other, just like a crow digging out
another crows eyes. In ;.:o.:, similarly, his request for the discussion
about the chicken and the egg is made in mockery of debate, rather than
in support of it. Despite Evangelus supercial appearance of allegiance
to Plutarchan forms of open discussion, then, it does not take much to
see that none of his interventions springs from any ideal of constructive
dialogue or productive divergence of opinion. His constant carping at
fellow speakers, in fact, has much in common with the language used in
Eustathius attack on Dysarius outlined above; the only difference is that he
,,
See Flamant (:,;;) ;,; Relihan (:,,:) :,,.
oc
E.g. :.::.: and :.:.; cf. :.;.: for the frowning reaction of the other guests to Evangelus on his
arrival.
::o Saints and Symposiasts
does not restrain it as scrupulously as they do. Ultimately, in fact, as Kaster
has suggested, the signicant thing may be what Evangelus shares with his
fellow guests, rather than what keeps them apart. That is not to say that
the work presents an admiring picture of Evangelus. Macrobius paints a
consistently negative portrait the shuddering reaction of the other guests
works almost as a trademark for characterisation of Evangelus. But he is
very clearly part of their world, an example of the implicit violence and
discord which always lies beneath the surface of Macrobian harmony, an
example of what can happen when the norms of polite consensus are not
observed.
conclusions
Macrobius, in summary, does indeed share the traditional sympotic plea-
sure of giving the voices of the past new life in the present. The sympotic
form also offers him an ideal opportunity for dramatising different models
of disputation and authority. On the whole, however, he holds back from
the kinds of competitive and speculative speech which are so central to the
Sympotic Questions. Book ; in particular shows us with very direct and
self-conscious contrast to Plutarch Macrobius tendency to resist sym-
potic indeterminacy; it raises the possibility of that traditionally sympotic
approach, only to express suspicion of it. It is as if Macrobius is trying to
show us that Plutarchan models of sympotic debate need to be adjusted
for this new cultural context.
In making that claim, I should stress that my aim is not to portray
Macrobius as unthinkingly authoritarian, or to suggest that he bluntly
suppresses the agonistic potential of the literary form. My point, as for
Methodius in chapter o, is rather that he dramatises and explores his
own relationship with that potential self-consciously: he allows sympotic
competitiveness to leave its mark on his text, irting with it at times,
shying away from it at others, in ways which provoke us, as readers, to ask
questions for ourselves about its value.
o:
Chaos and control always lie in
tension with each other in the arena of the literary symposium. Macrobius
does indeed lie at the more authoritarian end of that spectrum, but we
should not for that reason assume that sympotic chaos is written out of the
picture entirely.
How, nally, does Macrobius text relate to Christian attitudes to author-
ity? Macrobius work is self-consciously pagan in its subject matter, but it
o:
Cf. K onig (:ccb) for a shorter version of that argument.
Macrobius ::;
should be clear by now that the insistence on consensus in Macrobius, and
the danger of vicious dispute which lies behind that, have close parallels
in the Christian writers I have discussed in earlier chapters. It has much
in common with the use of zero-sum language in the debate between
Theophila and Marcella in Methodius, Symposium :, or with the devel-
opments I outlined for Augustine in chapter ;. In that sense it illustrates
vividly the fact that anxiety about competitive speech was not exclusive
to Christianity: pagan late antique culture shared the tendency to attach a
high value to consensus and harmony, and the same tendency to suppress
forces which threatened that harmony.
o:
Robert Kaster hints at a similar
conclusion in his nal paragraphs: It may be possible to hear in that pas-
sage [i.e. Eustathius attack on Dysarius] the idiom of the fth century: the
language of Macrobius in the heat of controversy is most closely paralleled
by the language used to denounce a contemporary Christian heresy, as the
unrestrained assertion of an idiosyncratic prudentia which seeks to undo
the solidarity of the whole.
o,
In conclusion: one of my aims in Part i of this book has been simply to
give some insight into the attractions of the great sympotic miscellanies of
the Roman world for their original audiences (not that we can ever recon-
struct their responses comprehensively), and perhaps also for us. We have
seen repeatedly that the appeal of imagined community is a key factor
community in the present, but also community with the past. It may well
be the case that these ideals of erudite, sympotic community were designed
to appeal only to a select few these were not necessarily texts with an
enormously wide readership but it is clear nevertheless that they were
widely known. At any rate the image of learned sympotic speech is repeat-
edly referred to in passing in other kinds of work, and repeatedly parodied
and subverted (as we shall see further in Part ii). It is also important to stress
that sympotic motifs and the ideals they implied could be very differently
activated by different authors, and at different times. I have suggested that
there is a large degree of continuity between the earliest and latest of the
authors we have looked at between, for example, Plutarch and Macro-
bius. Many Christian and late antique authors engaged with the sympotic
tradition in quite sophisticated ways. Nevertheless their appropriations of
o:
It has been argued in the past that Evangelus is portrayed by Macrobius as a Christian: most recently,
see MacCormack (:,,) ;, o; and Frateantonio (:cc;) ,o,;c. If that were the case, it might
be taken to imply that Macrobius is interested in exploring very self-consciously the relationship
between pagan and Christian models of dispute. I raised that possibility briey in an earlier version
of this piece (K onig (:ccb) :::), but it now seems fairly clear to me that that view is unlikely to be
right: see Cameron (:,oo) ,, and (:c::) ,,,o; Flamant (:,;;) ;; Kaster (:c::) xxxiiiv.
o,
Kaster (:,ca) :o:.
:: Saints and Symposiasts
that tradition were often at the same time highly defamiliarising: they
worked hard to adjust sympotic assumptions for their own world. In par-
ticular, the literature of the symposium is a fascinating space within which
to see changing concepts of authority and consensus in action, concepts
which mattered deeply within real life, in early Christian and late antique
culture, and not just within the fantasy world of literary conviviality and
miscellanism.
part ii
Consumption and transgression
chapter 9
Philosophers and parasites
introduction
Dignied sympotic behaviour is hard to guarantee in the ancient imag-
ination. Elite dining in Greek and Latin literature is often tainted by
vulgarity, violence and excess.
:
Many of the texts we have looked at so
far are aware of these dangers, but manage ultimately to keep them in
check. Even Plutarch and Macrobius, immersed in their rened and eru-
dite fantasy worlds, show some anxiety about suppressing behaviour which
is unphilosophical, uncivilised and excessively devoted to pleasure. The
common gure of the disruptive guest in the symposium tradition for
instance, Evangelus in Macrobius, whose gatecrashing echoes the disrup-
tion of Alcibiades in Platos Symposium is one common focus for that
anxiety: Evangelus aggressive interventions prompt reassessment and for
the most part reinforcement of the consensual styles of analysis shared by
the other guests. Similar anxieties are visible, at a less exalted social level, in
surviving regulations for dinner meetings of professional associations and
dining clubs, which set out explicit rules (in contrast with the unwritten
expectations of the elite symposium): they prescribe nes and other penal-
ties for those who behave badly, for example by insulting fellow diners or
swapping seats.
:
In all of these cases the threat of disruption is on the whole
suppressed: transgression of boundaries leads to reinforcement of them.
However, in many ancient accounts of feasting disruptive impulses are
not so easily contained, and pretensions to sympotic propriety come to
look much less stable. That instability is the main subject of the second
part of this book. I look not just at the way in which sympotic speech is
parodied, but also, and especially, at the way in which the transgressive
:
For brief discussion of these themes in archaic and classical Greek literature, with particular reference
to the Odyssey, see W. J. Slater (:,,c); cf. Wilson (:cc,), esp. ;;::,; and see also Halliwell (:cc)
:cc, on the good and bad uses of laughter.
:
For bibliography on club dining, see above, p. :,; and see MacMullen (:,;) ;;c and :;, n. ;
for elite complaints about rowdy behaviour at association banquets.
:,:
:,: Saints and Symposiasts
potential of eating and drinking, as bodily practices, can undermine elite
pretensions. Consumption and commensality can reinforce the boundaries
between high and low social status, or between high and low standards of
virtue, but they also always have the potential to disturb or confuse those
boundaries. It is not the case, of course, that food and drink are always
viewed as negative in Greco-Roman literature. As we have seen already in
the case of Athenaeus, writing about food in the ancient world is often
a matter of celebration: it celebrates cultural richness, natural abundance,
sometimes also (in its more frugal manifestations) philosophical temper-
ance and simplicity. Nevertheless food description in ancient literature also
often risks being overlaid with the overtones of greed and drunkenness
which were so prevalent in the ancient imagination.
Afull survey of those themes in the literature of the Roman empire would
take up a vast amount of space, and is not my aim here. There are two par-
ticularly striking omissions in what follows. The rst is a detailed account
of Latin satire: I leave that to one side partly in order to maintain this books
focus on prose narrative, but primarily because Emily Gowers has dealt with
it at such great length already.
,
The other is a detailed account of ethno-
graphic writing about food: from the Odyssey and Herodotus onwards,
Greek and Roman writers used eating habits often bizarre or grotesque
eating habits as a way of characterising foreign cultures.

Sometimes
these portrayals celebrate the distinction between Greek civilisation and
barbarism. Often, however, they also turn the mirror back on the society
of their readers, prompting them to reassess the customs they are familiar
with in their own cultures. In some cases these portrayals even hint at the
way in which civilised culture can be infected by overtones of savagery: the
,
Gowers (:,,,).

See Garnsey (:,,,) o:: for excellent overview. On the Odyssey, see J. Foley (:,,,) :;:; and
:;:,; Vidal-Naquet (:,:); W. J. Slater (:,,c); Segal (:,,) :o;, :co, :o, :o:; Dougherty (:cc:)
:o,; Wilkins and Hill (:cco) :,,. On Herodotus, see Hartog (:,) :;,,:; Romm (:,) :c;:c
and (:,,:) ,,. It was also a standard feature of classical and archaic writing on the symposium to
draw a contrast between moderate Greek drinking and drunken, barbarian excess: see W. J. Slater
(:,,c) ::,; Fantuzzi and Hunter (:cc) ;,. For an imperial Greek text which includes multiple
ethnographic accounts of eating customs, designed to celebrate, but also at the same time to
question (in Herodotean fashion) the superiority of Greek culture over barbarian, see Philostratus
Life of Apollonius of Tyana (esp. Book ,). For a good example along similar lines from Roman satire,
see Gowers (:,,,) :,:cc on Juvenal :,.;,:, a description of an incident of cannibalism in Egypt
which is uncomfortably reminiscent of features of Roman culture closer to home. And for visual
examples, see Schefold (:,o:) o; (with plate .:), Mols and Moormann (:,,,), Clarke (:cc,)
:;:c, and Dunbabin (:cc,a) oc: on Pompeian scenes of pygmies feasting in exotic or grotesque
fashion: these images must have invited comparison with the dining behaviour of those who viewed
them in convivial contexts, prompting, presumably, not just feelings of superiority but also in some
cases joking comments about their similarity; cf. Lissarrague (:,,c), esp. :,:, ,;c on the crude
and outlandish satyrs of classical Athenian dining art.
Philosophers and parasites :,,
suitors of the Odyssey, who share some of the gluttony of the Cyclops, are
a classic case. That ethnographic tradition of writing about food will be
particularly important in chapter ::, where we will see how it was reshaped
for the monastic communities of the Egyptian desert.
My choice in chapters , and :c, however, is to focus on a set of prose
ction texts which present images of consumption which fall short of the
ideals of the philosophical symposium. In chapter , I look in particular at
the work of Lucian and Alciphron, both of whom are fascinated by the way
in which images of sympotic misbehaviour can raise unsettling questions
about elite self-presentation. In chapter :c I turn to the Greek and Roman
novels, and especially to the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which draw on
these trends but also treat them with a new intensity, confronting us with
the corporeality of the consuming body to a degree perhaps unparalleled
within surviving classical literature. Many of these texts Alciphron and
Apuleius in particular are also tied together by their interest in using
gluttony and gastronomic excess as self-reexive images for literary con-
sumption and desire.
,
In the second half of Part ii, I then turn to two
related bodies of prose narrative literature from early Christian culture
the Apocryphal Acts in chapter :: and the early hagiographical writing of
the fourth and fth centuries ce in chapter :: which imitate but also rad-
ically rewrite the novelistic and ethnographic traditions they inherit from
Greco-Roman culture. We will see how Christian authors often dissociate
themselves from the negative associations of excessive or disruptive kinds
of consumption; also, perhaps more surprisingly, the way in which they
sometimes choose, at least in certain types of text, to welcome those asso-
ciations as a way of articulating the paradoxical and transgressive character
of Christian faith.
the grotesque body
One of the reasons why eating and drinking potentially confuse social and
moral hierarchies is because of their bodiliness. All human bodies even
the body of the fasting ascetic rely on the physical processes of ingestion.
Food is symbolic, a marker of social status, but it also always has the
potential to remind us as it sticks to our ngers and our lips, works its
way into our stomachs and later is ejected again from our bodies in partly
recognisable form of the shared corporeality of all eaters and drinkers (that
,
Cf. Gowers (:,,,) for similar conclusions on Latin verse satire; pp. ,, ,c and ,; above, on the similar
link in Athenaeus; p. :;;, n. ,c on Petronius and pp. :, on Apuleius; and further discussion of
Alciphron below.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
goes perhaps especially for the sight of other people eating and drinking).
Moreover, the moment of eating and drinking is a moment when the
body and its signicance can become hard to control. That seems to have
been particularly the case within the ancient imagination, where convivial
behaviour always had the potential to degenerate into absurdity or even
in extreme cases to inspire disgust. Ancient medical writers were acutely
aware of the way in which eating too much or the wrong type of food
could lead to bodily malfunction.
o
The rejection of excessive appetite in
ancient philosophical writing often involved vivid expressions of revulsion
at the corporeal effects of gluttony and drunkenness.
;
The literature of the
Roman empire returns obsessively to those themes, demonstrating how
grotesque bodiliness can show its face from beneath the dignied surfaces
of elite commensality.

It is hard to read far on the subject of grotesque eating and drinking with-
out once again coming across the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. For Bakhtin,
especially in his work on Rabelais, representing the grotesque body is one
of the key vehicles for a carnivalesque view of the world in the medieval
and Renaissance periods, dened by its interest in lowering or decrowning
high and ideal culture, in line with the role of the carnival feast as a time
for the suspension of normal social hierarchies. The grotesque body, on
that view, contributes to this debasement of everything which is elevated
and ofcial. The carnivalesque, as Bakhtin denes it, is obsessed with the
lower strata of the body, and with the associated actions of consumption,
defecation, copulation which are all shared human activities regardless of
rank and their role within an endless cycle of regeneration.
,
My aim in mentioning Bakhtin at this point is not to suggest that his
ideas on carnival can be straightforwardly applied to the texts I want to
examine in Part ii. Admittedly, many of the features of carnival he discusses
did have their origins in the classical world. For example, the Roman
festival of the Saturnalia (and its Greek equivalent, the Kronia) had much
in common with the later European carnival, as Bakhtin himself points out:
the Saturnalia was a time for unruly dining and for reversal of hierarchy,
most notoriously in the tradition of masters serving dinner to their slaves,
and Saturnalian imagery of social topsy-turviness informs much Latin
o
For Galens work onfood, including good introductory discussions of ancient dietetics more generally,
see Grant (:ccc) and Powell (:cc,).
;
See Richardson-Hay (:cc,) on Senecas Letters.

See Fredrick (:cc,) for a thought-provoking study along similar lines, esp. ,:: on Plutarchs
Sympotic Questions.
,
See Bakhtin (:,b), esp. :;,c: on eating and drinking; and for analysis, see (among many others)
Morson and Emerson (:,,c) ,,o and ,,;c; Shepherd (:,,,); Emerson (:cc:).
Philosophers and parasites :,,
satirical writing,
:c
even if it is hard to nd within Macrobius more dignied
version of Saturnalian behaviour. Nevertheless it has become clear that
Bakhtins ideas of carnival need to be treated very cautiously, rather than
applied anachronistically, in blanket form, to all classical representations
of social transgression and the grotesque body.
::
Bakhtins discussions of
carnival have also been much criticised from non-classical perspectives.
He has been attacked, for example, for his tendency to overstate carnivals
capacity to be a vehicle for freedom and liberation, when in fact it can
equally well provide a vehicle for reinforcing authority through providing
an illusion of freedom; and for his tendency to oversimplify and essentialise
customs and impulses which were in practice enormously varied.
::
His
positive portrayal of the grotesque body is also vulnerable to the accusation
that it underestimates the importance of pollution and disgust within
human self-denition.
:,
What I am particularly interested in, instead, is the work of later schol-
ars who have developed, moving on from Bakhtins work, more nuanced
models of the way in which grotesque physicality implies the mutual entan-
glement of high and low culture. Many of these commentators show, in
more subtle ways than Bakhtin himself, how carnivalesque, grotesque prac-
tices play a prominent role within the human imagination, closely entwined
with the experience of elite identity. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, for
example, have shown how Bakhtin overestimates the degree to which high
and low culture remain separate from each other within carnivalesque sub-
versions of authority.
:
On their account the grotesque is to be dened not
as opposite to the pristine elite body, but rather as a hybrid phenomenon:
the grotesque is formed through a process of hybridisation or inmixing of
:c
On the Saturnalia and the Kronia as festivals of reversal, see Versnel (:,,:); cf. Guittard (:cc,) on
the Saturnalia; Gowers (:,,,) :o for brief introduction on the festival and on the prevalence of
Saturnalian imagery in Roman literature; also Bakhtin (:,b) o on the Roman Saturnalia as a
forerunner of medieval carnival.
::
See Miller (:,,); Edwards (:cc:); also Branham (:cc,) for a helpful attempt to nuance Bakhtins
ideas of carnival in relation to the Greek and Latin novels. Bakhtin himself was aware of the fact
that his model was in many ways specic to the medieval and Renaissance worlds: see esp. Bakhtin
(:,b) ,o.
::
See Stallybrass and White (:,o) :::o for overview. For attempts to resist a simplistic link between
carnival and liberation and to bring the concept of carnival more closely in line with the rest of
Bakhtins work, which is so keenly aware of the pressures and constraints of human action and
communication as well as its potential for freedom, see Morson and Emerson (:,,c), esp. ,,o;
Rubino (:,,,) ::,. However, some scholars have criticised Morson and Emerson in particular for
their resistance to Marxist criticism and their marginalisation of the idea of carnival: see Thomson
and Wall (:,,:); Shepherd (:,,:) ;c,; and Miller (:,,) n. , for extensive further bibliography on
both sides of this debate.
:,
See Vice (:,,;) :,,,, drawing on Kristeva, and further discussion below, pp. :oo.
:
Stallybrass and White (:,o), esp. o:o.
:,o Saints and Symposiasts
binary opposites, particularly of high and low, such that there is a hetero-
dox merging of elements usually perceived as incompatible.
:,
Moreover,
images of social debasement and transgression, with which elite literature
is so often fascinated, themselves play a central role in constituting and
dening elite self-perception. On that argument the grotesque becomes
almost an object of elite desire: A recurrent pattern emerges: the top
attempts to reject and eliminate the bottom for reasons of prestige and
status, only to discover, not only that it is frequently dependent on that
low-Other . . . but also that the top includes that low symbolically, as a pri-
mary eroticized constituent of its own fantasy life.
:o
Geoffrey Harphams
work on the concept of the grotesque similarly emphasises the intertwining
of high and low culture, again not without criticism of Bakhtin.
:;
He
suggests, for example, that most grotesques are marked by . . . an afn-
ity/antagonism, by the co-presence of the normative, fully formed, high
or ideal and the abnormal, unformed, degenerate, low or material.
:
These insights into the inextricability of high and low resonate strongly, I
will argue, with the portrayal of eating and drinking in authors like Lucian,
Alciphron, Achilles Tatius and Apuleius, who dramatise the inescapability
of the grotesque and the degraded within the elite imagination.
philosophers
I want to start by taking an initial look at the way in which ancient authors
portray the eating and drinking of philosophers, particularly within bio-
graphical writing.
:,
Drinking in both Greek and Roman culture was often
viewed as a time when true character was revealed.
:c
In both festivals
and symposia, so Dio Chrysostom suggests, every individual shows clearly
what kind of mental capacity (oivcicv) he has (:;.:). That widely par-
alleled assumption partly explains why eating and drinking often occupy
a prominent position within ancient biography. Anecdotes of behaviour
at drinking parties were common, as precious windows on to the minds
:,
Stallybrass and White (:,o) ; they make it clear that there are traces of this notion in Bakhtins
work, but suggest that he is inconsistent inhis use of it, oftenpreferring a more simplistic oppositional
model.
:o
Stallybrass and White (:,o) ,.
:;
See Harpham (:,:), incl. ;:, for the standard criticisms of Bakhtins association of carnival
laughter with liberation.
:
Harpham (:,:) ::; and for a similar denition, see Robertson (:,,o), esp. : for summary.
:,
See Wilkins and Hill (:cco) :o,;, for a general discussion of food in biographical writing.
:c
However, see R osler (:,,,) for the point that the concept of sympotic truth (ntic) in Greek
poetic tradition refers primarily to the obligation of conscious truth-telling, rather than accidental
revelation of character.
Philosophers and parasites :,;
and private behaviour of great men, in line with the opening motto of
Xenophons Symposium (a text which itself has biographical aims, as a
record of Socrates),
::
that it is not only the serious deeds of well-bred
men which are worth recording, but also those done in play (Xenophon,
Symposium :).
::
Moreover, day-to-day habits of eating and drinking were
often used to characterise individuals in moral terms, especially in relation
to philosophically admirable standards of moderation. Crucially, however,
that process of characterisation often left open a degree of ambiguity. There
is a repeated pattern in biographical writing (even, as we shall see later, in
early Christian hagiographical writing) whereby an individuals attempts
to practice moderate consumption risk being contaminated by negative
connotations.
The biographical portrayal of philosophers conforms closely to those
patterns, although in this case with the added dimension that a philoso-
phers use of food and drink not only indicates virtue in general terms, but
is also often made appropriate sometimes comically appropriate or even
ironically inappropriate to his particular brand of philosophy.
:,
More-
over, philosophers were often particularly at risk of negative associations in
their eating and drinking, partly because they were often controversial g-
ures, vulnerable to criticism. An archetypal example is Socrates: his famed
frugality was not enough to protect him from mockery by the comic poets,
who represented it as a sign of his haughtiness.
:
Some philosophers and sages were even represented as forgoing their
reputations for convivial propriety quite deliberately, in order to signal
their rejection of or counter-intuitive relationship with social norms. The
anonymous Life of Aesop is full of memorable examples.
:,
Aesops wisdom
manifests itself in displays of unconventional ingenuity which transgress
::
On the Symposium as a work of biography, together with the Oeconomicus, the Memorabilia and the
Apology, see, among many others, Watereld (:cc); however, see also Hobden (:cc,) ,, on the
importance of seeing beyond this biographical conception of the work.
::
See Huss (:,,,) o,; for extensive discussion of this sentence, including discussion of overlaps with
the sympotic scenes of the Cyropaedia.
:,
For a survey of philosophical habits of eating and drinking, see McGowan (:,,,) o,;,. For a good
counter-example to the general interest in eating and drinking in philosophical biography one might
look at Eunapius fourth-century ce Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, which makes almost no
mention of eating habits; even here, however, it seems that Eunapius shows his awareness of the pos-
sibility that philosophical biography might contain sympotic details through his opening mention
of Xenophons decision (Symp. :) to write about the incidental deeds (tptp,c) (Eunapius word,
not Xenophons) of serious men and his intention to resist that precedent (,:,); for context, see
Miller (:ccc), esp. ::,, who discusses the way in which late antique biography, including the
work of Eunapius, shows less interest than before in anecdotes illustrating individual foibles.
:
See Diogenes Laertius :.:;.
:,
See Kurke (:c::) :c:,; on the Aesopic parody of high wisdom.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
the boundaries of conventional elite behaviour, appropriately so given his
status as a slave, and which are in some cases even associated with physical
grotesquerie. Many of these incidents occur in sympotic contexts. In the
Life of Aesop ,:,,
:o
to take just one example, Aesops master asks him to
serve the best dish he can nd, and then the worst dish, on successive days;
on both occasions he serves many identical courses of tongue (inducing
nausea in the guests) in order to indicate the advantages and dangers of
human speech. Here, as Leslie Kurke puts it, Aesop converts the sages
moralizing, metaphorical message into a recipe for diarrhea.
:;
Some of the most peculiar and most vivid examples of these trends
come from Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers,
written probably in the rst half of the third century ce, where habits of
eating and drinking are a frequent reference-point. Often Diogenes Laer-
tius philosophers are marked out by their abstemiousness, sometimes by
varieties of abstemiousness which are linked with their particular varieties
of philosophy.
:
That tendency is particularly important for Pythagoras,
whose dietary stipulations are catalogued at length.
:,
But a surprising num-
ber also have reputations for drunkenness and indulgence;
,c
others have a
rather eccentric relationship with sympotic norms. In some cases Diogenes
aims to undermine and parody these philosophers reputations for virtue.
In others he ingeniously rehabilitates apparently luxurious behaviour so
that it comes to have positive implications, making it paradoxically com-
patible with philosophical identity. In the process he gives his readers
memorable and paradoxical anecdotes by which to recall his subjects.
,:
The most lengthy example is the case of the Cynic Diogenes, whose life
is packed, on Diogenes Laertius account, with witty sympotic put-downs
:o
Following the numbering in Vita G (=Perry (:,,:) ,:,).
:;
See Kurke (:c::) ::,:: for analysis, and :,, for that phrase.
:
For other examples of philosophers consuming moderately or denouncing drunkenness and gluttony,
not discussed in the main text, see DL :.;o (Pittacus), :.:c, (Anacharsis), :.:: (Epimenides), :.;,
(Aristippus), :.::,,c and :.:,,c (Menedemus), o.,c (Crates), ;.: (Zeno).
:,
DL .,, .:::,, .:, and .,,; on Pythagorean food restrictions, see Wilkins and Hill (:cco)
:c,;.
,c
For another heavy drinker and eater not discussed below, see DL . (Xenocrates). Diogenes Laertius
is also interested in the way in which negative reputations can arise from envious and slanderous
accusations: for example, see :c.o for accusations of immoderate diet unfairly directed against
Epicurus.
,:
On the importance of anecdotes for ancient biographical tradition, see Momigliano (:,,,), who
discusses Peripatetic biography (esp. o;o) and Hellenistic biography (e.g. ;, on Hermippus);
Miller (:ccc) :::, on the importance of anecdotes in Diogenes Laertius, and also in the col-
lective biographies of Plutarch and Philostratus, for distinguishing individuality within repeated
philosophical types; and Warren (:cc;) for more general discussion of the biographical principles
on which Diogenes work is organised.
Philosophers and parasites :,,
and unconventional consumption, and whose scorn for worldly vanities
regularly leads him into behaviour which is very similar to what we might
expect from drunkards and parasites (on whom more below), for example
in the scene of him urinating at a symposium in o.o.
,:
This theme of contempt for worldly vanity is carried over into a num-
ber of descriptions of philosophers dying through gluttonous or parasitical
behaviour.
,,
For example we hear that the Cynic Diogenes is said, accord-
ing to one version, to have died, presumably from food poisoning, after
eating a raw octopus (o.;o), a detail which has obvious overlaps with his
unconventional attitude to eating and drinking elsewhere in the text, show-
ing his willingness to transgress culinary taboos.
,
Others are said to have
died from excessive drinking, for example Arkesilaos (.), appropriately
for his reputation for luxurious living throughout his life (.c), which
nevertheless seems not to have hampered him in his dialectical skills: here,
Diogenes point is surely to stress a sense of wonder that Arkesilaos philo-
sophical accomplishment was achieved despite his debauchery. Chrysippus
similarly dies from drinking unmixed wine (;.:), although in his case
it may be above all a sign of his habitual abstemiousness due to bodily
weakness, hinted at in ;.:,.
,,
This urge to put on show the distinctive wisdom and virtue of philoso-
phers through sympotic anecdotes and sayings, is paralleled in the visual
sphere. One common image type is a collection of the seven sages; in
some cases they are portrayed in a sympotic setting the visual equivalent
of the fantasy enacted within Plutarchs Symposium of the Seven Sages.
,o
,:
Good discussions of the transgressiveness of Cynic eating and Cynic asceticism, especially on the
gure of Diogenes as represented by Diogenes Laertius, include (among many others) Vaage (:,,:);
Krueger (:,,oa), esp. ::o; Branham (:,,o), esp. :cc:; McGowan (:,,,) ;,,; Sluiter (:cc,b), esp.
:,; Bosman (:cco). See also DL o.;, for Diogenes claim that there is nothing wrong even with
eating human esh.
,,
For other examples of deaths linked with eating and drinking, or fasting (some of them dened
more by memorable oddity than by their philosophical appropriateness), see DL .o: (Lakeades),
;.:;o (Kleanthes); .,, (Pythagoras); ,., (Heraclitus).
,
Julian, Or. ,.:: (discussed by Billerbeck (:,,o) ::,) makes Diogenes eating of the octopus an
example of his desire to put everything to the test of experience, in this case by nding out whether
eating uncooked meat really is harmful to the human body; Sluiter (:cc,b) :,, n. :, sees the
eating of raw meat as a dog-like characteristic, appropriate to the Cynics symbolic and etymological
association with dogs.
,,
An alternative story of Chrysippus death is that he dies from laughter at one of his own jokes: after
watching a donkey eat his gs, he tells the woman who owns it to give it some unmixed wine to
swallow down in addition (DL ;.:,), as if the donkey is a symposiast. That story is another good
example of a philosopher with an unconventional, undignied way of reimagining conventional
sympotic activity.
,o
For examples not specically tied to sympotic settings, see Richter (:,o,) (vol. i) ::, with gures
,::c, who gives a full list of surviving wise men ensembles (not all of them securely identied as
:c Saints and Symposiasts
Figure ,.: Baalbek, mosaic of Kalliope with Socrates and the Seven Sages; probably third
century ce.
Figure ,.:, a mosaic from Beirut, probably dating from the third century
ce, exemplies well the way in which sages and their maxims were often
inserted within a feasting context: this image of dignied, iconic wisdom
was situated within a dining-room (although the gures are not depicted
eating or drinking themselves).
,;
In this case their portrayal is dignied and idealised. In one well-known
exception, however, this image type is overlaid with a debunking spirit
which has much in common with the literary examples already discussed.
The images in question (Figure ,.: is an example) are wall-paintings from
such), both in mosaics and other media; and for statues of the seven wise men, as well as imitations
of their iconography in other contexts, see Zanker (:,,,) o,, :,,, :;: and ,:c.
,;
See Ch ehab (:,,,) ,:,, with plates xvxx; and cf. Hanfmann (:,,:), Balty (:,,,) :oo; and
Dunbabin (:,,,) :o,;c for a remarkable fourth-century ce mosaic fromApamea, which reimagines
the Last Supper, with Socrates and the sages substituted for Christ and his followers.
Philosophers and parasites ::
Figure ,.: Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages, view of the south and west walls; late rst
century or second century ce.
what was probably an inn at Ostia. On the bottom half of the wall, stretch-
ing all the way around the room, is a row of seated men relieving themselves
in the kind of arrangement which was common in the public lavatories
of any Roman city. Above them, more spaced out, but unmistakeably
engaged in the same activity, are the seven sages. Written above each is
an epigrammatic maxim on the best means of defecation, parodying their
traditional association with ingenious aphorisms. It is hard to avoid the
conclusion that these images are involved in a carnivalesque overturning
:: Saints and Symposiasts
of the distinction between high and low culture.
,
The images of the sages
are situated literally above the more packed ranks of the masses on the
lower half of the wall. They resemble not only the serious gures from the
Beirut mosaic, but also the common iconography of statues of the seven
sages. But those dignied associations are undercut. The pompousness of
their intellectual aspirations is exposed by the way in which they apply their
high-minded language to more mundane, earthy topics than they usually
would. At least in the eyes of the viewer since there is no sign that the
sages themselves recognise this their philosophical dignity is undermined
through association with bodily functions. The incongruous introduction
of images of defecation into a space for drinking enhances some of these
effects: the humour lies partly in the fact that it is philosophers who act
here as vehicles for the inappropriate irruption of the imagery of excretion
into a place of consumption.
parasites
The process of debunking or mocking philosophical eating and drinking
is carried to further extremes by the common motif of associating philoso-
phers with parasites. The parasite (parasitos) originated in Greek comedy,
but later became a stock gure in many other genres also, and became
almost indistinguishable by the Roman period from the comic atterer
(kolax in Greek).
,,
He is almost by denition a low-status interloper into
the elite banquet, an alien gure against whom the other civilised symposi-
asts dene themselves. He earns his meal not through friendship, but rather
by attering or entertaining the other guests. In that sense the parasite is an
exception, along with other entertainers, to the ideal of equality between
guests at the elite symposium. Often parasites are badly treated by their
hosts, subject to mockery and physical abuse, and made by their authors
into absurd targets of comedy for their seemingly unquenchable gluttony.
c
The humiliated parasite thus stands in opposition to the elite sym-
posiast, marked out in part by his grotesque physicality. However, that
,
See Clarke (:cc,) :;cc, with plates :::,; and :o (very briey) on Bakhtin; Kurke (:c::) ::,,o;
and for further discussion of these images, see Zanker (:,,,) ::c.
,,
On their interchangeability in the Roman period, see Damon (:,,;) :::,, including discussion of
other related words for parasite gures. The relationship between the two terms is more debated for
earlier periods: e.g., Nesselrath (:,,) ::: argues for a strong distinction between the two types
as late as New Comedy; by contrast Tylawsky (:cc:) and ,,;;, following Athenaeus account in
o, :,c:o:a (see esp. :,oe and :d), stresses their interchangeability even there.
c
For a comprehensive overview of the role of the parasite in Athenian comedy, see Wilkins (:ccca)
;:o.
Philosophers and parasites :,
distinction is also frequently undermined. For one thing, parasites in the
literary tradition often show an ingenious ability to throw off their humil-
iation and to appropriate elements of elite self-fashioning and respect for
themselves. Witty sayings of parasites were widely recorded. Athenaeus
collection in Book o seems to have a vast body of now lost material lying
behind it, some of which clearly focused on recording the exploits of indi-
vidual parasites.
:
Repeatedly in these comic fragments we see parasites
boasting of their own expertise, describing it in terms of a techne or art.
:
At times the parasite breaks away even more radically from being a g-
ure of fun. In Menanders plays, for example, the parasite maintains some
of his characteristics as an outsider to elite society, with a special talent
for manipulating and subverting the legal and administrative machinery
of the Athenian democracy, but because of that skill takes on a valued
role as condant and adviser.
,
Athenaeus stresses the fact that the term
parasitos did not originally refer to a comic gure at all, but rather to
the functionaries who performed the function of ritual dining in Greek
culture.

Later in his account he deals specically with parasites serv-

ing tyrants. Some of these gures are unmistakeably abject gures: for
example the parasites who hold out their faces for their masters to vomit
and spit on, and then lick off the resulting bodily uids, claiming that
they taste sweeter than honey (o, :,f:,ca). But many of the para-
sites listed later are surprisingly well-educated and politically powerful
gures.
,
High-status gures were often at risk from overtones of parasitism in
turn. The accusation of parasitism was always open to be used against
members of the elite for unattering or debunking purposes. Plutarch,
in his work on How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, acknowledges that
the comic parasite, on stage, is impossible to miss, given his stereotypical
traits and blatant self-abasement (,cce). But he also goes on to warn of
the dangers we face when parasitism and attery become hard to detect,
when the atterer takes on the standard features of civilised elite behaviour,
hiding his nefarious purposes behind them:
:
See Tylawsky (:cc:) oo;o on Athenaeus use of anecdotes concerning named parasites; cf. McClure
(:cc,) o and ;,:c, for the way in which he draws similarly on collections of anecdotes and
witticisms of courtesans.
:
See Anderson (:,,,) :; Tylawsky (:cc:) o,o; and cf. below on Lucians On the Parasite.
,
See Handley (:,o,) :c: and Gomme and Sandbach (:,;,) :,:: on Chaireas in Menanders
Dyskolos, with parallels; cf. Lape (:cc) ::, on the parasite Theron in Menanders Sikyonioi, who is
motivated to give romantic advice to his patron by desire for marriage with the courtesan Malthake,
rather than desire for food.

Ath. o, :,c:,,e.
,
E.g. o, :,:f on Sosis and o, :,:c on Lysimachus.
: Saints and Symposiasts
Whom, then, do we need to guard against? Against the man who does not give any
appearance of attery and who does not admit to being a atterer; who is not to
be found hanging around the kitchen or measuring the shadow on the sundial in
anticipation of dinner; who never gets drunk and falls down where he is. Instead,
he is usually sober, he is busy, and he thinks it is necessary to get involved in
everything, and wants to be in on all the secrets, and plays the part of friendship
seriously, like a tragic actor, not a satyric or comic one. (,ce)
o
This danger was particularly stark in the Roman west, where friend-
ship and convivial interaction were often less egalitarian than in the east. As
Cynthia Damon has shown, the hierarchical relations of the Roman patron-
age system, and the problems of that system, were repeatedly described,
especially in satirical contexts, but also in elegy and rhetoric, through the
language of parasitical exchange.
;
In some cases the role of the comic par-
asite could even be an object of desire and imitation, as high-status gures
actively appropriate the vocabulary of parasitism for their own activity.
Parasitism is used, for example, as an image by comparison with which
authors measure up their own practice a factor which will be central to
my analysis of Alciphron in the concluding section of this chapter. Horace,
for example, is very much aware of the danger that his own relationship
with his patrons may be viewed as a kind of parasitism, and his Satires and
Epistles are accordingly full of parasites. Most often he distances himself
from these gures, but there are also moments when he acknowledges a
degree of identication with them.

The parasite was associated particularly often with the gure of the
philosopher. That connection has a long pedigree: it seems likely that the
fth-century bce gure of the philosopher-sophist was one of the bases
for the emerging stereotype of the atterer in the comedy of that time.
,
Athenaeus Deipnosophists is full of passages from comedy and elsewhere
which draw that link. For example, that theme is prominent in Book ,
especially in the speech by Magnus at :oce:od where he denounces the
gluttony of his fellow-guest, the Cynic philosopher Kynoulkos. Moreover,
the work hints at parasitical characteristics for the deipnosophists as a
o
On this text and other discussions of the same problem within Greek literature, see Konstan (:,,;)
,:c,; Whitmarsh (:ccc) ,co and (:cco).
;
Damon (:,,;), although oddly she includes very little discussion, even in passing, of the imperial
Greek texts discussed in this chapter; cf. Tylawsky (:cc:); for reections on similar problems in
comedy in relation to classical Athenian society, see Wilkins (:ccca) ;o.

See Damon (:,,;) :c,,.

,
See Tylawsky (:cc:) :,:; also ,; on the possibility that Antisthenes the Cynic, who modelled
himself at least in part on Socrates, may have been the model for the comic kolax in Eupolis
Flatterers.
Philosophers and parasites :,
group, tied in, as they are, to a relationship of patronage with their Roman
host Larensis. At times, Athenaeus even seems to re-appropriate the idea of
attering, parasitical speech as an image for the playful, luxurious qualities
of his own text, as Tim Whitmarsh has argued.
,c
What the parasite shows us, then, is that high and low status are hard
to separate from each other. Moreover, reading about parasites can often
prompt us to apply that conclusion to ourselves. The parasite is not just
a gure of spectacle, but also a gure who insinuates himself into the
self-imaginings of his audience. The parasite is a scare-image by contrast
with which elite identity can be conceptualised and performed; at the same
time, however, it can tempt elite readers towards a fantasy of identica-
tion, all the more liberating for its degraded, transgressive quality and its
distance from the protocols they are usually constrained by. The remarks
of Peter Stallybrass and Allon White are once again very suggestive on that
phenomenon. Their work explores the process by which the bourgeois
subject in post-Renaissance Europe continuously dened and re-dened
itself through the exclusion of what it marked as low as dirty, repulsive,
noisy, contaminating. They also note, however, that
that very act of exclusion was constitutive of its identity. The low was internalized
under the sign of negation and disgust . . . These low domains, apparently expelled
as Other, return as the object of nostalgia, longing and fascination. The forest,
the fair, the theatre, the slum, the circus, the seaside-resort, the savage; all these,
placed at the outer limit of civic life, became symbolic contents of bourgeois
desire.
,:
We will see examples from Lucian and Alciphron in a moment where
it is clear that the narrator and even the reader risk being marked by
parasitical identity in similar ways. For now I just want to offer one, visual
parallel for that effect. The parasite is a familiar gure in the visual arts
of the Roman world. We have, for example, a dining-room mosaic from
third-century ce Antioch, from the triclinium of the House of the Sundial
(gure ,.,), which shows, in two separate panels, two well-dressed gures
gazing up at sundials, apparently wishing that the dinner hour would come
sooner.
,:
The idea of parasites gazing wistfully at sundials, trying to make
time go faster by wishful thinking, seems to have been a motif of New
Comedy and of the parasitical literature which draws on it.
,,
Plutarch
mentions that stereotype in passing in the passage just quoted. Katherine
,c
Whitmarsh (:ccc).
,:
Stallybrass and White (:,o) :,:.
,:
See Becker and Kondoleon (:cc,) :o.
,,
See Gratwick (:,;,), with reference to Alciphron ,.: and other texts.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
Figure ,., Antioch, House of the Sundial, mosaic with parasite; probably mid to late third
century ce.
Philosophers and parasites :;
Dunbabin in her comprehensive study of dining images misses the fact
that these sundial-watchers are surely parasites: she describes them simply
as well-dressed diners hurrying to dinner.
,
But it is tempting to feel that
her misidentication is itself symptomatic of an effect encouraged by the
images themselves, which invite the identication of their viewers: for a
moment even the most dignied of diners, as he gazes at the image, perhaps
while waiting to be seated, may see his own smart appearance and his own
hunger mirrored in the gure in front of him, only to laugh at having been
caught in the trap of identication with the image of the parasite.
parasites and philosophers in lucian
The most sustained engagement with the hybrid image of philosopher-
parasites comes in the work of the second-century ce satirist Lucian. Most
obviously relevant here is Lucians dialogue On the Parasite, which reshapes
the comic motif of parasites praising their own profession: in Lucians
hands this turns into an extended parody of philosophical and professional
self-denition.
,,
Important too is On Salaried Posts, mentioned already in
chapter :,
,o
which describes the degradation suffered by a Greek intellectual
employed in what he thinks is a prestigious position in a Roman household,
only to nd himself suffering growing humiliation a good example
of the way in which parasite-like inferiority is a constant threat, in the
Roman empires collective imagination, for those involved in relationships
of patronage.
,;
In the Nigrinus, biographical motifs discussed earlier in this chapter
are integrated with an exploration of the parasitical behaviour of philoso-
phers in the city of Rome. The work is a dialogue between two speakers,
one of whom explains that he has recently returned from Rome, where
he encountered the philosopher Nigrinus, who converted him to a philo-
sophical lifestyle. He describes Nigrinus words of wisdom at length. Key to
his account is a contrast between the abstemiousness Nigrinus embodies,
,
,
Dunbabin (:cc,a) :,;, pointing out one of the sundials other functions here, which is to hint
at philosophical reections on the passing of time (cf. Becker and Kondoleon (:cc,) : for that
point).
,,
See Nesselrath (:,,), who charts at great length the traditions of parasite representation Lucian is
drawing on.
,o
See above, p. :.
,;
See Whitmarsh (:ccc) ,c; briey for the imagery of attery (kolakeia) in this text. Lucians
Saturnalia (e.g. ,:) similarly offers a pessimistic image of the way in which poor but well-educated
diners are exposed to inequalities in the dining room.
,
E.g., Nigrinus plain diet is praised at Nigrinus :o.
: Saints and Symposiasts
and which he also praises in Athenian society, and the loose living he sees
all around him in Rome. The thing which shocks Nigrinus new follower
most is the atmosphere of attery which surrounds Roman dining,
,,
and
the way in which so-called philosophers ght for dinner invitations along
with the other clients of wealthy Romans:
For how do you think it affects my soul when I see one of these people, especially
one of those who are advanced in age, mixed up with a crowd of atterers, and
sticking to the heels of some man of standing, and exchanging words with those
who summon people to dinner, all along looking more notable and conspicuous
than anyone else through his appearance? . . . Do they not stuff themselves more
vulgarly and get drunk more openly, and leave the table later and aim to carry off
more leftovers than anyone else? (:,)
At the same time, Lucian also hints that it may be harder for the two
interlocutors to separate themselves from this kind of behaviour than they
realise: for example, he uses the imagery of drugging and drunkenness
to describe the enthusiasm of Nigrinus new convert, and indeed the
enthusiasm of his interlocutor, who seems to be converted in turn.
oc
The text I want to look at in most detail, however, is Lucians Symposium,
whose fascination with parasitical imagery has to my knowledge not been
noted except in passing. As we saw in chapter :, this work parodies the
Platonic symposium tradition, as mediated through Plutarch and others.
o:
In it, Lucian offers us a highly cynical take on the technique we have
seen already for Diogenes Laertius, whereby feasting behaviour can be
used to mark out philosophical beliefs and afliations.
o:
That theme is
related to a wider concern in Lucians work with the commodication of
philosophy, and with the way in which the fake philosophers of the Roman
empire pay lip-service to eye-catching philosophical doctrines and clich ed
philosophical appearance but are exposed as hypocrites under the pressure
of the satirists gaze.
o,
The guest-list of the Symposium contains a mixture
of diners: two Stoics, one Peripatetic, one Epicurean, and a Platonist, as
,,
In addition to the passage quoted below, see Nigrinus ::, and ,:, on Roman banquets.
oc
See esp. Nigrinus , and ,; for intoxication. Cf. Clay (:,,:) ,:,,, who shows how the narrator,
despite being converted to philosophy, refuses to let go of the language of rhetoric; Whitmarsh (:cc:)
:o,;, on the way in which the text confronts us with Lucians involvement in the theatricality of
Roman culture, even as he criticises it.
o:
See esp. Martin (:,,:) :::,; Bompaire (:,,) ,::;; Branham (:,,) :c:c; Jeanneret (:,,:)
:,c:; Frazier (:,,); M annlein (:ccc), esp. :;,; Romeri (:cc:) :,,:o; and pp. ::,, for
further brief discussion.
o:
For a more sober example of Lucians interest in the biographical functions of sympotic character-
isation, see Demonax o, and o. For other examples of hypocritical philosophers misbehaving at
symposia in Lucians work, see Runaways :,, Fisherman ,, Timon ,, and Hermotimus ::.
o,
See Whitmarsh (:cc:) :;,; also M annlein (:ccc) :,;, on parallel depictions of hypocritical
philosophers in the work of Lucians contemporaries.
Philosophers and parasites :,
well as a grammarian and a rhetorician. The mixture of professions recalls
the professional eclecticism of Plutarchs Sympotic Questions, where we so
often see the representatives of different intellectual elds in discussion.
o
A late entrant is the Cynic Alkidamas, who insists on walking around as
he eats, rather than reclining (Symp. :,), a sign of typically Cynic disregard
for sympotic convention. The philosophical virtue of all of these gures is
parodied increasingly as the dinner descends into chaos, with each of them
misbehaving in ways which are ironically appropriate to his philosophical
afliation.
o,
To take just one example, the Platonist Ion, through a series
of witless echoes of Platos theories of er os
oo
introduces the claim that
pederasty is more virtuous than marriage (,,), a theme which is absurdly
inappropriate here, given that the feast is part of a marriage celebration,
and given that we have heard already that the hosts son Zeno is rumoured
to be having an affair with his tutor Diphilos.
Crucially for now, many of these gures take on the markers of para-
sitism. For example, the light-ngered qualities of two of the philosophers
put them in line with parasitical habits of sympotic theft.
o;
Zenothemis
steals food (:: and ,o), as well as spattering it all over his clothes in a display
of self-absorbed gluttony: Look . . . how he stuffs himself with tasty food,
how he has covered his cloak with soup, and how much food he hands to
his servant standing behind him, thinking that the others have not seen
him (::). Later, towards the end of the text, the rhetorician Dionysodoros
steals a bowl (o). The Cynic Alkidamas even insists on wrestling with
the professional joker (gelotopoios a stock character often equated with the
parasite)
o
after being teased by him: for a long time it had been clear, the
narrator tells us, that he was jealous because the gelotopoios was popular and
holding the attention of the symposium (:,). Lucians badly-behaved sym-
posiasts are of course far from unique in Greco-Roman literature. Where
Lucian stands out is in the exuberance with which he shows different codes
of behaviour mingling with each other inappropriately, different strands of
the classical tradition which conict with each other incongruously when
they come together in the same gures. Bracht Branham has analysed
the work in these terms, showing how the narrative brings the language
of the Homeric battleeld into its philosophical frame when the dinner
nally degenerates, in a way which undercuts the seriousness of both.
o,
As
o
See above, pp. o,o.
o,
See Branham (:,,) ::::, on the opening part of the banquet; ::;: on the nal sections; and cf.
good further discussion by M annlein (:ccc) :,,.
oo
Branham (:,,) ::,.
o;
E.g. Alciphron, Letters ,.:c (theft of a napkin), ,.:: (theft of a silver jug), ,.:; (theft of food).
o
See Damon (:,,;) :,,c, n. ::.
o,
Branham (:,,), esp. ::;:c.
:,c Saints and Symposiasts
Branham notes, the pleasure of the account broadly speaking parallel
to what we have seen in the Ostia mosaics comes in part from the way
the work sets up a strong binary contrast between high and low, only
to undermine it, infecting the bodies of the philosophers with grotesque
associations.
;c
Typically of Lucian, these parasitical overtones spread out beyond the
philosophers to inltrate the works representation of its narrator, Lykinos.
Lykinos ostensibly disapproves of the behaviour of his fellow-guests and
dissociates himself from it.
;:
In Symposium ,, for example, he expresses
his reluctance to tell the story of the evenings events, suggesting that it
is not right to scatter many stale dregs (tccspcoicv sc:costooc,)
over philosophical men.
;:
That metaphor casts Lykinos as a symposiast
who soberly refuses to play degrading tricks on his fellow drinkers. The
reference here, according to a scholiast to Lucian, is to a sympotic practice
of pouring the dregs in leftover drinking cups over guests who fall asleep
while drinking.
;,
This is the kind of trick one might play on a parasite.
;
It is
also, as it happens, close to the behaviour we see from the Stoic Zenothemis
at Symposium ,,: At the same time, for he happened to be drinking, he
scattered (sc:tostocotv) over them [i.e. the Epicurean Hermon and the
Kleodemos the Peripatetic] whatever was left in his cup, about half of it.
Immediately afterwards, however, his interlocutor Philon speaks as follows,
stressing Lykinos lack of restraint:
I know perfectly well that you desire to speak more than I desire to listen, and it
seems to me that if you lacked a listener you would even go up to a column or
a statue and pour everything out (tsytci tv:c), speaking continually without
drawing breath (ouvtipcv tvtuo:i). If I decide to leave now, you will come after
me and follow me and plead with me. ()
;,
;c
Branham (:,,) draws loosely on a Bakhtinian frame in elucidating those effects (see esp. ::,),
although he also criticises Bakhtins reading of Lucians Symposium (:;, n. oc).
;:
M annlein (:ccc) :,; shows that Lykinos is consistently contrasted with the other philosophical
gures, and suggests that this may be linked with his lack of afliation to a particular philosophical
sect.
;:
That phrase is an adaptation of Demosthenes, On the Crown ,c, where Demosthenes criticises
Aeschines for scattering me with the stale dregs of his own depravity, in other words accusing
Demosthenes of misdeeds, in the past, for which he himself was responsible.
;,
See Romeri (:cc:) :c;, n. :o.
;
For parallels, see Alciphron ,.:.,, where a parasite is nearly drenched with hot water (although
outside the symposium); ,., where a parasite has a wine cup smashed over his face; ,.::.: where a
parasites eyes are spattered with sh sauce; ,.:,.: for a parasite covered in soup; ,.,:.: for an attempt
to pour boiling water over a parasite in a symposium.
;,
The phrase speaking continually without drawing breath (ouvtipcv tvtuo:i) echoes a later
moment in On the Crown ,c, where Demosthenes criticises Aeschines for his unrestrained and
Philosophers and parasites :,:
The word tvtuo:i (without drawing breath) is used twice in surviving
comic fragments to describe the act of draining a cup at a single draught.
;o
It links Lykinos metaphorically with unrestrained sympotic behaviour
;;

a small hint that his attempts to separate himself from the misbehaving
philosophers may not be quite so secure as he would like to think.
;
introducing alciphrons letters
In Lucians Symposium, then, we see how elite pretension can become
infected with parasitical overtones. In the nal sections of this chapter I
turn to an even more complex manifestation of that theme in the Letters of
Alciphron. Alciphrons Letters is one of the more peculiar texts of imperial
Greek literature. It comprises four books: letters from shermen, farmers,
parasites and courtesans, totalling well over :cc letters in all. The letters
are unashamedly and extravagantly ctional. They offer us a succession of
comic glimpses into the day-to-day lives of the low-status inhabitants of
classical Attica. Many of them are focused in some way on the culture
of the symposium:
;,
in particular the parasites (my primary focus in this
chapter) regularly describe their attendance at drinking parties.
What is this text for? What might its attraction have been for Alciphrons
contemporaries? One answer is that the letters appeal to much the same
taste for erudite game-playing as Athenaeus Deipnosophists. They are full
of references to earlier literature. This is a world of fantasy, woven together
from the texts of New Comedy and other sources, and presumably all the
more compelling precisely because of its articiality.
c
Alciphron offers us
useless speech-making: he strings together (ouvtipti) these words and phrases clearly without
drawing breath (tvtuo:ti).
;o
Antiphanes fr. ;.: (Ath. :c, ,,b); Alexis :., (Ath. ::, ,c:b).
;;
An alternative reading in several of the manuscripts and in the scholia is uuo:i (without closing
ones mouth), a word which is similarly used in sympotic contexts (e.g., Lucian, Lexiphanes ,
and above, p. :,, for an example from Clement) to describe drinking at a single draught: see LSJ
p. .
;
Cf. Branham (:,,) :co; Romeri (:cc:) :,;.
;,
On the prominence of the symposium in Alciphron, see Ozanam (:,,,) ::; Ruiz Garcia (:,)
:,:; Longo (:,,), esp. :c.
c
On Alciphrons allusions to classical texts, especially New Comedy, see (among many others)
Gratwick (:,;,); Vieillefond (:,;,); Ruiz Garcia (:,); Anderson (:,,;b), esp. ::,c,; Ozanam
(:,,,), esp. ,:o; Rosenmeyer (:cc:a), esp. :,;, differentiating her own work from the interest in
charting allusions to earlier texts; Schmitz (:cc,), focusing on the way in which Alciphron goes out
of his way to stress the articiality of his creation; F ogen (:cc;). Given that articial, literary quality,
it is important to stress that this is not a text which offers a realistic portrayal of low-status life in
the Roman empire or even classical Attica; however, see Longo (:,,) for good discussion of the
relation between the works representation of class structures and the social structures of Alciphrons
contemporary world.
:,: Saints and Symposiasts
a version of daily existence in the comic underbelly of rural and urban
Attica which could never have existed in reality, but which is conjured
up with a wonderful, tantalising intensity as we glimpse the scraps of his
letter-writers lives and the remains of their voices coming eetingly to life.
Sympotic and culinary vocabulary play a crucial role in these effects,
just as they do for the conversation of Athenaeus deipnosophists, who
are similarly fascinated by the sympotic past, and especially the world of
comic feasting.
:
Alciphron, like Athenaeus, shows us glimpses of exotic
sh and luxurious food; moreover he gives that portrayal added spice and
ingenuity by showing it from unfamiliar perspectives, still glinting, for
example, in the shermens nets or smeared over the humiliated bodies of
his parasites. The passage at Letters ,.,,, for example, opens as follows: A
at-cake lay before us, the kind which takes its name from Gelon of Sicily.
But I was enjoying myself even just at the sight of it, preparing myself
to swallow it down. However, there was a long delay, while the cake was
being wreathed with sweetmeats: there were pistachio nuts and dates and
nuts taken out of their shells.
:
Athenaeus deipnosophists are themselves
distinctly interested in cake, and presumably would have been fascinated
by this particular specimen.
,
Another point of contact with Athenaeus is
their shared preoccupation with voice: Alciphron, too, reactivates the voices
of the past, bringing them back to life; and he too shows an awareness of
the precariousness of those voices, presenting them to us via the letter form
(on which more below), as if these are fragmentary sections of ongoing
epistolary conversations, chance survivals across the centuries.
At the same time, Alciphron combines this appeal to classicising tastes
with a more sensationalistic interest in the vulnerability of social pre-
tensions. In that sense he is an important gure for this book, exempli-
fying as he does not only the antiquarian urges of Part i, but also the
theme of grotesque consumption which is my focus in Part ii. Alciphrons
characters especially the parasites of Book , remind us of the contam-
inating risk of degradation which is usually suppressed within elite self-
portrayal. And they offer us an extreme example of how the self-regarding
language of status and self-promotion can come to look absurd: repeatedly,
we see Alciphrons parasites longing to be accepted into the upper tiers of
society, only to be dragged down by their grotesque appetites. Alciphron
achieves those effects in part by his reshaping of specically epistolary tra-
ditions of writing about the symposium. We know from Athenaeus that
:
See Schmitz (:cc,) :c:: on Alciphrons use of specialised vocabulary.
:
For similar examples of food description, see ,..:, ,.::.:, ,.:,.:.
,
Athenaeus :, ocao,c, with discussion by Ceccarelli (:ccc) :,,.
Philosophers and parasites :,,
there was a subgenre of the literary epistle devoted to reporting on lavish
banquets.

Alciphron offers us a degraded version of that theme, especially

in the many letters in Book , where parasites use the language of extrav-
agant food description not to recall the pleasures of eating but instead to
describe the way in which food has been used to humiliate them stuffed
into their mouths or poured over their heads.
,
This is a text, in fact, where ideals and dreams are always precarious.
Incompetent social climbing is just one of many types of humiliation and
disappointment depicted. In addition, the text is packed with images of the
non-fullment of nancial or gastronomic or erotic desires. The sherman
in :.:c, who thinks he has hauled in a vast catch of sh, only to nd that his
net is lled with a dead camel already rotten and overrun with maggots
(:.:c.,), is an entirely typical example. The letter form is an appropriate
vehicle for that theme of disappointed expectation:
o
letters were used to
conjure up connections across geographical space, but also at the same
time viewed as a very unreliable form of communication; ancient letter-
writers often express anxiety about the prospect that their letters might
miscarry.
;
The fact that so many of the letters in Alciphrons collection
go unanswered, especially the parasites letters of Book ,, where none
of the letters is paired with a response (in contrast with the much more
satised and less nave courtesans of Book , where we frequently see letters
responding to those which have come before), adds to the atmosphere of
fragmented and precarious communication there.

See esp. Dalby (:,,o) :,;oc and (:cccb) ,;o on the sympotic letters of Lynkeus outlined at
Deipnosophists , ::ac; pp. :c;,, above, on Parmeniskos epistolary Symposium of the Cynics from
Deipnosophists , :,od:,a; and o, :a for a passage suggesting that there may even have been a
tradition of parasites writing letters of sympotic report. For a good example from outside Athenaeus,
see Pliny, Letters :.o.
,
Numerous examples from Book , are discussed below; see also .:, and .: for courtesans reporting
on lavish, and highly eroticised banquets.
o
See K onig (:cc;b) for further discussion. For Ovids Heroides as a good parallel, see Altman (:,:)
:,, citing Heroides :.:: and Lindheim (:cc,); other relevant passages include Heroides ,.:, ,.:,
;.,o, ::.::. For discussion of the way in which the letter form acts as a powerful frame for
portraying precarious communication and disappointed desire in modern European literature, see
Altman (:,:), esp. :,o on romantic ction, where the themes of oscillation between separation
and reunion, between intimacy and disillusionment, are often enhanced by epistolary form. And
see also Rosenmeyer (:cc:a) :,,,c; on other aspects of Alciphrons relation to the tradition of
ancient literary letters.
;
See K onig (:cc;b) :o:,, with further bibliography. Oddly, Alciphrons characters are on the whole
blithely unaware of that possibility, but in a sense their nave optimism only makes the fragility of
their desires all the more striking.

See Longo (:,,) ,, on the isolation of the parasites, contrasting this with the sense of a mini-
community in Book ; cf. Rosenmeyer (:cc:a) :;:; and more generally on the carefully manu-
factured atmosphere of fragmentariness in the work, see Reardon (:,;:) :c,; Ozanam (:,,,) :,.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
In the section following I want to look a little more closely at the themes
of social status and bodily degradation. One nal pair of caveats is necessary,
however, before we go any further. First: the text itself is in a very precarious
state of reconstruction.
,
It is tempting to feel that there is something
appropriate about this precariousness, given that the theme of precarious
accomplishment is so prominent in the text itself. It does lead, however,
to considerable difculties of analysis. There is, for example, uncertainty
about the order in which the letters might originally have been arranged: it
is not even certain that they were originally published in their current book
divisions.
,c
For that reason I have conned my remarks here to questions
which do not depend on knowledge of the original order. Secondly, there
is also uncertainty about the works date. Many characteristics of the texts
fantasy reconstruction of the classical world t closely with the sophistic
writing of the second and third centuries ce, as I have suggested, and in
some cases Alciphron is clearly imitating, or imitated by, other writers from
this period, especially Lucian.
,:
However, it is conceivable that the text may
date from the fourth or fth centuries ce. The comments I make in what
follows are therefore intended to stand independently of the works precise
date.
appetite and social status in alciphron
Let us look rst at the way in which the text presents the gulf between
Alciphrons low-status parasites and the high-status symposiasts they come
into contact with.
,:
The parasites often seem to be unavoidably separated
from their elite patrons by the fact that their appetites are of an entirely
different kind; their voracious hunger is blunted by the fact that their
,
See Schmitz (:cc,) ;, and F ogen (:cc;) ::, n. ,. The most recent critical edition, on which my
translations here are based, is Schepers (:,c,). The Letters still lack a high-quality, readable English
translation (although it is, admittedly, a very difcult text to translate, with all its love of obscure
comic vocabulary): currently the only available version is Benner and Fobes (:,,) in the Loeb
Classical Library series.
,c
See Schmitz (:cc,) ,, esp. n. for criticism of Rosenmeyers attempt to view the opening letters
of each book as programmatic when the original order of publication is uncertain.
,:
On Alciphrons date, and his close relationship with other texts of the Second Sophistic, especially
the work of Lucian, see (among many others) Santini (:,,,); Anderson (:,,;b) ::,,; Ozanam
(:,,,) :o; Rosenmeyer (:cc:a) :,o;; Schmitz (:cc,), esp. ;; F ogen (:cc;) :,; also Baldwin
(:,:), who dates the text, for different reasons, to the rst decade of the third century ce or earlier;
and see further discussion of ,.:, and its relationship with Lucians Symposium below, n. ,;.
,:
For scenes of sympotic degradation and disappointed aspiration in Books ::, not discussed in any
detail here, see especially :.:, :., and :.:. The courtesans of Book , by contrast, tend to be more
competent at controlling their own self-representation and manipulating the elite world to their
own advantage: see Rosenmeyer (:cc:b); McClure (:cc,) o.
Philosophers and parasites :,,
hosts have different priorities. In ,.,,, for example, mentioned already
above, a parasite writes about a cake at a recent dinner party and the
torments he suffered in waiting for it to be served. His hosts seem unin-
terested in it, dragging out the time in talking while he gazes on it in
agony:
keeping my appetite in suspense as if by prearrangement, one of them would pick
up a toothpick and start clearing out the brous bits of food lodged between his
teeth, while another would lie back as if more interested in going to sleep than
in paying attention to what was on the table; and then one of them would start
talking (oitt,t:c) about something and everything was being done other than
bringing forward for enjoyment the sweet at-cake that I desired. (,.,,.:)
Here, the parasites gluttonous desire clashes with the very different
appetites of his elite hosts. For example, the idea of sympotic conversa-
tion, which he mentions in the vaguest of terms (one of them would
start talking (oitt,t:c) about something) seems entirely alien to him.
The detail of the brous pieces of food does hint at elite susceptibility
to grotesque physicality, but the very fact that this guest is cleaning his
teeth simultaneously points to a desire to wipe away any contaminating
association with the grotesque.
In ,.:, a textual equivalent of the sundial mosaic from Antioch discussed
above, we similarly see voracious parasitical appetite frustrated by social
convention. Two parasites, Trechedeipnos (Runtodinner) and Lopadek-
thambos (Dishamazed) gaze up at a sundial, longing for the dinner hour,
and plotting to move the pointer of the sundial to bring that hour closer.
,,
Their longing is described as something horrifyingly physical. The speaker
describes himself as goaded (stv:cutvc,) by hunger and in danger of
withering up (tcosvci) (,.:.:): these are men who cannot escape from
the tyranny of their own bodies, and whose other desires are entirely sub-
ordinated to physical appetite (a common theme throughout Book ,, as we
shall see further). Contrasted with them is their host, Theochares, whose
conservative devotion to conventional dinner hours they complain about:
he is austere in his habits and doesnt allow his stomach to ll itself up
before the proper time (cos tti:pttti :n ,co:pi tpc :, cpc, tutiu-
tcoci). That phrase stresses Theochares control over his stomach, in
contrast with the letter-writers slavery to his appetites. It also stresses the
difference in Theochares conceptions of time: for him the word hour
or time (cpc) is used to describe a xed and predetermined moment of
,,
See Gratwick (:,;,) on this letters background in Menanders Boiotia, and ,::, for reconstruction
of the letters text.
:,o Saints and Symposiasts
the day; for the speaker Trechedeipnos, by contrast, it refers to the urgent
experience of the present moment, in his opening plea to Lopadekthambos
that it is time for you to come up with a plan (cpc oci cutuc:c,).
The rigidity of Theochares elite conceptions of time is as immovable a
barrier to the satisfaction of their physical hunger as the sundial itself. That
clash enhances the impression of the vast difference between the parasites
and their masters.
In other letters, by contrast we nd parasites who try rather harder to
bridge the gap. In these cases, however, Alciphron tends to expose the
hopelessness of their wishes. Here again, what we are seeing is conicting
desires: not, this time, physical appetite blunted by social convention, but
rather social aspiration blunted by hunger and by other reminders of the
inescapable, grotesque bodiliness of the parasite. One of the distinguishing
marks of the parasitical appetite in this work is the way in which it erases
the will and even the identity of these speakers. Artepithymos (Loafdesirer)
in ,., complains of his inability to control his repulsive and gluttonous
belly (,.,.:) and again later of the kind of evils this omnivorous and most
all-devouring belly compels us to put up with (,.,.,), and resolves to spit
out (tct:oci) life, having enjoyed a lavish dinner (,.,.,). That nal
phrase suggests that he intends to eat himself to death. And the imagery of
spitting (tct:oci) is a characteristic sign that he cannot think beyond
the language of consumption: even suicide is described with the language
one might use for rejecting rotten or unpleasant food. For Hetoimokossos
(Readyforabeating) in ,. the problem of self-effacement is taken even
further: he complains of being stuffed almost to death by the other guests
at a party, who pour a mixture of mustard, sh-sauce and vinegar into
his mouth as if into a wine jar (,..). Here, Hetoimokossos is not even
under the control of his stomach, but instead even further removed from
a position of self-mastery, under the control of his hosts, as if he is an
inanimate object. Bodily impropriety surfaces in other forms too, not just
in other accounts of force-feeding
,
and beatings,
,,
but also more unusually
in ,.,c, where the letter-writer complains that a barber has played a trick
on him, deliberately leaving patches of unshaven hair on his face, which
exposes him to ridicule in the symposium.
That sense of inescapable and identity-threatening corporeal degrada-
tion threatens to resurface even in moments where the parasites at rst
seem to have achieved a more dignied position. In Letter ,.:, for example,
,
For other examples of humiliation linked with food, see Letters ,.::, ,.:, (discussed further below),
,.,:.
,,
Examples of beatings at Letters ,.,, ,.;, ,.,, ,.:.
Philosophers and parasites :,;
Hektodioktes (Noonchaser) is promised a lavish dinner by a wealthy host,
Gorgias, if he goes to fetch the courtesan Aedonion from her house, but
ends up almost having boiling water poured on top of his head by the
woman in question for his pains (although he manages to dodge out of the
way). Part of the attraction of the dinner invitation seems to stem from
the way in which Gorgias addresses Trechedeipnos in terms of familiarity
and friendship: he greeted me kindly and criticised me for not coming to
see him often (,.:.:), echoing Kephalos friendly reproach to Socrates in
Plato, Republic ,:c. But the typically parasitical risk of pain and humil-
iation in the attempted drenching of course undermines that impression
of equality, as does the revelation that Aedonion is angry about not hav-
ing been paid enough for a previous engagement, which reminds us that
friendship in the world of the parasites and courtesans is always a busi-
ness matter. It may be signicant here that Gorgias has casually thrown
into conversation a mention of the menu, as if he knows that this is all
it will take to bend Trechedeipnos to his will: sliced and salted sh and
wine-jars full of Mendesian nectar, as one might call it (,.:.:). Moreover,
the inescapability of parasitical identity seems yet again to be ingrained in
the letter-writers language, in his nal, resigned reection: So we are fed
(cusccutvci) on deceptive hopes, and submit to insults rather than
pleasures (,.:.,). Here, the experience and language of gluttony in the
word fed (cusccutvci) marks the parasites interactions with the
world at every level. That word is also marked by connotations of low
status through being often applied to animals with the sense of pastured
or grazed.
The names of the parasites contribute to this effect of showing grotesque
identity lying beneath a dignied surface: Alciphron follows the convention
of ancient letter writing whereby the names of sender andrecipient appear at
the head of the letter. He exploits that convention in order to remind us that
his letter-writers are inhabitants of the degraded underbelly of Athenian
society, inextricably marked by a grotesque appetite for food whether they
like it or not.
,o
Letters ,.:, is a good example, where the writers name,
Skordosphrantes (Garlicsmeller) becomes a matter of explicit comment.
The letter opens with a typically indignant lament:
By Herakles, what great trouble I underwent in cleaning off, with soap and soda
from Chalastra, the stickiness of yesterdays soup which was poured over me. It
was not so much the insult itself that bit me, but rather the social inferiority of
,o
See K onig (:cc;b) :;;c; also Ure na (:,,,); Anderson (:,,;b) ::c::; Casevitz (:cc:); and see
Athenaeus ::cf for mocking nicknames given to parasites.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
my insulter. For I am the son of Anthemion, the richest of the Athenians, and
Axiothea, descended from the family of Megakles, whereas the man who did this
to me is the son of an undistinguished father and a barbarian mother, a Scythian
or a Kolchian, bought on the rst day of the month. (,.:,.::)
Here, the speaker claims elite birth and expresses outrage at the lack of
respect afforded to him, but the drenching he receives exposes the absurd
incongruity of that claim with his present position. That incongruity is
enhanced by the mention of both his old and new name in the closing lines
of the letter: And what upsets me not least, in addition to all the other
things, is the throwing away of my name. For my parents gave me the
name Polybius, but Fortune has changed my name, forcing me to be called
Skordosphrantes by my colleagues from the same profession (,.:,.,).
His decision to sign himself as Skordosphrantes at the very beginning of
the letter appears as a tacit acknowledgement that his old name is useless
for the purposes of identication, that he has no prospect of reversing the
journey from prosperity to parasitism, even if he might have succeeded in
washing away the soup poured over his head.
the parasite as sophist in alciphron
The social aspirations of the parasites are thus repeatedly mocked and
debunked in the forty-two letters of Book ,; the high-status charac-
ters of the work are rarely themselves saddled with grotesque, parasitical
associations.
,;
One might feel that Alciphrons stress on the gulf between
low- and high-status characters weakens the argument I have been making
so far in Part ii, i.e. that descriptions of grotesque eating and drinking tend
to undermine social hierarchies as well as reinforcing them. Alternatively,
however, one might read the degradation of Alciphrons parasites as a delib-
erately absurd, exaggerated image of the danger which faces all those who
accept hospitality in the patronage-obsessed world of the Roman empire,
in other words the kind of danger which is dramatised in Lucians depiction
of the humiliated Greek intellectual in On Salaried Posts.
,;
The obvious exception is ,.:,, which probably imitates Lucians Symposium, rather than vice versa
(on the relationship between the two, see Santini (:,,,); Anderson (:,,;b) ::,,). As in Lucians
text, the narrator describes brawling philosophers who behave like parasites (e.g. ,.:,., for the
unknown Cynic collecting leftovers, like the parasites at ,.:,.,, ,.:;, ,.:c.:, ,.:,.:). Even in this
letter, however, the nal lines ensure that the focus is shifted away from the philosophers and back
on to the humiliation of the letter-writer himself: he suggests in the nal lines (,.:,.,:c) that his
professional pride has been damaged, because the symposiasts no longer pay any attention to him
and his fellow entertainers, being preoccupied with the philosophers misbehaviour (a detail which
is not paralleled in Lucians version).
Philosophers and parasites :,,
Not only that, but Alciphron also hints repeatedly at parallels between
the aspirations of his characters and the aspirations of his readers. As I have
already suggested, this is a text about desire, and about the precariousness
and elusiveness of satisfaction. It does not just represent desire in the long-
ings of its low-status characters; it also aims to stimulate desire, indulging
its readers longing for access to the classical past while also exposing the
inevitable failure and fragility of that longing. Desire for a past just out of
reach and all the more tantalising for that has recently come to be seen
as a major theme within imperial Greek literature: James Porter has made
that argument for Pausanias and several writers who were roughly contem-
porary with him.
,
What we see in Alciphron is another manifestation of
that phenomenon: hopeless longings for status, for food, and for prot,
stand in the Letters as parallels (among other things) for literary nostalgia.
Oddly, that fundamental equation between desiring readers and desiring
characters has not to my knowledge been noted, even in passing, within
recent scholarship on Alciphron. There has been a tendency to focus on
Alciphrons allusions to earlier texts as if the display of erudition in itself
is an adequate explanation of the works appeal. These studies have failed
to acknowledge that the work also offers us self-reexive images of our
own literary desire, asking us to think about the process of precariously
re-imagining the past that we are ourselves engaged in when we read this
text.
Beyond that broad resemblance, moreover, there is one feature of the text
which has particular importance for linking readers and characters, and that
is its obsession with the theme of role-swapping and role-playing.
,,
The text
itself is an elaborate version of the exercise of ethopoieia (character-creation),
that is the exercise of imagining oneself into the voice of a particular
historical gure or a particular type of character. This process was taught
at school level and beyond, and treated in texts of rhetorical theory.
:cc
It
also inuenced sophistic literature heavily and there are many examples of
authors imagining themselves into the position of rustic characters in much
the same way as Alciphron does: Longus Daphnis and Chloe and Aelians
,
Porter (:cc:); on Pausanias, see also Elsner (:,,) :,:; K onig (:cc,) :;,; and cf. McClure
(:cc,), esp. :;, for similar arguments on Athenaeus.
,,
See esp. Rosenmeyer (:cc:a) :;;, on complaints and escapism and :,,: on role-swapping;
for the latter, cf. Longo (:,,) ::: on movements between the country and the city and vice versa.
:cc
On ethopoieia and its inuence on Alciphron, see Ure na (:,,,); Rosenmeyer (:cc:a) :,,o,;
Schmitz (:cc,) ,c:; F ogen (:cc;) :c:. See also Stowers (:,o) ,:, and Stirewalt (:,,,) :c for
letter-writing as a school exercise and a basis for rhetorical training; and Reed (:,,;), who argues
that rhetorical conventions had a strong inuence on ancient epistolary practice and theory. On the
background of character creation in the lawcourt oratory of classical Athens, and its theorisation
in Aristotle, see Carey (:,,) ,,.
:oc Saints and Symposiasts
Letters from Farmers are the most obvious examples. What sets Alciphron
apart is his obsession with showing his characters themselves engaged in
the same processes of play-acting: we see shermen planning to become
farmers, farmers planning to become shermen; farmers and shermen
contemplating life in the city; parasites attempting to act as members of
the elite; or else moving to take up the life of farmers in the countryside;
and a range of more wealthy, urban characters along with the courtesans
of Book feasting in the countryside, acting out a fantasy of rural
existence. In many cases their aspirations are exposed as unrealistic dreams,
but that does not stop them from trying, with an irrepressible optimism.
The overlap between the actions of the characters and the exercise of
imagining which we, along with Alciphron, are engaged in, offers us a
self-reexive image for ourselves as we read. The ever-optimistic, ever-
frustrated desire of the characters, stuck forever in the gutters of classical
Athens in search of satisfactions and dreams just out of reach, is a comic
emblem for the processes we as readers engage in although some readers
may, of course, choose to view their own role-playing abilities as more
successful.
How are those impressions conveyed within the detailed texture of
Alciphrons writing? My starting-point is the often-made observation that
his characters often slip into elevated, literary language. That effect of
course has a long history, stretching at least as far back as Theocritus.
Many of Alciphrons contemporaries used similar techniques in presenting
implausibly erudite visions of rustic life.
:c:
One possible response to this
is to suspend our disbelief, and to imagine a process whereby the letter-
writers have picked up the crumbs of elite discourse from their contact with
people wealthier and better-educated than themselves, often using them
clumsily or inappropriately.
:c:
That possibility is given prominence in a
number of places, for example at :.,.:, where the sherman letter-writer
quotes a snippet from the work of Aratus (Phainomena :,,) it is only a
thin plank that wards off death, a reference to the precariousness of boats
in order to justify his decision to abandon the sea and become a farmer.
He claims to have overheard the phrase from one of those corpse-like and
shoeless people who hang around in the Stoa Poikile (i.e. a philosopher)
during a visit to the city to sell sh.
A second response is to see these intrusions of sophisticated language as
moments which draw our attention to the fact that we are listening not
:c:
See Whitmarsh (:cc:) :cc; Rosenmeyer (:cc:a) ,c:: on Aelians Letters of Farmers, esp. ,:::
on Letter :c.
:c:
Cf. Schmitz (:cc,) ,,.
Philosophers and parasites :o:
to real, low-status characters, but instead to people imitating low-status
characters. Alciphron goes out of his way to remind us of the sophistic
articiality of the world he has created, as Thomas Schmitz has convinc-
ingly argued.
:c,
Alciphrons use of the letter form gives that technique an
added dimension, in the sense that the letters (many of which are unan-
swered) invite us to write ourselves into the correspondence, trying our
own hand at ethopoieia in reply.
:c
There is a revealing moment in .;
where one of Alciphrons courtesans appears to step out of the frame of the
work for a moment to draw our attention to that articiality. The letter-
writer denounces a famous philosopher for the hypocritical gap between
his professional persona and his private, sex-mad behaviour, and claims the
superiority of the profession of the courtesan.
:c,
Within her long denuncia-
tion one question in particular stands out for its self-reexive connotations:
Do you think the sophist differs from the hetaira? (.;.). The ostensible
purpose of this phrase is to hammer home the hypocrisy and degrada-
tion of the intellectual. But it also in passing reminds us, in metaliterary
fashion, of a different kind of equation: the courtesan is a sophist in
disguise.
There is also, however, a third, related possibility not acknowledged
by Schmitz which is that we are being invited to see the letter-writers as
gures whose activities offer us a comical, undignied image for sophistic
activity, and indeed for the kind of engagement with sophistic composition
to which we commit ourselves as readers. It is this third interpretation I
want to focus on in what follows, although I would stress that it stands
side by side with the other two. These different possible responses are not
mutually exclusive. Instead we are left to try them out in turn as we read.
And even if the rst two strategies are the ones most likely to dominate
our perceptions of the text on rst reading, it is nevertheless surely hard
to miss the fact that the aspirations of Alciphrons parasites are at times
mirror images of our own. They are, of course, distorted, comical, absurd
mirror images. But can we suppress the sneaking suspicion that we may be
at risk of some of the same failures and absurdities, albeit in a less blatant
form?
Take for example the many passages where we overhear parasites using,
often in clumsy or inappropriate ways, erudite styles of speech epic or
tragic quotations, aphorisms, mythological references and so on. A reader
who prides himself on his erudition and his own capacity to reproduce (for
:c,
Schmitz (:cc,).
:c
See Rosenmeyer (:cc:a) :c and ,c; for that suggestion.
:c,
For Athenaeus use of stories of interactions between courtesans and intellectuals, and traditions of
comparison between them, see McClure (:cc,), esp. ,, :c:,, :,o and :o;,.
:o: Saints and Symposiasts
example) Homeric quotations ingeniously in sympotic conversation
:co

as many of Alciphrons readers must have been able to do, at least in

rudimentary ways might be expected to indulge in a smile of superiority
as he hears the letter-writers comically incongruous attempts. He might
equally laugh at the rather less attering implications of that comparison
next time he catches himself speaking in similar terms.
Another variant of the same effect is the way in which the letters of
all four books are haunted by the language of professional self-promotion
and professional rivalry, of the kind used regularly by sophists and other
intellectuals. As in the case of Lucians On the Parasite, which plays the
same game in a more sustained form, this language comes to seem more
absurd when it is in the mouth of a low-status character. Letters ,. is a
good example. Here the letter-writer is furious at the success of a rival:
No-one pays any attention to us, as if we came from Megara or Aegium. Gryl-
lion is the only one who is highly esteemed (toocsiut) now, and is master of
the town (sc:tyti :c co:u), and every house is open to him as if he were
Krates the Cynic from Thebes. It seems to me that he is bewitching the poor
young men, having got hold of a sorceress from Thessaly or Akarnania. For
what kind of wit does he have? What kind of charm and pleasure does he have
to offer? (,..::)
Attacks against rivals were a common feature of sophistic activity in the
second and third centuries ce, if Philostratus Lives of the Sophists is to be
believed.
:c;
Moreover, the language Gnathon uses to describe his rivals
successes and qualities is itself reminiscent of sophistic characterisation.
Gryllion, we are told, is highly esteemed (toocsiut) and holds the atten-
tion of the town (sc:tyti :c co:u). Both of those phrases are appropriate
more to superstar intellectuals than to parasites. The verb toocsiuc (to
be highly esteemed, to win renown) is admittedly a common one, but
it is used, together with words like toocsiuc, from the same root, with
striking frequency (fteen times) in the Lives of the Sophists to describe
sophistic renown. The phrase sc:tyti :c co:u (holds the attention of
the town) recalls the kind of language Philostratus uses in his Lives of
the Sophists in describing how whole cities admire or even fall in love with
prominent sophists.
:c
Moreover, the verb sc:tyti (holds the attention of,
bewitches, conquers) can have overtones of enchantment and possession
and inspiration
:c,
which have some resonances with Philostratus accounts
:co
For good examples of Homeric quotation, see ,.:c and ,.:; and see further discussion of Homeric
quotation repeatedly in Part i, e.g. pp. ;o;.
:c;
See Whitmarsh (:cc,a) ,;c; K onig (:c:c).
:c
E.g. Philostratus, VS :., ,c, :.::, ,:, :.:,, ,,c (among many other examples).
:c,
LSJ p. ,:o.
Philosophers and parasites :o,
of the beguiling power of sophistic oratory.
::c
Accusations of magic against
professional rivals also seemto have been common: there are examples again
in the Lives of the Sophists, and others in Galens medical writing.
:::
And
the reference to young men parallels Philostratus interest in the devotion
of young men to their sophistic teachers.
:::
Aspects of Gnathons letter, in
other words, sound like comically overstated versions of the language we
would expect from a sophist debunking a rival and expressing scorn for
his style of speech. Once again, the obvious explanation is that Gnathon
is imitating, rather naively and absurdly, the self-aggrandising language
of the wealthy, erudite gures he rubs shoulders with in the symposium.
However, Alciphron also leaves it open to us to see him as a comic emblem
of the absurdities of sophistic self-promotion.
The analogy between parasite and sophist is at its most blatant, as I
have already suggested, in the many scenes of role-swapping in the Letters.
Patricia Rosenmeyer has helpfully collected the examples of role-swapping
in all four books, and I do not want to go over the same ground exhaustively
here.
::,
However, she chooses not to discuss the way in which these role-
changing ambitions are themselves presented as a comical equivalent to
the traditions of ethopoieia Alciphron himself is working with. In several
cases we nd quite positive images of the way in which urban characters
can act out fantasy images of the countryside. In .:,, some courtesans and
their lovers indulge in an extravagant, erotic banquet in the countryside,
bringing their urban luxury and sophistication with them. In :.:,, the
sherman Nausibios explains to his friend how he was recently engaged
by a rich youth from the city for a days boat trip. The youth brings the
trappings of urban life out to sea in order to make it bearable, creating a
maritime idyll in the image of the luxurious symposium (although without
any specic mention of food or drink): there are singing-girls and parasols
and comfortable seating: for he could not endure the hard planks of my
shing boat, and he reclined on exotic rugs and cloaks (:.:,.:). This is
not the real seaside, but a fantasy version of it, as is Alciphrons text in the
whole of Book :. The letter offers us, in other words, a relatively positive
mise-en-abme image of the creative processes Alciphron and his readers are
themselves engaged in.
More often, however, role-playing is haunted by the prospects of failure
and dissatisfaction. The parasites in particular seem susceptible to the
::c
See (among other examples) VS :., ,:, with Gleason (:,,,) ::,.
:::
On the association of magic with sophists and sophistic rhetoric, see Gleason (:,,,) ;, and a
good example at VS :.::, ,:,; and on medicine, see Galen, On Prognosis :.o, and :c.:,, with
Nutton (:,;,) :,c.
:::
E.g. VS :.::, ,:, (among many other examples).
::,
As noted above, n. ,,.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
desire to look across professional boundaries, and to imagine themselves,
in a parodic version of sophistic inventiveness, playing other roles. They
also seem, more so than the characters of the other books, incapable of
a satisfactory or successful transition. Over and over again we see the
parasites exposing, often without their full understanding, the impossibility
of throwing off their true parasitical identity, even after their resolution
to change career. In ,.,, for instance, Limopyktes (Famineboxer) writes
to a colleague explaining how his recent move to a job in the country
has gone wrong.
::
After initial optimism, we hear, Limopyktes begins
to bridle under the heavy workload and so decides to return to the city.
He then discovers he is no longer able to t in there either, so is forced
to take up a third profession, as a bandit. As so often, there are signs
of the difculty the speaker has in throwing off his parasitical nature.
For example Limopyktes uses the language of parasitical relationships in
order to describe his own (ostensibly non-parasitical) interactions with the
farmer, Corydon, who employs him: I was quite well acquainted with
the farmer Corydon, who often used to laugh at me, for he understood
the humour of the city far better than is usual for country people (,.,.:).
Corydons inclination to tease him is presumably precisely the thing which
makes Limopyktes feel at home. Nevertheless, Limopyktes acts out his new
rustic identity vigorously, wearing rustic clothes: dressing myself in rustic
fashion, fastening a eece (vsc,) around myself and carrying a mattock,
I looked just like a genuine digger (,.,.:). His action here dressing
myself in rustic fashion is a literalised version of the game Alciphron
himself has been playing throughout Book :. Has Alciphron, we might
ask, been any more successful?
::,
One nal example in particular (,.,,) stands out for its engage-
ment with the imagery of sophistic oration. The letter-writer Philoporos
(Incomelover) explains how he has joined a troop of actors after becoming
disillusioned with his current occupation. He also acknowledges, however,
that he is not suited to his new career. The letter ends with expressions of
his anxiety about being mocked on stage:
::
This letter echoes :.,: where the parasite Gnathon overstepping the dividing structures of the
text as well as the boundaries of his own profession writes to a farmer asking for a job in the
country.
::,
There may even be echoes here of the most famous disguised rustic in ancient Greek literature, that
is the gure of Lykidas in Theocritus, Idyll ;.:,:, (similarly dressed in a sheepskin: svcscv otpuc).
Lykidas may be the god Apollo in disguise, or may instead be standing for one of Theocritus poetic
predecessors: see Hunter (:,,,) :o,c for summary of debate. Areader who makes that connection
might be inclined to see Limopyktes too as a gure who is more than he seems.
Philosophers and parasites :o,
Having changed my career and my nature very late in the day, I turned out to
be miserable and a slow learner. But since I had no choice in the matter, I learnt
the play, and strengthening my declamation (utt:nv) with practice I am ready
to make my contribution to the chorus. As for you, together with our friends,
please stir up applause for me, so that even if I make a mistake without noticing it
the young men of the town will not have the opportunity to hoot or whistle but
instead the noise of your praise will put an end to the murmur of insults. (,.,,.:,)
His language here recalls the characteristic fears of parasites at dinner, in
danger of mockery and physical abuse from the other guests, and acts as a
reminder of howhard it is for himto escape fromhis former self. At the same
time, however, his worries about making a mistake recall the many passages
where we hear of the disgrace which could come to sophists and other
intellectuals on making mistakes in their speech, and the trouble which
they could face from unruly audiences.
::o
Moreover, the word utt:n
which is regularly used to refer to rhetorical declamation colours the
letter with overtones of sophistic oratory. Philoporos nervousness and
obvious unsuitability for the role-playing he has undertaken help to paint
him as a comical representative of failed or incompetent sophistry.
In summary: depictions of grotesque eating and drinking were frequently
used in ancient literature to undermine claims to high social status and
philosophical virtue. The gure of the parasite was a particularly powerful
vehicle for that effect in the ancient imagination. Alciphrons parasites, too,
stand as absurdly exaggerated images of the way in which high aspirations
can be brought down to earth within the status-conscious world of imperial
culture. Alciphron is not unusual in that respect. I have argued, however,
that he gives that theme an added dimension by associating parasitical
desire with the fantasising procedures of sophistic composition. In ,.,,,
as often in the Letters, the perspective of the parasite threatens to mingle
with the perspective of the works sophistic author or even of its readers,
who are themselves similarly engaged with the pleasures and frustrations
of role-playing.
::o
See Whitmarsh (:cc,a) :o, ,;.
chapter 1 0
Food and the symposium in the Greek
and Latin novels
grotesque consumption and disgust
The Greek and Latin novels of the imperial period are packed with scenes of
eating and drinking. Between them they offer some of the most sensation-
alistic portrayals of transgressive consumption in the whole of surviving
ancient literature. They are typical of the trends we have been looking at so
far in Part ii, especially the use of eating and drinking scenes to blur bound-
aries between high and low culture, between virtuous and blameworthy
behaviour. I also want to suggest, however, that some of the novels go well
beyond standard versions of that effect. These texts do not simply debunk
and satirise elite culture in conventional ways. Novelists like Petronius,
Achilles Tatius and Apuleius push their representations of the grotesque
much further than the relatively muted versions of it we have seen so far,
portraying the corporeality and vulnerability of the human body in quite
unsettling ways.
To what extent are those effects illuminated by the Bakhtinian
approaches to grotesque consumption mentioned in the last chapter? For
Bakhtin, grotesque bodiliness is associated above all with what he calls the
carnival sense of the world, with laughter, and with the overturning of high
culture.
:
That perspective has some relevance to the novels, especially the
Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius.
:
However, it fails to capture their
fascination with the way in which representations of the grotesque physi-
cality of the human body can also produce a sense of horror and mystery. In
order to shed light on that phenomenon we need to look instead to other
critics who have given much greater weight than Bakhtin to the importance
of fear and disgust in human reactions to the grotesque. Wolfgang Kayser,
for example, writing more than fty years ago now, inuentially linked
:
See above, pp. :,o.
:
Bakhtinian approaches to the ancient novel are discussed in Branham (:cc,b), but with surprisingly
little attention to the gure of the grotesque body.
:oo
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :o;
the grotesque in art and literature with sensations of horror and fear and
incomprehensibility.
,
Others have suggested that his denition needs to
be combined with Bakhtins more positive, comic view of the grotesque,
and that the dening feature of our reactions to the grotesque is the way
in which they stand halfway between terror and laughter.

The psychoanalytic work of Julia Kristeva similarly gives more weight

than Bakhtin to the role of disgust and fear. For Kristeva, all children at
rst exist within what she calls the semiotic realm associated with the
mothers body, before moving into the symbolic realm, characterised by
language, socialisation and gender difference. She suggests, as paraphrased
by Sue Vice, that the subjects position in the symbolic realmis precariously
maintained, and anything that threatens to send the subject back into the
semiotic realm, by confronting us with the materiality of our physical selves,
is accompanied by sensations of dread and, more signicantly, disgust and
revulsion.
,
The abject, as she names it, is what disturbs identity, system,
order.
o
As Judith Perkins puts it, in her work on early Christian attitudes
to the grotesque body, to which I will return in the chapter following, what
is horrifying about the abject is the evidence that ultimately no amount of
surveillance or policing can secure the boundaries of a clean and proper
body, personally or socially.
;
Vice has helpfully shown how Kristevas
view of grotesque corporeality helps to explain features of literary writing
which Bakhtins approach does not deal with adequately.

She identies
ve categories which are central to both authors the margins of the
body, the maternal, food, death, and the text and draws out the contrast
between their different uses of those categories: Bakhtins approach to each
attempts to reclaim a positive sense of the grotesque. Kristeva, by contrast,
tries to explain why the phenomena associated with each of these categories
might seem to us coarse and cynical, disgusting and obscene.
,
Others, writing from an anthropological perspective are interested in
similar reactions, but offer rather different explanations. Mary Douglas in
particular has written at length about the way in which particular foods
inspire horror or disgust by their transgression of a cultures imagined
vision of symbolic order.
:c
The prospect of eating substances which are
culturally marked as inedible or taboo can induce fear, although it can also
be associated with a sense of transgressive pleasure.
::
,
Kayser (:,o,).

E.g. McElroy (:,,) :,.
,
Vice (:,,;) :o,.
o
Kristeva (:,:) .
;
Perkins (:cc,b) :,.

See Vice (:,,;) :,,,, esp. :;: on the edible.
,
Vice (:,,;) :o.
:c
Douglas (:,;).
::
See Falk (:,,), esp. ,,c; and on the intertwining of disgust and desire, see above, pp. :,o and :,,
on Stallybrass and White (:,o); also Miller (:,,;), esp. :c,:.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
Geoffrey Harpham, meanwhile, has pursued a rather different angle,
extending Kaysers interest in the uncategorisability and mysteriousness of
the grotesque.
::
The word grotesque, he suggests, designates a condition
of being just out of focus, just beyond the reach of language;
:,
and it often
occurs in the interval between incomprehension and comprehension: the
interval of the grotesque is the one in which, although we have recognized
a number of different forms in the object, we have not yet developed a clear
sense of the dominant principle that denes it and organizes its various
elements.
:
The grotesque, in other words, not only challenges hierarchies
of high and low; it also stands halfway between comprehensibility and
incomprehensibility, shocking us with its inability to be subsumed within
existing categories, while also inviting us to ll the gaps of signication.
:,
As we shall see later, those insights are suggestive not only for the Greek and
Latin novels where grotesque eating often has a startling, disconcerting
quality but also for representations of grotesque eating in early Christian
literature, which often seem designed to open up a space for perception
of the indescribable, paradoxical, almost unimaginable elements of the
sacred.
These various approaches to disgust and the grotesque hover in the back-
ground to my reading in what follows. Transgressive eating and drinking,
for Apuleius and Achilles Tatius and many of their novelistic counterparts,
can provoke fear and horror and incomprehension, as well as laughter;
and they can remind us, in the process, of the difculty of maintaining
uncontaminated bodies and the social status that they imply.
feasting and the symposium in the greek novels
Arguably, that link between bodily integrity and high social status was
even more prominent in the ancient imagination than it is for us. There
was a widespread assumption in Roman imperial culture that the elite
body ought to be instantly recognisable by contrast with the bodies of
slaves and others of low status, not just by their clothing, but also by
their deportment and gesture. At the same time, however, there was also
a widespread awareness that the relation between physical form and per-
sonal identity was never a straightforward one: the link between body and
::
Harpham (:,:). However, see McElroy (:,,) ; for criticism of Harpham, on the grounds that
his association of the grotesque with indeterminacy neglects the visceral impact of grotesque art and
literature.
:,
Harpham (:,:) ,.
:
Harpham (:,:) :o.
:,
See Harpham (:,:), esp. :c:.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :o,
identity, in other words, was often a source of anxiety and subject to varied
interpretation.
:o
The ancient novels engage with those concerns by returning obsessively
to the subject of the human body, a subject which has been oddly neglected
within recent scholarship on these texts.
:;
Many of them offer us fantasy
images of the inviolability of the elite body. Their heroes and heroines
miraculously keep their beauty and chastity intact, despite the many threats
and dangers they face in their travels beyond the boundaries of the civilised
Greek world. At the same time, even the most idealising of these texts do
show some awareness of the instability of beauty and of the elite virtue
and identity it is taken to guarantee. Some of them go further, showing us
in a much more blatant way the human bodys openness to degradation,
through their portrayal of dismembered, deformed, polluted physicality.
The novels portrayal of eating and drinking
:
is a key part of that wider
project of representing human corporeality. They include a rich variety of
different approaches to the symposium tradition far too wide to chart
here in the depth they deserve. At the more idealising end of the spectrum
of Greek ction the symposium tends to be used fairly straightforwardly
as a marker of elite, Greek identity. The hero and heroine participate in
civilised dining in ways which seem to guarantee their high social status.
In some cases, the novelists eschew old Greek traditions of the symposium
as a male-only institution, showing men and women dining together, in
line with the unusual equality between male and female in the novels
portrayal of love and desire.
:,
One exceptional example of that motif
comes in Longus Daphnis and Chloe, where we see the rustic hero and
heroine stumbling upon one of the sophisticated conventions of sympotic
irtation cup-kissing
:c
as they feast together in the peasant hut of
Chloes foster-parents:
:o
See esp. Gleason (:,,,).
:;
For more detailed discussion, see K onig (:cca).
:
For a brief survey, see Doody (:,,;) :c,: (with reference also to a wide range of modern novels,
and with special reference to the prominence of cannibalistic consumption), stressing the way in
which novelistic eating and drinking remind us of the materiality of the body; also chapter : of
Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus forthcoming book Memorable Meals (currently in nal preparation),
comparing the novels with meal scenes in Luke. To my knowledge no other overview of this topic
exists, although there are some good studies on the importance of eating and drinking for individual
texts, as outlined below.
:,
Discussed in general terms by Konstan (:,,); and for men and women dining together, see esp.
Achilles Tatius . and .:,, banquets which mark Leukippe and Kleitophons rehabilitation into
respectable elite society (the culmination of a wider series of mixed-gender feasts which includes the
seductive banquets of Books :, : and ,, discussed further in the section following); see also Stephens
and Winkler (:,,,) ,: on the Metiochos and Parthenope fragment, with a brief list of novelistic
parallels.
:c
For parallels, see Morgan (:cc) :c (including Achilles Tatius :.,.: and Heliodorus ;.:;).
:;c Saints and Symposiasts
They also told Chloe to pour something to drink, and she served the others
happily, and then Daphnis after the others: for she was pretending to be cross
because having come there he had intended to run away without seeing her.
Nevertheless before passing him the cup she drank from it, and then gave it to
him. And Daphnis, although he was thirsty, drank it slowly, giving himself longer
pleasure through his slowness. (Longus, Daphnis and Chloe ,..:)
It is as if their cultured, urban natures shine through despite their naive,
bucolic upbringing. At the same time that very naivety absolves them from
the connotations of luxuriousness and moral laxity which this motif would
in some contexts bring with it. Indeed, the text confronts us with the gap
between Daphnis and Chloe and ourselves, in suggesting that it may be
our own urbanised perspectives which make us view the scene in terms of
the stereotypes of eroticised luxury. The nal banqueting scenes in Book
of the novel, where Daphnis and Chloe are reunited with their true, urban
parents, later act as a conrmation of their rediscovered identity, cele-
brating their re-absorption into the elite world to which, by birth, they
belong.
::
Admittedly, sympotic dignity in the Greek novels is often threatened
by disruptions of various kinds, but they are on the whole kept in check,
and the hero and heroine emerge relatively unscathed from the risks of
impropriety andpollutionto whichthey are exposed. Most oftendisruption
comes not from external threats like these, but in the form of internal
psychological disorder. In particular, the symposium is often represented
as a place where characters fall in love, or struggle to conceal their love
(a problem which has few parallels in the Greek sympotic tradition of
the pre-Roman period).
::
In several cases that involves the reception of
shocking news in letter form, which disrupts the composure of the character
in question.
:,
Usually, the momentary conict between public face and
private desire is suppressed, inways whichguarantee the self-control, loyalty
::
.,o (the symposium at which Chloes father acknowledges her) and .,c (Daphnis and
Chloes wedding banquet).
::
See the Sesonchosis fragment in P.Oxy. ,,:, (col. ,, :;:,) (Stephens and Winkler (:,,,) :ooo),
where the heroine is unable to conceal her love; the Metiochos and Parthenope fragment (Stephens
and Winkler (:,,,) ;:,,), where the hero Metiochos speaks, in imitation of Platos symposiasts,
about the god Eros, criticising the implausibility of love at rst sight, apparently in response to an
enquiry from the philosopher Anaximenes who is also present; the heroine, Parthenope, furious that
Metiochos has apparently discounted the possibility of falling in love with her, then speaks against
him; also further on Achilles Tatius :.,, below, p. :;,; and for the turmoil of emotions in the Greek
novels more generally, see Fusillo (:,,,).
:,
E.g. Charitons Chaireas and Callirhoe .,, where the disturbed symposiast is Dionysius, one of the
heroines admirers (he is also shown in turmoil at a drinking party in :.): see Whitmarsh (:cc,b),
esp. ::,:o on the clash between public obligation and private emotion in these two passages; also
further on Achilles Tatius ,.:::, p. :;,.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :;:
and dignity of the character in question. In Heliodorus ,.:c::, for example,
at a banquet he is hosting in Delphi, the hero Theagenes cannot conceal
from other guests the distractedness and irritability which spring from his
love for Charikleia (who is not present): For the thoughts of a person in
love, rather like those of someone who is drunk, are volatile and completely
lacking stability . . . And when they saw that he was full of an anguished
listlessness, then it became obvious to all of the other guests too that
he was not well (Aithiopika ,.:c::). This passion risks the charge of
inhospitability, rudeness and lack of self-control, although Theagenes does
do just about enough to maintain a civilised face.
In some other cases, however, scenes of eating and drinking subject
the protagonists to much more transgressive associations, putting them
at risk of being contaminated by foreign or grotesque forms of sym-
potic behaviour. The most obvious example is the very opening scene
of Heliodorus novel (:.:,), where the hero and heroine appear to have
been responsible for a scene of slaughter at a banquet on the beach:
The signs were that this had been no unmixed (sccpc0) battle, but instead mixed
in with it (vcutuis:c) were these pitiful remains (ticvc) of the unhappy feast
which had come to such a terrible denouement: some tables still full of food,
others tipped on the ground, held in the hands of the dead, having been used
by some of them in place of weapons in the battle . . . The deity had contrived a
countless variety of deaths in this small space, deling wine with blood, and rousing
up war in the symposium, yoking together murders and drinks, libations and
slaughter. (:.:.o)
The transgressiveness of this feast is signalled by the imagery of mon-
strous entanglement of incompatible things. The language of mixed and
unmixed (sccpc0, vcutuis:c) is transferred from the sympotic custom
of mixing water with wine to a more horrifying usage. And the word
remains (ticvc) carries a grotesque double meaning of bodily and culi-
nary leftovers. That said, the characterisation of Charikleia as an Odysseus
gure, defending herself with bow and arrow from the threat of drunken
bandits, whose sympotic misbehaviour is presumably due in part to their
barbarian natures, means that her moral integrity is never seriously in
question.
:
:
See ,.,:, where the full story of the brawling bandits is nally revealed; the transgressiveness of that
feast is made all the more obvious by the fact that Charikleias mentor Kalasiris gives his account of
it in the course of a sacricial feast in honour of Demeter (,.:,,,), which is represented as a rare
moment of celebration and recuperation for himself and Charikleia.
:;: Saints and Symposiasts
That tendency towards transgression of ideal sympotic behaviour is
much more blatant in some of the fragmentary Greek novels, where can-
nibalistic horror and disgust often have prominent roles.
:,
In Iamblichus
Babyloniaka of which only Photius summary survives there are several
cases of human esh being consumed or nearly consumed, along with
many other kinds of dangerous consumption.
:o
For example, the heroes
Rhodanes and Sinonis stop at the house of a brigand who waylays wayfar-
ers and makes them his dinner (;b,::), and escape only when soldiers
sent to arrest the man burn down the house; later Rhodanes dog eats one
and a half dead bodies; when Sinonis father arrives, he wrongly assumes
the half-consumed woman is his daughter, and so hangs himself, having
killed the dog (;;a:,b). In this case the prevalence of grotesque eating
is linked with the fact that the hero and heroine are passing through bar-
barian territory, on the very edges of Greco-Roman civilisation. And in
one of the few surviving fragments of Lollianus Phoinikika we see a scene
of human sacrice, with initiates swearing an oath on the roasted heart
of a boy, followed by scenes of vomiting, drinking and public sex.
:;
In
both of these texts (as far as we can tell from their fragmented remains),
the integrity, identity and dignity of the human body are radically under
threat.
:
achilles tatius
Of all the Greek novels it is Achilles Tatius Leukippe and Kleitophon
which offers the most sustained treatment of those themes. There was a
tendency in ancient novel scholarship in the latter half of the twentieth
century to see a clear separation between idealistic (including Longus and
Heliodorus and the other fully surviving Greek novel texts) and comic-
realistic novels (including the fragments just discussed and the Latin novels
of Apuleius and Petronius).
:,
That categorisation is problematic, for two
reasons, both of which should become clearer as this chapter progresses.
:,
See Perkins (:cc,a) ,c.
:o
See Stephens and Winkler (:,,,) :;,:, for text and commentary.
:;
See Stephens and Winkler (:,,,) ,:,,; for text and commentary, incl. ,::, on the juxtaposition
of the sacred and the scurrilous (,:,) in this text; Winkler (:,c), who characterises this as an
eclectic horror tableau [constructed] from various and sundry taboos (:;:); and for novelistic
parallels to this scene, especially the scenes of transgressive feasting among the outlaws of Apuleius,
Met. , see Jones (:,c).
:
On the related theme of mistaken identity in Iamblichus, see Stephens and Winkler (:,,,) :,.
:,
See Holzberg (:,,,) for that distinction, placing Achilles Tatius and (oddly) even Lollianus in the
idealistic category; and see Fusillo (:,,,) o: for a list of examples from earlier scholarship, whose
approach he rejects; also Whitmarsh (:cc) ; for more nuanced discussion of those categories.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :;,
The rst now widely acknowledged is the fact that on closer inspection
even the so-called ideal novels do have elements of parody and grotesque
physicality lurking beneath their dignied surfaces.
,c
For that reason the
model of a spectrum stretching from more to less grotesque seems
preferable. Achilles Tatius Leukippe and Kleitophon is perhaps the most
obvious example of a text which stands halfway along that spectrum, or
rather oscillates between its different poles. The novels eating scenes, as we
shall see, are a key component in articulating its unstable position, halfway
between dignied and degraded.
The second problem less often discussed is with the term realistic.
That term implies among other things that the obsession with physicality
which we nd in these so-called comic-realistic novels brings them some-
how closer to real experience. In practice, however, the opposite is often
true. Close attention to the physical working of the human body, in all
its grotesque physicality, can in itself have a disconcerting, defamiliarising
effect. Such representations gain their power precisely by their ability to
undermine and unsettle any sense of the naturalness of the way we experi-
ence our bodies in day-to-day life.
,:
My contention in what follows is that
we need to take full account of the estranging, threatening, discomforting
effects of the novels portrayal of eating and drinking, as well as their comic
realism. Once again, Achilles Tatius is a good test case.
A plot summary does not in itself make clear the transgressiveness of
Leukippe and Kleitophon many feasting scenes. At rst sight, Achilles seems
to be mainly interested in portraying dignied elite symposium behaviour
in much the same way as other novelists like Longus and Heliodorus.
There are, again, several scenes of emotions boiling beneath the surface of
sympotic composure for instance when Kleitophon and Leukippe fall
in love in :., and :.,, or when Kleitophon learns by letter in ,.::: that
Leukippe is still alive, and struggles to disguise his distress from his new
wife, the widow Melite, with whom he is dining but on the whole the
characters in these passages cling on to their composure.
When we look more closely, however, it becomes clear that the text
is packed with grotesque associations just beneath its dignied surface,
as Helen Morales has shown at length.
,:
Achilles is highly self-conscious,
,c
Cf. K onig (:cca) ::;,o.
,:
See Rimell (:cc:) :,:, and ::, on Petronius, criticising Auerbach (:,,,) and others for too
straightforwardly applying the vocabulary of realism to the Satyrica; and cf. Morales (:cc) ::,c
on the way in which Achilles Tatius descriptions of the physicality of emotional reactions are so
detailed that they block any sense of realism, having instead an alienating effect.
,:
Morales (:cc); my reading of Achilles Tatius in the paragraphs following is heavily indebted to her
account.
:; Saints and Symposiasts
in other words, about the way in which the veneer of idealised, day-to-
day, sympotic reality can drop away leaving us with very different more
threatening, more defamiliarising ways of imagining reality in its place.
The self-regarding rst-person voice of the narrator repeatedly shows itself
to be unreliable, giving glimpses of illicit desires behind its dignifed mask.
Most startling in this respect is the imagery Kleitophon uses in describing
his beloved. In the initial seduction scenes in Books : and :, we see not only
conventional images of love in particular the image of love as hunger but
also a disturbing sense that those images might contain an implicit violence
and aggression within them which is not compatible with the male-female
equality to which the novel at least pays lip-service.
,,
The ostensibly equal
relationship between hero and heroine is repeatedly contaminated, for
example, with overtones of bestial or cannibalistic consumption: I went
away drunk with love, carrying the banquet in my eyes, lled with the face
of the girl and satiated with my undiluted looking (:.o.:).
,
That in itself may not seem remarkable, but what is extraordinary is
the way in which the image is literalised within one horrifying scene of
(false) cannibalism halfway through the novel, where Kleitophon watches
as bandits sacrice Leukippe and consume her innards (so it seems).
,,
It
is worth taking a closer look at this scene, despite its status as one of the
most analysed passages in the novel, or indeed in any of the ancient novels.
Leukippe and Kleitophon are in Egypt, having been captured by bandits,
the notorious boukoloi (literally herdsmen) who gure also in Heliodorus,
and who are described here, in ,.,.:, as terrifying and wild men. Soldiers
join battle with the bandits and Kleitophon is rescued, but not Leukippe.
Kleitophons rescue is marked as a return to civilisation: he impresses the
general with his skills of horsemanship and is invited to dinner (,.:.:), a
sign of his status as a member of the elite. But on the following day this
atmosphere of sympotic harmony is horrically subverted, when they see
Leukippe led out by the bandits to sacrice, a scene which is described
with a similar mixture of sacred and grotesque to the sacrice passage in
Lollianus: the sacricer took a sword and sunk it in around her heart
and burst open her body tearing the sword down to the lower part of
,,
See Morales (:cc) ,:, and :o,;: for examples and parallels from earlier literature; and see
Konstan (:,,) oc;, for the tension between equality and voyeuristic dominance in Kleitophons
relations with Leukippe.
,
See Morales (:cc) :oo. The text also represents women not as victims of cannibalism, but as
cannibalistic in turn: e.g. Morales (:cc) ::, on ,.:,; and cf. Morales (:,,,) on the dangers of
female appetite implied by Achilles repeated tendency to animalise Leukippe by associating her
with exotic creatures with bizarre eating habits in the scenes in Egypt in Book .
,,
See Morales (:cc) :oo;.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :;,
her stomach. Her entrails leapt out at once; dragging them out with their
hands they placed them on the altar, and when they were roasted, they all
cut them into pieces and ate them (,.:,.,).
This stress on the grotesque physicality of Leukippes body can hardly
help disrupting the texts portrayal of her beauty; moreover Kleitophon
can hardly help being contaminated by the association of his cannibalistic
gazing earlier in the novel with this scene of literal anthropophagy. The
others averted their gaze, he tells us, but he was transxed to the sight,
replicating his earlier staring: My reaction was one of astonishment; the
calamity, being without limit, struck me like a thunderbolt (,.:,.,o).
,o
That response potentially parallels our reactions as readers.
,;
It is not, of
course, the only possible reaction. Achilles Tatius leaves open the possibility
of a more worldly-wise approach to narrative which is ready for surprises
like this when they come.
,
But he also makes it hard for us to maintain
such a detached reading style; he tempts us to associate ourselves with the
immoderate gaze of his narrator. Moreover, as Morales has shown, even
later when Leukippe is reunited with Kleitophon the sacrice, of course, is
a trick she is cast again as an object rather than subject, through denial of
the opportunity to tell her own story: she is allowed no kind of intellectual
interiority, nothing but the blood and guts of the fake killing. Even in his
lament for her a few paragraphs before, Kleitophon seems obsessed with
mourning the fate of her innards rather than of the girl as a whole.
,,
That complex of ideas is also replayed within a large number of passing
references to the consumption or dismemberment of human esh. Many
of these references come in dreams and descriptions of artwork.
c
Most
ominously, just before the decapitation scene, Kleitophon and Leukippe
have seen a depiction of the story of Philomela and Prokne:
:
Kleitophon
rst describes, in retrospect, the content of the picture: the women are
showing Tereus the remains (ticvc) of the dinner in a basket, the head
of the child and his hands; they are laughing and afraid at the same time
(,.,.;). He then tells us that he explained the picture to Leukippe, in very
similar words: and they brought in the remains (ticvc) of the child in a
basket, laughing with fear (,tcoci qc). Tereus sees the remains of the
child and mourns the food he realised that he was the father of the dinner
(,.,.). There is a strong sense of paradox in the images of mourning and
(even more so) giving birth to food, images whose absurd horror derives
,o
See Konstan (:,,) o; Morales (:cc) :o;.
,;
See Perkins (:cc,a) :, for the suggestion that Morales underestimates the horror of this scene.
,
See Whitmarsh (:cc:) c: and (:cc,).
,,
Morales (:cc) :;:.
c
See also Morales (:cc) :;; on ,.o.
:
See Bartsch (:,,), esp. o,;:; Morales (:cc) :;c.
:;o Saints and Symposiasts
fromthe way in which they mix together things usually kept separate. Once
again the word ticvc (remains) encapsulates that bizarre mingling of
the edible and the corporeal. That word is also applied by Kleitophon a
few paragraphs later, in the singular form ticvcv, to the decapitated
body he is holding in his arms and which he thinks is Leukippes (,.;.):
Leukippes beautiful body is thus contaminated once again by associations
of food and dismemberment. Moreover Achilles mention of the reactions
of Philomela and Prokne offers us another suggestive model for our own
reactions. In doing so it anticipates modern denitions of the grotesque as
standing halfway between horror and comedy. We too, perhaps, are frozen
halfway between horror and hilarity in being confronted with this texts
unsettling, estranging vision of the human body.
petronius
However, grotesque eating and drinking get their most complex treatment
in the two fully surviving Latin novels, of Petronius and Apuleius. The
famous eating scenes of Petronius Satyrica have been discussed at great
length in recent scholarship, so I deal with them only briey here. The
Satyrica is a text which blurs high and low culture in complex ways,
most notoriously in the long Dinner of Trimalchio episode (Sat. :o;),
which describes an extravagant, theatrical banquet, parodying stereotypes
of Roman excess.
:
In the process, Petronius offers us a disturbing picture
of a world where the rules and expectations of everyday life can no longer
be trusted: Trimalchios house is a place where interpretation is hard to
get right, where things are not what they seem.
,
He also parodies the
tradition of sympotic literature, especially Platos Symposium.

Petronius
goes further than most other sympotic writers in wrenching Platonic motifs
into more degraded territory: for example, the imagery of a descent into
Hades which recurs throughout the episode subverts Platos focus on the
ascent of the soul in the speech of Socrates.
,
The episode also debunks
:
The novels depiction of pretentious and excessive banqueting is inuenced by Roman satirical
writing, especially Horace: see Rodriquez (:,:); Conte (:,,;) ::,, ::;, :,c; Bodel (:,,,) ,,.
The often stated perception that Petronius parodies Nero is very difcult to pin down in the text,
but see Vout (:cc,) for recent discussion.
,
See N. W. Slater (:,,c) ,co.

See Martin (:,,:) :,o, and ::,; Cameron (:,o,); Sandy (:,;c) ;:,; Dupont (:,;;) o:,;
Bessone (:,,,); Citroni (:,;,); Conte (:,,;) ::c:; Bodel (:,,,) c:; Hunter (:cc) ::o;
(cf. Hunter (:cco) ,c,:: on the inuence of Plato, especially the Symposium, on other parts
of Petronius text); Morgan (:cc,) ,c; Perkins (:cc,a) :,:,.
,
For the underworld imagery see among others Bodel (:,,) and (:,,,) c:; cf. Whitmarsh (:cc:)
:;, for a similar characterisation of Lucians On Salaried Posts.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :;;
Platonic ideals of philosophical conversation: the speakers at Trimalchios
dinner (seven of whom address the company as a whole, to echo the seven
speakers in praise of love from Platos text) are distinguished above all by
their intellectual banality.
o
One key aspect of that debunking of social and philosophical pretension
in Trimalchios dinner is Petronius representation of the human body,
which is portrayed as vulnerable and insecure, and so no longer reliable as
a marker of elite identity.
;
Repeatedly, for example, Petronius confronts us
with bodies of various kinds bursting out beyond their bounds. Early on, for
example, the vulgar host Trimalchio gives a commentary on the blockage
of his bowels and the medical help he has sought, before announcing that
everything is on the mend: Besides, my stomach is rumbling; youd think
it was a bull making that noise. So if any of you should wish to satisfy the
needs of nature there is no reason to be ashamed of it. None of us was
born solid. I dont think theres any torment so great as having to hold
oneself in (Sat. ;). This rumbling of Trimalchios stomach prepares us for
what is to follow, as the imagery of regurgitation and spillage is actualised
in the banquets dishes: the stuffed pig, who spills out sausages and black
puddings when its stomach is slit (Sat. ,); and the cakes which spurt out
saffron and other unpleasant liquid into the faces of those who touch them
(Sat. oc).

These innards carry connotations of pollution and disgust,

even as they turn out to be edible.
,
Moreover, the human body itself is
regularly represented as edible within the novel as a whole, most blatantly
so in the nal scene of the novel as it survives, where Eumolpus explains
that his will requires his heirs to feast on his body before becoming eligible
for their inheritance (Sat. ::). Victoria Rimell has shown at great length
how these images are threatening to conventional conceptions of social
hierarchy, through their capacity to draw our attention to the upsetting,
culturally concealed truth of physical instability and vulnerability.
,c
o
See Morgan (:cc,) ,c.
;
Cf. K onig (:cca) :,, and :,,: on representation of bodies in Trimalchios dinner and also other
episodes.

See Zeitlin (:,;:) o,,oo for vivid discussion of these and other passages in relation to the atmosphere
of chaos, confusion, surprise and instability which characterises Trimalchios dinner.
,
See Fredrick (:cc,) ,::; cf. Gowers (:,,,) ,c:.
,c
Rimell (:cc:), esp. :::o (:, for that quotation); also :::, and ::,,, for the claim that earlier
critics (esp. Bakhtin, McGlathery (:,,) and Conte (:,,;) :c,,, who offers an elegant account
of Petronius fascination with the materiality of food) have underestimated the degree to which
the categories of high and low are inextricably and claustrophobically combined with each other in
the Satyrica. She also argues that Petronius repeatedly draws links between eating and reading, and
represents both as risky processes, in ways which might make us wonder about the effects his own
text is having on us as we read: see :o,;c and :;o: for summary; also :,: on the imagery of
:; Saints and Symposiasts
apuleius
The other great text of grotesque eating among the novels of the Roman
empire and my focus for the rest of this chapter is the Metamorphoses
of Apuleius.
,:
Maaike Zimmerman has recently shown how important the
symposium is as a reference-point for this text.
,:
The Metamorphoses, as
she demonstrates, is packed with symposium scenes. The text as a whole
is marked by an atmosphere of sympotic spoudogeloion.
,,
It may even be
right to feel that we are sometimes prompted to imagine a sympotic setting
for the narrators story-telling.
,
Apuleius engages closely with traditions
of mocking the philosophical symposium in Latin satire.
,,
The novel is
imbued with themes and images drawn from sympotic epigram.
,o
Apuleius
was also intimately familiar with traditions of the sympotic miscellany: he
is known to have written a work entitled Sympotic Questions (Quaestiones
Convivales), presumably a work of miscellanism along the same lines as
Plutarchs.
,;
Ina number of places he seems to be making reference to Platos
Symposium.
,
On its own terms Zimmermans reading is comprehensive
and convincing. However, she chooses not to discuss the way in which the
works presentation of sympotic communication is contaminated by more
grotesque or horrifying forms of consumption. That is my main subject
here.
The omnipresence of grotesque imagery in this novel, and its contri-
bution to a destabilising vision of human identity, should be immediately
clear even from a brief plot summary. The novel tells in the rst per-
son the story of Lucius: he visits the town of Hypata in Thessaly in
search of witchcraft, is transformed in Book , into a donkey, passes from
one owner to another, suffering increasing physical dangers and threats
luxurious eating applied to bad education in Sat. :,; and ,,o for the claim that Eumolpus two
long poems (Sat. ,, ::,:) regurgitate in mangled form the conventional verses and themes with
which he has been force-fed.
,:
For text see Robertson and Valette (:,c,); also Harrison (:,,,) xxvi for other available texts; and
the Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius series for individual books.
,:
Zimmerman (:cc).
,,
Zimmerman (:cc) :,o,.
,
Zimmerman (:cc) :c:. Some scholars have argued for a sympotic setting for the stories in
Aristides Milesian Tales, a lost Greek text which inuenced both Petronius and Apuleius; Harrison
(:,,) o, and ;c is sceptical.
,,
On Apuleius use of traditions of satirical description of philosophical symposia in book : (esp. the
dinner with Milo at Met. :.:o), see Keulen (:cc;) :;:, ,o; and (:cc,b) :::.
,o
Zimmerman (:cc) :,o.
,;
See Sidon., Epist. ,.:,., (discussed above, p. :c) and Macr. Sat. ;.,.:,, with discussion by Harrison
(:ccc) ,c:; and Zimmerman (:cc) :,:.
,
See Kenney (:,,c); Harrison (:ccc) ::,; Hunter (:cc) ::, and (:cco) :,,c,; Dowden
(:cco); Zimmerman (:cc) :,:.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :;,
and eavesdropping on lots of stories along the way, all of which are nar-
rated to us as inserted tales, before nally being returned to human form
and converted to the worship of the goddess Isis in Book ::. Images of
extreme bodily deformity and hybridity have the capacity to induce reac-
tions of horror, as well as laughter, by disturbing our sense of proper
order. In particular the mingling of human and animal bodies has often
been viewed as one of the dening features of grotesque physicality.
,,
The
same goes for depictions of metamorphosis, with their capacity to portray a
moment of transition and incompatible mixture between two things which
should not be mixed.
oc
Within his new donkeys body, Lucius exists as a
grotesque mixture of humanand animal, comical and unsettling at the same
time.
Not surprisingly, Lucius experience of asinine physicality threatens his
condence in his own social status: repeatedly in Books ::c he worries
to himself about whether his old identity remains intact despite his new
situation.
o:
As we shall see, the works often startling representations of
consumption,
o:
especially in Apuleius obsession with the disturbing con-
cept of the human body as food, contribute to those worries about identity
and status. To that extent Apuleius has much in common with some of
the other novelists already discussed, especially with Achilles Tatius. Like
Achilles Tatius, too, he not only provokes shock, but also describes charac-
ters in the novel reacting in shocked terms to what they see, in ways which
give us one possible model for our own reactions as readers.
o,
What sets Apuleius apart from Achilles Tatius, however, is the way
in which those images contribute to his wider aim of representing the
experience of conversion. They do so, I argue, in two closely related ways.
First, they help to articulate an impression of Lucius, in Books ::c, as a
gure who is trapped in a world where bodily concerns are so overwhelming
that it is hard to see beyond them to higher spiritual truths, until Isis
,,
See Robertson (:,,o) ::c.
oc
See Harpham (:,:) :c:: and :o:;. And for related observations on Apuleius, though not specif-
ically in relation to metamorphosis, see Winkler (:,,) ::,; Selden (:,,) ;,: perpetually
deployed between divergent codes, Apuleiuss narrative is neither hybrid not ambiguous, but a
delirious seam edging incompatible systems of order (,).
o:
For prominent examples of Lucius equating animal identity with low social status and painting his
fellow animals as ignorant or socially inferior, see Met. ;.,, ,.:: and :c., (the last of these discussed
briey again below). For general discussion of the contrast between high status and slavery in the
novel, see Gianotti (:,o) ::,:.
o:
For surveys of Apuleius use of food, see Heath (:,:) and Krabbe (:cc,) :,::o.
o,
See Keulen (:cc;) :, for suggestive brief discussion. Admittedly Apuleius, like Achilles Tatius,
also sometimes associates this kind of reaction with naivety: see Shumate (:,,o) ,,, on the works
representation of credulity.
:c Saints and Symposiasts
nally intervenes.
o
Maeve OBrien has argued that this kind of distinction
between the mortal and divine realms is crucial to the Metamorphoses.
o,
She suggests, with particular reference to Apuleius work De Platone,
oo
that
Apuleius draws on Plato especially the Gorgias and the Phaedrus in
order to set up a contrast between two types of discourse: the sublunary,
earthly discourse of Books ::c, which is concerned above all with trickery
and appearance, associated with things which are literally visible in the
world of senses; and the higher discourse of Book ::, which can give access
to higher truths, and portrays things which are visible to the minds eye.
Secondly, the novels eating and drinking scenes contribute to the impres-
sion of Lucius as a gure who is disoriented and confused, forced by his
new situation to experience the world in ways which are entirely alien to
him, and which make himripe for conversion. Nancy Shumate has recently
explored the way in which the Metamorphoses parallels other ancient (and
also modern) conversion narratives where conversion is preceded by an
impression of disintegrating reality. She explains that according to this
pattern of crisis and conversion, a perception of the collapse of familiar
cognitive constructs precedes the converts reconstruction of a new world
and world view along religious lines.
o;
The world of Books ::c, she
suggests, is
a world characterized by a gradual disintegration of the categories devised to
organise its parts into a tidy and meaningful whole. Lucius environment is one
that is radically defamiliarized by changes that rupture its previous unity; it is
marked by every kind of instability. His world is one where matter itself is unstable
and where familiar ontological and cultural categories death and life, human and
animal, male and female, for example merge unpredictably into one another.
o
The defamiliarising quality of Apuleius descriptions of food in Books :
:c makes a signicant contribution, I argue, to that portrayal of unstable
reality.
o
The bibliography on the prominence of bodily concerns in Books ::c is huge: see Schlam (:,;c)
esp. c for the argument that Lucius metamorphosis is a symbol of the souls subjection to the
world of earthly experience and animalistic appetites; DeFilippo (:,;c) on the curiositas to which
Lucius is subject prior to his conversion, esp. ,:: curiositas is really the daemonic, Typhonic or
asinine condition of being under the control of ones appetites and the pleasures which motivate
them; Penwill (:,;,) esp. ,,oo on the theme of voluptas in Books ::c; Bradley (:ccc) with special
reference to the Metamorphoses on the way in which donkeys, like slaves, were linked in the ancient
imagination with immoderate bodily needs and bodily pleasures.
o,
OBrien (:cc:); see also Apuleius, De Deo Socratis ::,,: for a clear statement of his views on the
vast gulf between the human and divine spheres.
oo
OBrien (:cc:) :c:,.
o;
Shumate (:,,o) :.
o
Shumate (:,,o) ,,.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels ::
Let us return rst of all to Lucius worries about maintaining dignity
and status. His confrontation with the corporeal realities of consumption
is one of the things which makes that process so difcult for him.
o,
In
particular he worries about eating animal food.
;c
The bestialisation of
Lucius is also combined with a strong dose of parasite imagery, equating
him with the degraded gures of comedy.
;:
In .:, for example, soon after
his transformation, he explains that he is still unaccustomed to lunch
on hay (adhuc insolitum. . . prandere faenum); the only remotely palatable
food he can nd is a pile of rawvegetables, on which he stuffs himself. When
the owner of the vegetables beats him he manages to escape by kicking; and
when the villagers respond by setting a pack of dogs on him, he manages to
scare them away by a convenient attack of diarrhoea.
;:
Here his rejection
of inhuman food only emphasises all the more his new animal identity:
the vegetables are clearly not suited to his donkeys constitution; and the
spraying of his tormenters confronts him and them with the dominance
of his bodily functions, the grotesque opposite of civilised self-control, a
lurid extension of Trimalchios speech in favour of unashamed indulgence
of the bowels. My belly, Lucius tells us, sending out a jet of dung, drove
away the people from my beaten shoulder-blades, some of them repelled
by the spraying of this awful liquid, others by the rottenness of the stinking
fumes (.,). In that passage Lucius seems to view the belly as having an
identity of its own, beyond his control.
In .::, similarly, Lucius rejects the barley which is given to him, and
searches round until he nds a pile of a human food leftover bread but
then proceeds to eat it in a way which exposes the gap between his human
aspirations and the physical reality of eating:
;,
even impending sleep could not restrain me as I chewed (manducantem) urgently
and vigorously. Before, when I was Lucius, I used to leave the table satised with
one or perhaps two pieces of bread. But now, enslaved to such a deep belly, I was
o,
Many of the themes and passages discussed in this paragraph and the next are dealt with well by
Schlam (:,,:) :cco.
;c
Heath (:,:) o:o makes the point that Lucius over and over again avoids eating animal food; the
only example where we see him breaking that habit comes at :c.:,, ironically just before his re-
transformation. However, see Finkelpearl (:cco) :c,::, who rightly argues (against Schlam (:,,:)
:c: and others) that Lucius often seems to be ambivalent about the animal food he comes across,
partly attracted rather than wholly repelled by it, and that that detail enhances the works blurring
of the boundaries between human and animal identity.
;:
See May (:cco) :,:; she points out (:,,o) that parasites are regularly compared with animals in
comedy, making the use of parasite imagery for the transformed Lucius particularly appropriate.
;:
Cf. Pseudo-Lucian, Onos :;: for a condensed version of the same incident.
;,
Cf. Onos :: for a brief parallel to this scene, which lacks, however, the detailed description of eating
all night.
:: Saints and Symposiasts
already chewing over nearly my third basket. The bright light of dawn caught me
by surprise in my frenzied devotion to my task. And so at last, led by my donkeys
sense of decency (asinali verecundia), I reluctantly moved away and began to
quench my thirst in a nearby stream. (.::,)
;
Once again, the sheer oddity of Lucius experience is clear. The rays of the
rising sun allow him a moment of self-consciousness: the frenzy of animal
engrossment, which he glimpses himself indulging in, has made him lose
track of time, leading him into actions i.e. eating all night beyond
any normal human experience. Moreover, the belly is once again depicted
here as an independent force beyond Lucius control, in this case recalling
complaints made by parasites about serving a bottomless stomach.
;,
And
the word manducantem (chewing, eating) may even have connotations
of parasitism through its association with the comic gure of the manduco,
a gluttonous character from Roman theatre.
;o
His attempts to cling on to human identity by eating human food
are similarly unsuccessful in :c.:,. There, Lucius rehabilitation in human
society seems to be underway when he comes to live with two bakers: they
catch him eating their cakes, and encourage him, feeding him more and
more sophisticated dishes, and teaching him to recline on his elbow and
drink wine.
;;
Once again, however, the scale of his appetite is bestial: for
example, the bakers, before they know who has been eating their food,
accuse each other of improper behaviour (this is not fair, nor is it human
even (:c.:)). And it leads him into the undignied situation of being an
object of spectacle, laughed at and fed bizarre and exotic combinations of
food, again like a parasite: meat steeped in silphium, birds sprinkled with
pepper, sh covered in exotic sauce. Meanwhile the convivium echoed with
the greatest possible amount of laughter (:c.:o).
;
Lucius himself uses the
language of disgrace or shame: but this bodily beauty of mine [i.e. the
good condition caused by his rich diet] caused my sense of decency to be
infected with a feeling of disgrace (:c.:,). His hopes of regaining civilised
status through participation in sophisticated convivial practices are dashed
by the fact that he has been assigned the humiliating status of a parasite.
And at :c.:o he is referred to as a parasite quite explicitly by his owner
Thiasus: Hey, boy, he said, wash this golden cup carefully, mix in a
little honey-wine and offer it to my parasite.
;
Brief discussion by Heath (:,:) o:.
;,
E.g. Alciphron, Letters ,.:, ,., (discussed above, pp. :,,o) and ,.:.
;o
See May (:cco) : on the use of the word manduco for Lucius in o.,:.
;;
Cf. Onos ;.
;
See May (:,,); Zimmerman (:cc) :,c:.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :,
We might notice, moreover, that this language of humiliation and para-
sitism, linked particularly with failed eating and drinking, dates back even
before Lucius transformation.
;,
For example he is described in language
which recalls the humiliating comic portrayal of parasites even in the din-
ner scenes of Book :, at the house of his host Milo in Hypata. Particularly
striking here is the peculiarly inexplicable, dreamlike sequence in :.:o,
where Lucius is tormented with hunger in the house of Milo, having had his
purchase of sh trampled on in the marketplace (:.:,), and goes to bed
having dined on stories alone (cenatus solis fabulis) (:.:o).
c
Similarly in
the opening pages of the novel, Lucius tells his new travelling companions
about the polenta mixed with cheese (polenta caseata) he nearly choked on
the night before in the course of an eating contest with his fellow guests.
In this passage food impinges on the human body in a very suffocating,
overwhelming way: by the softness of the glutinous food sticking in my
throat (mollitie cibi glutinosi faucibus inhaerentis) (:.).
:
High and low
status, dignity and gluttony, seem to be intertwined in Lucius case even
from the start.
Intriguingly, we, as readers, are forced, metaphorically speaking, to share
Lucius parasitical gluttony and his lack of culinary satisfaction. Telling and
listening to stories is regularly described in the work through the language
of consumption. In the opening paragraphs of the work, for example,
Lucius describes himself as a drinker of novelty (sititor . . . novitatis) (:.:)
in attempting to persuade his travelling companion to tell his story.
:
The many failed or interrupted meals of the novel
,
parallel the narrative
;,
See May (:cco), esp. :,:; Keulen (:cc;) ,c,, ,c; also Vander Poppen (:cc) :oc, on the
breakdown of the relationship between Lucius and Milo in Books :,, characterised among other
things by their mutual misbehaviour to each other in sympotic contexts.
c
See Heath (:,:) ,; and oc.
:
On parasitical overtones here, see May (:cco) :,; Keulen (:cc;) ,c and :,c:; Zimmerman
(:cc) :::.
:
The rarity of the word sititor (see Keulen (:cc;) ::c::), which occurs in only one other place in
surviving Latin literature, makes it all the more likely that a reader would be aware of its literal
meaning (drinker), rather than just thinking of it as a dead metaphor whose original meaning is
no longer conspicuous.
,
See (among others) :. (an offer of dinner not fullled), :.::, (Socrates unsuccessful picnic, also
discussed below), ,.:, (where the adulterous meal of the bakers wife is interrupted by the return of
her husband), ,.,:, where the meal promised to the market gardener is interrupted by the series of
portentous happenings discussed below. Heath (:,:) , also points out that the whole plot is in a
sense centred around a search for food in Lucius quest for roses, which often tantalise him by being
just out of reach (e.g., in ,.:, and .:). Petronius similarly includes many scenes of interrupted
feasting, which use culinary prolongation to produce narrative delay and frustration: the longest
examples (apart from Trimalchios dinner) are Satyrica :o:, and ,c for meals which refuse to
come neatly to an end, or to allow the straightforward satisfaction of appetite: see Schmeling (:,,:);
also Zeitlin (:,;:) o,, for brief discussion of both of the scenes mentioned here, as examples of
: Saints and Symposiasts
oddities and insufciencies of the novel, which leave us repeatedly without
full explanation or satisfaction. As John Heath puts it, the salient features of
Lucius dietary habits insatiability and involuntary abstinence provided
a piquant metaphor for this quizzical response of the reader to a novel of
puzzles.

Often Lucius worries about consumption of animal food overow into

a sense that Lucius own body, without the protection of Roman citizenship
and elite status, is in danger of being consumed or dismembered. In many
cases, those scenes of potential dismemberment are described through
perverted rewritings of the language of sacrice, similar to what we have
seen already for Lollianus and Achilles Tatius.
,
This threat intensies in
the second half of the work. In o.:o, for example, one of the bandits
recommends throwing Lucius over the cliff so that he becomes a nice meal
for the vultures.
o
A little later, after Lucius has attempted to escape along
with a girl being held captive by the bandits, they contemplate the plan of
sewing the girl up inside Lucius body and leaving her out in the sun, so
that she will endure the bites of wild beasts, when the worms tear at her
limbs . . . and the torture of the cross, when the dogs and vultures draw out
her innermost entrails (o.,:).
;
In ;.:o, Lucius is attacked by his fellow
animals in the mill, who kick and bite him; Lucius compares them with
the herds of Diomedes, who were fed on human esh.

In ;.::, Lucius
new owner threatens him with sacrice as punishment for the lecherous
deeds of which he has been unjustly accused: slaughter him right away and
throw his entrails to our dogs; but be careful to keep back the rest all the
meat for the workers supper.
,
In .,:, when a dog has stolen a stags
thigh from the kitchens of a rich house, the cook plans to use Lucius body
instead: kill him and cut off his thigh so that it resembles the one which
has been lost, and cook it up meticulously and tastily with herbs, and serve
it up to the master in place of the venison. We see clearly here that Lucius
is in a degraded position in the culinary hierarchy: his body will yield only
poorly valued meat, which must be disguised. He manages to save himself
only by bursting into the dining room, where the master of the house was
eating the sacricial feast with the priests of the goddess . . . and in my rush
the works chaotic structure: episodes are not resolved; they disintegrate; and Bodel (:,,,) on
that pattern in Trimalchios dinner party.

Heath (:,:) o,. He discusses many instances of frustrated appetite beyond those mentioned in the
previous note.
,
See McCreight (:,,,).
o
Cf. Onos :,.
;
Cf. Onos :,.

Cf. Onos :, but with no mention of the horses of Diomedes or the imagery of consuming human
esh.
,
Cf. Onos ,,.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :,
I battered against and disturbed even the tables and lamps (,.:).
,c
That
scene, while it secures his escape from a bestial fate, only reinforces the
impression that he is distant now from civilised human behaviour, casting
him as an intruder in the sympotic, sacricial harmony of the dining room.
In addition to these scenes which involve Lucius himself, as either eater
or eaten, there are many other passages where he witnesses, or more often
hears about, degraded eating. Most of the incidents and themes of animal
and human consumption already discussed are inherited (although in some
cases probably also expanded) by Apuleius from his Greek source, as far
as we can know from pseudo-Lucians Onos (sometimes referred to by
its English translation, The Ass, but more often with the transliterated
Greek title), which is apparently based on the same original Greek text.
,:
By contrast, the novels many inserted tales from which most of the
examples which follow are taken are likely to have been Apuleius own
innovation.
,:
Here in particular, then, we can see that Apuleius is very
much more interested in eating and drinking themes than his source text.
,,
There are repeated examples of food as dangerous, often involving either
poisoning or overconsumption; and sometimes, balanced with that, an
interest in hunger as something equally threatening, as if it is hard to get the
balance right between the two. Even before Lucius metamorphosis, food
is often dangerous and indigestible. In :.,:,, for example, Lucius newly
found companion Aristomenes, having promised to tell an extraordinary
story, explains how he recently discovered his old friend Socrates sitting in
the gutter in rags, reduced to penury after an amorous encounter with a
jealous witch. Aristomenes takes Socrates to the baths to wash him, and
then feeds him: I revive him by putting him to bed, I satisfy him with
food, I alleviate his distress with a drinking cup, I soothe him with tales
(:.;). Here, food has health-giving associations, and marks Socrates return
to civilised society. But we do not have long to wait before the sense of
threat resurfaces. In the middle of the night the witch Meroe, Socrates
persecutor, breaks into their room and cuts Socrates throat, inserting a
,c
Cf. Onos ,,c.
,:
Cf. Hall (:,,,) on images of social humiliation in the Onos. There is even one scene (Onos ,o,
absent in Apuleius) where this text goes beyond Apuleius in its debunking of sympotic high-status:
the narrator, now human again, goes to see the rich woman who had paid to have sex with him
while he was still a donkey (Onos ,:; cf. Apuleius, Met. :c.:c:); she gives him a lavish dinner, but
then throws him out when he strips naked and expects to sleep with her. Van Mal-Maeder (:,,;)
:::; raises the possibility that a similar scene may have dropped out of the end of Apuleius text.
For a helpful table comparing food motifs in the Onos and the Metamorphoses, see Krabbe (:cc,)
:,:c.
,:
On Apuleius aims in inserting the many tales in the novel, see (among others) Tatum (:,o,).
,,
Cf. May (:cco) :.
:o Saints and Symposiasts
sponge in his neck, and in the process turning Aristomenes into a tortoise.
When they wake in the morning, it all appears to have been a dream,
caused by the wine: Trustworthy doctors are not wrong when they say
that those who are swollen with food and intoxication have harsh and
oppressive dreams. In my case, because I was not moderate enough in my
drinking yesterday, a rough night brought me terrible, violent visions, so
much so that I still imagine myself to be spattered and deled with human
blood (:.:).
,
The grotesque, cannibalistic overtones of that passage are
of course ominous all the more so when we realise that Meroes name
puns on the word merum, meaning unmixed wine (proverbially linked
with immoderate and, in Greek tradition, barbarian drinking).
,,
They
set out from the inn where they have been staying; as soon as they stop
for refreshment, Socrates bolts down some cheese greedily, drinks from
a stream, and falls down dead.
,o
Despite its occasional association with
refreshment and relaxation, then, consumption in this text is nearly always
threatening or degrading in some way. There are countless other examples
of similar scenes and similar stories, not involving Lucius directly, after his
metamorphosis.
,;
In addition to these repeated descriptions and stories of debased eating
and drinking we also nd images of the consumption of human esh
threaded right through the novel, as for Achilles Tatius.
,
When Lucius
seduces the servant Photis in Book :, her body is described in culinary
terms, as delectable, but also potentially poisonous: this is a bittersweet
delicacy you are tasting. Take care lest you end up with chronic indigestion
from the excessive sweetness of this honey (:.:c).
,,
In .:,, criminals due
to be executed in the arena are described as providing food for fattening
up the beasts by the banquets consisting of their own bodies (suis epulis
bestiarum saginas instruentes). In Book ,, the lavish banquets in Cupids
house are undermined by the lying claims of Psyches sisters, who tell
,
See Panayotakis (:,,) on Apuleius engagement with medical thinking in this passage.
,,
Cf. Panayotakis (:,,) ::o;.
,o
On the difculties and dangers of consumption in this incident, see Heath (:,:) oc.
,;
One series which particularly stands out is the succession of increasingly riotous and indulgent meals
which Lucius watches while in the robbers lair in Books ;: see Zimmerman (:cc) :,,c; and
cf. Onos ::, ::, : for much briefer, less sensationalistic versions. Another is the series of poisoning
stories in the second half of the work: .::, :c.,, :c.:o, none of these in the Onos. See also Ferradou
(:cc,) on the way in which the banquet of Byrrhena in Book :, for all its supercial appeal, has
threatening and dangerous overtones.
,
Some of these discussed briey by James (:ccc/:cc:) :,:,. On similarly prevalent images of
dismemberment, see K onig (:cca) :,,o.
,,
Unusually Onos o in this case makes the cannibalism image much more explicit than Apuleius; more
often, Apuleius goes far beyond the Onos in using that kind of imagery.
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :;
Psyche that her husband is a snake, fattening her up and waiting until her
womb has swollen before consuming her (,.:;:). Psyches rst sister is
later dashed to the ground from the top of the cliff, a fate described in
terms which look forward to Lucius worries about being pushed over the
edge in o.:o: her limbs were hurled and scattered over the rocks of the
cliff, and with her entrails lacerated just as she deserved, she died providing
a ready meal to the birds and beasts (,.:;).
There is a particular intensication of these images in the nal books.
:cc
In .:,, for example, Lucius reports stories of half-eaten human bodies
on the road and man-eating wolves: And then they told us that over the
whole route we were to follow lay half-eaten human bodies, and that the
whole area shone from the whiteness of bones stripped of their esh. In
.:; he and his party are attacked by dogs, who try to tear them to shreds,
and by farmers throwing rocks in an image which recalls the cannibalistic
Laestrygonians of Odyssey ,. In .:,::, an old man they meet on the road
turns into a snake and eats one of their fellow-travellers. In .:: a slave is
executed by being smeared in honey and exposed to ants:
As soon as they perceived the sweet and honeyed odour of his body, they fastened
themselves deeply into his body with small but numerous and unceasing tiny bites.
After enduring this torture for a long time the man was devoured, with his esh
and entrails eaten away, and the ants denuded his limbs, so that only the bones,
stripped of esh and shining with excessive brightness, stuck to that funereal tree.
In .:,, a band of eunuchs pick a young man for group sex, which is
described in culinary, cannibalistic terms.
:c:
In ,.,:, Lucius comes into the
hands of a market-gardener. He recalls rst their hungry shared existence,
but then tells of an invitation to dinner from a wealthy landowner: for a
moment it seems that their worries are at an end. The luxurious dinner
is interrupted, however, by a set of bizarre portents, including a fountain
of blood which erupts under the table and showers them with gore, and a
moment later a messenger bursts in with news of the death of one of the
landowners friends. An envious neighbour keen to steal the mans land
has set his dogs on to the mans sons: erce and monstrous farm-dogs
used for shepherding, which were accustomed to eat corpses discarded in
the elds, and trained also to attack passers-by with indiscriminate bites
(,.,o). The youngest son trips and sprawls on the ground, providing an
illicit feast (nefariam dapem) to those savage and most ferocious dogs; for
:cc
Cf. Shumate (:,,o) ,: on the way in which the disintegration of reality intensies and becomes
more threatening in tone in Books ;:c.
:c:
See Dowden (:,,,) :co.
: Saints and Symposiasts
as soon as they come upon their prey lying on the ground, they tear that
poor young man to pieces bit by bit (,.,;). Here, as so often in the text,
the transformation of the human body into food for animals upsets the
proper hierarchies of the world. The making of food from human esh is
reinforced by the suicide of the boys father, who kills himself because of
his grief by stabbing himself with a cheese knife (,.,).
:c:
Eating and drinking in the Metamorphoses thus help to defamiliarise the
human body, in ways which prepare us, along with Lucius himself, for his
conversion in Book ::. They also contribute to the portrayal of Lucius as a
gure immersed in the experience of corporeal pleasures and pains, trapped
in the world of earthly, bodily perception in Books ::c. His encounters
with food, in other words, give him and us a heightened, claustrophobic
awareness of his own corporeality. I have argued elsewhere that Apuleius
portrayal of landscape has similar effects.
:c,
Over and over again we see
the physical landscape of Roman Achaea impinging on Lucius body, for
example digging into his feet as he walks. The same goes for the other
characters in the work: most strikingly, there is an extraordinary number
of scenes where people or animals are killed or injured by rocks thrown
off cliffs, beaten with stones, pelted with boulders. The body is made
ever-present in these images.
This claustrophobically corporeal existence is thrown to one side only
when we nally enter Book ::, where Lucius is re-metamorphosed into
humanformand enters the service of the goddess Isis. The eating and drink-
ing of Book :: are (for the most part) utterly unlike what has come before:
grotesque appetite is replaced by moderation, animal food is replaced by
human food, unwanted abstinence by voluntary abstinence (prescribed at
::.:: and ::.:,, with sacred banquets at ::.: and ::.:;).
:c
Lucius glut-
tonous devotion to the physicality of the world has been swapped for a
higher reality. Some readers have suggested that Lucius in Book :: is still in
thrall to many of the traits which have dogged his footsteps in the rest of
the novel excessive desire, gullibility and curiosity.
:c,
It is certainly true
that the language of parasitical desire resurfaces, albeit in very muted form,
:c:
Cf. Panayotakis (:,,) ::,o on the sinister connotations of cheese elsewhere in the novel.
:c,
See K onig (forthcoming).
:c
See Heath (:,:) oo; Schlam (:,,:) :c,; Zimmerman (:cc) :,: for the emphasis on absti-
nence; Vander Poppen (:cc) :;: on Lucius acceptance of the meal of roses offered by Isis as an
example of hospitality working well, in contrast with the many scenes of failed hospitality earlier
in the novel; and cf. McCreight (:,,,) ,o; on the way in which the grotesque distortions of
sacricial ritual in Books ::c give way to an atmosphere of sacramental calm in Book ::.
:c,
See van Mal-Maeder (:,,;) ,,::c for a particularly forceful statement of that position, with
detailed bibliography; and Winkler (:,,) for the classic account of the way in which the text
holds serious and parodic interpretations of Book :: in tension, without clear resolution. My
Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels :,
several times in the book, suggesting that at least some aspects of Lucius
former parasitical self remain.
:co
For example, Apuleius stresses Lucius
greed at the moment when he eats the roses which will bring him back to
human form: taking it up with my eager mouth, greedy for the promised
result, I devoured it (::.:,). Nevertheless the change of atmosphere is a rad-
ical one. Those suspicions about Lucius continuing gluttony perhaps say
as much as anything about our own difculties, as readers, in throwing off
the view of the world we have been immersed in throughout Books ::c.
The strange experience of Books ::c is so overwhelming that it is hard
not to be shocked when it is taken away from us. It is hard for us to follow
Lucius as he plunges into the new, cleansed world of Isis.
Apuleius Metamorphoses thus offers us perhaps the most unsettling of all
novelistic portrayals of grotesque consumption. Transgressive eating and
drinking, as in many of the other novels, undermine the main characters
claims to high status in ways which are both comical and disturbing at
the same time. Not only that, but the food scenes also play an impor-
tant role in Apuleius representation of conversion. The degradation and
the exaggerated sense of bodiliness Lucius experiences in his eating and
drinking in Books ::c (as also in his encounters with landscape) function
among other things as signs of his subjection to earthly experience before
the intervention of Isis. The food scenes of Books ::c also have highly
defamiliarising qualities which help to show the vulnerability and fragility
of Lucius familiar ways of understanding the world and his own place
within it, and so prepare the way for a radically new understanding of
identity in Book ::. We shall see in the chapters which follow how some
early Christian narrative similarly uses the imagery of dysfunctional feast-
ing in order to make its readers more receptive to the radical newness and
superiority of Christian belief.
primary aim here is to stress the difference of Book :: from what comes before, rather than
its (important) satirical elements, but that should not be taken to imply that I read the work
as straightforwardly didactic or protreptic: cf. Shumate (:,,o), esp. ;, :,: and ,:, on the
Metamorphoses as simultaneously a satire of credulity and a seductive evocation of religious
belief (;).
:co
See May (:cco) :, n. ; for one example.
chapter 1 1
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts
the apocryphal acts and the ancient novel
The main focus of this chapter is the group of novel-like texts collectively
known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (AAA).
:
It is a corpus with
a great deal of diversity. The so-called major Apocryphal Acts the Acts
of Andrew, Acts of John, Acts of Paul, Acts of Peter, and Acts of Thomas
date fromthe second and early third centuries ce.
:
Those texts also inspired
many later imitations, many of them considerably later, dating from the
fourth and fth centuries and after; I include discussion of some of these
later texts (sometimes refererred to as minor Acts) in addition to the major
Acts in what follows. The Apocryphal Acts seem to have been composed,
as far as we can tell, in a range of different locations.
,
The majority of
surviving texts are in Greek, but versions of the Apocryphal Acts have
also survived in Latin, Syriac, Coptic and a range of other languages.
Some are more sophisticated in literary terms than others. They also differ
from each other doctrinally, espousing a range of theological positions.

Despite those differences, however, they also share many common features.
They tell stories of the miracles and martyrdoms of the apostles as they
fan out across the inhabited world carrying out the work of conversion
that Jesus has assigned to them. In doing so they conjure up a world
where Christianity is beleaguered and threatened on all sides, viewed with
suspicion and alarm by the pagan elite, but ultimately able to triumph over
all, in ways which reveal the superior power of the Christian god through
his messengers, the apostles.
The Apocryphal Acts have a double-edged relationship with the Greco-
Roman traditions of ctional and biographical writing we have looked at so
:
For accessible English translations, see Schneemelcher (:,o,) and Elliott (:,,,); for extensive bibli-
ography up to the mid-:,cs, see Charlesworth (:,;).
:
For the dating of the major Acts, see Bremmer (:cc:) :,:;.
,
See Bremmer (:cc:) :,;,.

See Davies (:,c) ::::.
:,c
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts :,:
far in Part ii.
,
In many ways they are similar. For example, they share many
common motifs with the Greek and Latin novels. Even if it is relatively
difcult to nd specic allusions to those texts,
o
it is nevertheless clear
that they speak the same narrative language.
;
At the same time, however,
they are also in some ways aggressively different. The models of Christian
selfhood they offer are parallel to, but ultimately very different from, the
models of elite self-fashioning the novels provide.

One of their key subjects

is the way in which Christian behaviour disrupts the norms of pagan society.
They re-use the motifs of Greco-Roman ction in defamiliarising ways
precisely in order to resist the elitist perspective the novels present to us.
,
Averil Cameron has written about the importance of understanding the
role played by Christian rhetoric in cementing Christianitys dominance
within the Mediterranean world, and particularly about the importance of
stories in creating a powerful imaginative universe for Christian readers.
The Apocryphal Acts take us into a new and unsettling Christian world,
designed much more blatantly than any Greco-Roman ctional text to
inspire and convert.
:c
,
The relation between the AAA and the novels has been much discussed. Some scholars argue
for radical differences between the two bodies of texts; for example, some have drawn attention
to the strikingly female perspective of the AAA, which return repeatedly to the topic of female
empowerment through chastity, and have suggested that the texts were composed within, and
aimed at, communities of women: see Davies (:,c); MacDonald (:,,) ,,,; Burrus (:,o) and
(:,;), who argues that the inuence of the novels on the AAA has been overstated. By contrast
Kaestli (:,o) disputes Burrus conclusions (and see also the quotation from Bovon and Junod (:,o)
:o, in n. :c, below); while Bremmer (:cc:) :oo;c, suggests that the appeal to female readers brings
the AAA closer to the novels, rather than further away. Others have suggested that the AAA arise
from oral, folk traditions quite different from the literary origins of the novels, visible in the fact that
we often nd several variant versions of the same narrative: see esp. Burrus (:,o) and (:,;) on folk
narrative; also Thomas (:,,), (:,,,) and (:cc,) on the uidity of the AAA as a function of their
oral transmission (although she also acknowledges that there are signs of similar patterns for some
of Greco-Roman prose ction). However, most scholars now accept that the AAA use novelistic
motifs, even if they do so in defamiliarising ways and in combination with other inuences: see
(among others) S oder (:,,:); Kaestli (:,:a) ,;o;; H agg (:,,) :,o; Pervo (:,;) :::,:, (:,,)
and (:,,o); Cameron (:,,:) ,c, n. : with further bibliography; Edwards (:,,:) on the Clementina;
Bremmer (:cc:), esp. :o,; Rhee (:cc,) ,:,; also further discussion below on the work of Kate
Cooper and Judith Perkins. See also K onig (:cc,b) for the argument that we need a more dynamic,
exible model of the way in which the AAA present conicting images of their own closeness to,
and distance from, novelistic traditions.
o
However, on echoes of the novels (especially Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus) in the Acts of
John, see Junod and Kaestli (:,,) ,:o:c and ,;,:; Lalleman (:,,;).
;
Thomas (:,,) :;.

Perkins (:,,,) and (:cc,a) has been inuential in making that argument.
,
See esp. Perkins (:,,,) ::: and (:cc,a) :c;:o and :,.
:c
See Cameron (:,,:), esp. ,::, on the AAA, suggesting that Christian stories are different from
ction in the matter of their relation with truth (::). That is not to deny that the AAA had their fair
share of trivial, sensationalistic elements, and that they were often vague in theological terms: Bovon
and Junod (:,o) stress the importance of avoiding an oversimplied view of the apocryphal acts as
:,: Saints and Symposiasts
That odd combination of familiarity and uncompromising strangeness
in relation to the classical tradition similar in some ways to what we have
seen in Part i for Christian sympotic writing is, to my mind, one of the
things that makes these texts compelling to read (at least from a classicists
perspective). Recent scholarship on the resistant qualities of the Apocryphal
Acts has focused most often on their redeployment of the romantic motifs
of the novels for distinctly un-novelistic ends. Kate Cooper, for example,
has written inuentially on the way in which the Apocryphal Acts reshape
the romantic plot patterns of the novels precisely in order to show their
resistance to the ideals of marriage which the novels recommend.
::
She
argues, for example, that the narrative strategy of the Acts of Andrew and
the other Apocryphal Acts borrows from and subverts the ideology of er os
and the citys regeneration that we have seen in the ancient novel;
::
and
similarly later: if the parallelism between the Apocryphal Acts and the
ancient romances is intentional and surely it must be then the rejection
of the romances ideal of passionate marriage was also a response to the
romances call for renewal of the city.
:,
I argue in what follows that their
quasi-novelistic representations of eating and drinking contribute to similar
patterns.
feasting and transgression in early christian culture
The transgressiveness of the Apocryphal Acts is of course part of a wider
phenomenon of resistant self-identication within early Christian culture
and narrative, in which Christian feasting played an important part, as we
have seen already in chapter ,. That resistance manifested itself particularly
within the distinctive qualities of Christian social organisation. Admittedly
many features of the early churches and their commensality were very sim-
ilar in some ways to Greco-Roman and Jewish institutions.
:
Christian
writers could in the right circumstances choose to stress the compatibility
of Christianity with Greco-Roman and Jewish tradition. In practice, on
the ground, the dividing line between Jews and Christians must often have
been less than clear-cut.
:,
Recent studies have shown how scholarly claims
a homogeneous and straightforwardly prescriptive corpus, arguing that they appear too equivocal
to have been created by militant communities (:o).
::
Cooper (:,,o) ,o;; and for other discussion of Christian use of these romantic motifs in the
AAA, see H agg (:,,) :,o,; Brown (:,) :,,;; Reardon (:,,:) :o,o; Doody (:,,;) ;,;;
Perkins (:,,;), who argues for similar effects in Apuleius; Aubin (:,,); Jacobs (:,,,) :::,; Lieu
(:cc) :c; Rhee (:cc,) ::,,,. However, Konstan (:,,) makes an important caveat in stressing
that the Apocryphal Acts repeatedly show the apostles restoring separated lovers to each other.
::
Cooper (:,,o) ,o.
:,
Cooper (:,,o) ,:.
:
See above, pp. ::,,c.
:,
See Lieu (:cc:) :::,.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts :,,
about the uniqueness of early Christianity, in the context of comparison
with other late antique religions, have sometimes been problematic, shaped
by the desire to justify religious especially Protestant uniqueness in the
modern world,
:o
and there is, of course, a danger of falling unthinkingly in
line with that tendency whenever one talks about the alienness of Christian
literature. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the idea of separateness was
a key factor in the rhetoric of early Christian self-presentation,
:;
and that
it was often linked especially with its feasting culture and with distinc-
tive practices of communal fasting. Narrative representations of feasting
and fasting played an important role in that rhetoric of separateness. For
example, we saw in chapter , how the disturbing quality of Jesus eating
in the gospels plays a major role in articulating the threat he poses to the
social norms of those he interacts with.
:
Both John and the canonical Acts
of the Apostles even go so far as to use Dionysiac language to articulate
the newness and disruptiveness of Jesus and his miracles (although that
imagery is of course also striking because it shows how Christian separa-
tion of itself from the world around it could be articulated paradoxically
through traditional Greco-Roman imagery).
:,
Christianitys forging of new kinds of social interaction was also linked
with new, unsettling attitudes to the human body. Judith Perkins has
shown howearly Christian culture welcomed an association with grotesque,
degraded corporeality, which had traditionally been associated with low
status in the ancient imagination, as a way of overturning the elite biases
of the society which surrounded it.
:c
That change went hand in hand with
a new insistence on the bodiliness of Jesus incarnation: In the second
century A.D., some strands of Christian discourse began to challenge this
cultural inscription of the body as base by insisting that Jesus assumption
of a material eshly body erased the shame associated with the body and
that his resurrection in a esh-and-blood body guaranteed the resurrection
of the human material body and its immortality.
::
The most striking
products of that shift are the many stories of martyrdom in the Apocryphal
Acts, and also the Martyr Acts which were roughly contemporary with
them, where the apostles welcome their subjection to grotesque bodily
punishment of the kind to which the lower-class body was particularly
vulnerable in the Roman judicial system. They take hideous and painful
:o
See Smith (:,,c).
:;
See Perkins (:cc,a) ,c,.
:
pp. :,c.
:,
See Bultmann (:,;:) :::, on Johns account of the wedding at Cana; Moles (:cco) on Acts; also
Smith (:,;) for possible Dionysiac inuences on Christian, and also Jewish narrative and ritual.
:c
See esp. Perkins (:cc,a).
::
Perkins (:cc,b) :c.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
death and mutilation which in many cases involved being eaten by
animals as paradoxical signs of Christian triumph.
::
This valuing of the degraded body is part of a wider Christian appropri-
ation of the language of paradox to describe the counter-intuitive nature of
Christian faith.
:,
It also extends and appropriates the disconcerting quality
of grotesque physicality I discussed for Apuleius and the other Greek and
Latin novelists. Here the work of Geoffrey Harpham again seems relevant.
For him one of the dening features of the grotesque is its tendency to
combine incompatible things in one body, in a way which opens up new
possibilities for the imagination. Christian narrative like the work of
Apuleius discussed in chapter :: seems to be imbued with an interest in
grotesque paradox as Harpham denes it, in its counter-intuitive combi-
nation of sacred and profane, spiritual and bodily:
:
confused, unresolved,
unstable, and apparently lled with great but uncertain signicance, such
images seem to demand that we rescue them from absurdity, that we make
them complete.
:,
On that model, the grotesque, within early Christian
narrative, appeals in part through its capacity to open up a space for per-
ception of the indescribable, paradoxical, almost unimaginable elements
of the sacred.
For all the explosion of interest in these themes, there has been relatively
little sustained interest in the motifs of transgressive eating and drinking
in early Christian narrative of the second and third centuries ce, especially
in the Apocryphal Acts, and their relation with similar themes in Greco-
Roman ction. That is my main topic in what follows.
Those strategies of welcoming and advertising the transgressiveness of
Christian eating should of course be viewed also as a response to Jewish
society and Jewish narrative traditions, although there is no space for a full
discussion of that relationship here. In the Old Testament, and indeed in
later Jewish writing, culinary and convivial propriety are associated with
virtue and social order in much the same way as in Greco-Roman literature,
and improper eating is often linked with the breakdown of society.
:o
One
::
Perkins (:cc,a), esp. ,o: and ,c:co.
:,
See Cameron (:,,:) :,,.
:
See Harpham (:,:) :c for that link with early Christian narrative.
:,
Harpham (:,:) ::.
:o
See MacDonald (:cc), esp. :cc,, on Judges; and see also Carroll (:,,,) on food images in the
prophetic discourses of the Old Testament and the way in which YHWHs anger is often described
in terms of his imposition of unnatural eating and drinking to counter-balance his provision of
abundant harvests. It is no accident that the commonest references to cannibalism in the Old
Testament are those that refer to cannibalism in times of siege, often described as a fate inicted
by the Lord on his people out of punishment: see Leviticus :o.:,, Deuteronomy :.,,;, : Kings
o.:o,, Jeremiah :,.,, Lamentations .:c, Ezekiel ,.:c. For a good non-biblical example of Jewish
disapproval of drunkenness and excess, see Philo, On the Contemplative Life (with discussion above,
pp. :,,o) and On Drunkenness.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts :,,
might think, for example, of the eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil in Genesis :,; or the story of Ahab and Jezebel,
where the eating of Jezebels body by dogs is described in the language of
a perverted sacrice (: Kings ,.,c;).
:;
Jesus and his followers challenge
Jewish assumptions about eating and social order. One particularly startling
example is the passage in Luke ;.,, (discussed already in chapter ,),
:
where Jesus identies himself as a glutton and a drunkard, echoing an
Old Testament phrase used to describe apostasy from the Jewish faith.
christianity and cannibalism
One particularly shocking example of Christian transgressiveness is to be
found in the representation of cannibalism within early Christian culture.
The accusation of cannibalism seems to have been applied quite regularly
to Christianity by its opponents during the second and third centuries ce.
:,
Many of the relevant texts record rumours of Christians dining on young
babies and committing incest at their love feasts.
,c
It seems quite possible
that these stories made a signicant contribution to popular anger against
Christians.
,:
The accusations may have been at least in part a response to
the imagery of eating Christs esh in the eucharist. However, the consensus
in recent scholarship is that this is unlikely to have been the only, or even
the most important, driving force behind the accusations.
,:
At least equally
important seems to have been simply the desire to stigmatise Christianitys
outsider status.
,,
Cannibalism accusation has been used in similar ways in
many different cultures and different periods, particularly against groups
:;
See Appler (:,,,).
:
p. :,:.
:,
For full surveys of the evidence, with listing of relevant passages, see (among others) Henrichs
(:,;c); Benko (:,) ,;; Rives (:,,,), with reference particularly to accusations of human
sacrice; McGowan (:,,), esp. :::; Wagemakers (:c:c).
,c
On these related accusations of incest, see Corley (:,,,) :;,, esp. ;,.
,:
For that claim see McGowan (:,,) ::, suggesting that these charges were made often and taken
seriously; cf. Hopkins (:,,,) :c,.
,:
McGowan (:,,), esp. :,:, n. : and ::, sees this factor as a very minor one; see also ,,,
n. ,o for rejection of the argument, made, e.g., by Benko (:,) ,;, that the accusations arose
as a result of mistaken identity, through confusion of orthodox Christian behaviour with heretical
Christian or quasi-Christian groups who may sometimes have practised cannibalism.
,,
See McGowan (:,,). Of course these accusations do not imply that Christianity was uniformly
viewed as outlandish and alien: in a sense it was precisely the disturbing closeness of Christianity to
pagan tradition which made the activity of separation seem so urgent (see Lieu (:cc) ::,; Hargis
(:,,,), esp. ::,,). See also Downing (:,,,), who argues that the accusations spring from the
identication of Christianity as a perverted form of Cynicism: see above (p. :,,, n. ,:) on Diogenes
willingness to countenance cannibalism as a natural practice.
:,o Saints and Symposiasts
who themselves resist assimilation into the dominant culture.
,
In line with
that principle, accusations of cannibalism were also occasionally made by
Christian writers against other Christian groups whose practices were felt
to be threateningly marginal and unorthodox.
,,
In one of the most famous of these passages, the pagan interlocutor in
Minucius Felixs Octavius states rumours of Christian savagery as if they
are well known:
An infant covered in dough, in order to deceive the unwary, is placed next to
the person who is about to be initiated. The child is then killed, with blind
and hidden wounds, by the initiate, who is challenged to launch what seem to
be harmless blows on the surface of the dough. They lick up the childs blood
thirstily horrible to say and they compete with each other to divide up its
limbs . . . And their way of conducting the convivium is widely known; everyone
talks about it everywhere . . . On the customary day they gather for a feast with all
their children, sisters and mothers, people of both sexes and all ages. There after
much feasting, when the convivium has heated up and when the fever of incestuous
lust has caught re in them because of their drunkenness, then a dog is tied to a
lamp-stand and tempted, by a scrap thrown beyond the range of the rope by which
he is tied, to jump forwards in a rush. Thus the witnessing light is overturned and
extinguished, and they cover with shameful shadows their indiscriminate embraces
of unspeakable lust. (Octavius ,.,;)
,o
Pliny the Younger, in investigating Christianity in Pontus, seems to have
expected improprieties along similar lines, but found only hymn-singing
and normal dining he refers to information received on their custom
of coming together to take food, but only commonplace, innocent food
(promiscuum tamen et innoxium) (:c.,o.;) although even so he drew
,
See Kilgour (:,,c) ,: to accuse a minority that resist assimilation into the body politic of that bodys
own desire for total incorporation is a recurring tactic.
,,
Even Justin (1 Apol. :o) does not rule out the possibility that some heretic Christian groups practise
the Thyestean feasting and Oedipean intercourse which he so vigorously denies as mainstream
Christian practice elsewhere: see Wilken (:,) :,::. Even as late as the fourth century ce, claims
that the Montanists used the blood of infants in their worship were apparently widespread (see
Rives (:,,,) ,, n. : for references), and Epiphanius of Cyprus discusses a Gnostic group called the
Phibionites who allegedly worshipped through ritual intercourse and consumption of an unborn
baby, described by him in horrifying detail (Panarion :o., and .:): see Benko (:,) o;c
and again Wilken (:,) :,::. For the related accusation that some groups feasted on semen or
menstrual blood, see McGowan (:,,,b) ,c:, n. , with reference to Buckley (:,,). There is also
some slight evidence for accusations made against Christianity by Jews, who viewed themselves
as criticising an aberrant sect within their own midst: see McGowan (:,,) :;, with reference
to Origen, Against Celsus o.:;, Justin, Dial. :c; cf. Josephus, Against Apion :.,:c: for similar
accusations against Jews, with good discussion by Barclay (:cc;) ::;:.
,o
Baldwin (:,,c) :c points out that the detail of the overturned lamp adapts a common motif of
Greco-Roman sympotic literature, the most obvious example being Lucian, Symposium o.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts :,;
very negative conclusions about the godlessness of Christianity.
,;
These
passages and others like them seem to assume widespread familiarity with
these kinds of rumour.
Many Christian apologists attempted to turn that imagery back on to
pagan culture, expressing their horror at pagan sacricial practice and the
cannibalistic elements of Greco-Roman myth.
,
Octavius, for example,
the Christian interlocutor in Minucius Felixs work, rejects the stories of
Christian incest and cannibalism as absurd calumnies (Octavius ,c:), and
offers a torrent of examples of human sacrice and incest from pagan myth
and ritual, including examples from Roman tradition, as well as from a
range of barbarian tribes. Those examples tie in with the wider theme of
the absurdity of pagan myth and ritual which runs through his speech.
,,
Nobody, he suggests, can believe this, apart from someone capable of
daring to do it himself (,c.:). Tertullian uses very similar language to
Minucius Felix: it may even be that one of them is imitating the other
or that they are using a common source:
c
We are said to be the most
depraved of people, because of the ritual of infanticide and because of the
meal which follows from it, and because of the incest which follows the
convivium, which is arranged for us by the lamp-overturning dogs who are,
they say, pimps in the shadows, giving our impious lusts the appearance
of respectability (Apology ;.:). He goes on to claim that all of these things
have in fact been done within pagan religion, which is perhaps the reason
why you have believed it of us (,.:). The implication in what follows is
that it is paganism, not Christianity, which is to be equated with inhuman
monstrosity and viewed as inseparable fromthe savagery of barbarian tribes.
Tertullian lists, amongst many other examples, the sacrice of children in
Africa up to the reign of Tiberius, the human sacrice imputed to Catiline
and his fellow conspirators in rst-century bce Rome, and the habits
of funerary cannibalism in Scythia, listing barbarian and Greco-Roman
savagery together.
:
He even goes so far as to link this counter-accusation
of human sacrice with his characteristic horror of gladiatorial sport (horror
,;
On this letter of Pliny and Trajans response, see Wilken (:,) :,,c; Benko (:,c) :co;o.
,
See Lieu (:cc) :;;.
,,
However, see Clarke (:,o,) for discussion of the way in which the dialogue is saturated with signs of
the authors knowledge of Greco-Roman literary tradition: however vehement his scorn for pagan
ritual, Minucius Felix is still keen to stress the potential for compatibility between Christian and
Greco-Roman ideas.
c
For comparison of Minucius Felix and Tertullian, see Henrichs (:,;c) :o, who argues that the
signicant differences between their accounts make it hard to be sure of any close relationship.
:
Apology ,.:::, closely paralleled by Minucius Felix, Octavius ,c.
:, Saints and Symposiasts
which is evident in more extended form in his De Spectaculis).
:
Some, he
says, even commit cannibalism at second hand when they eat the meat
of animals which have consumed humans in the arena: the bellies of the
bears themselves are sought out, still suffering from indigestion from the
human esh they contain (Apology ,.::).
Distinctive variations of these motifs recur in many of the Greek apol-
ogists, some of whom were writing several decades before their Latin
counterparts. For example, Justin,
,
Tatian,

Theophilus,
,
Clement
o
and Athenagoras
;
all twist cannibalism accusations back against pagan
culture, attacking immoderate Greco-Roman feasting and violent pagan
myth, often in combination with attacks on the consumption of sacricial
meat. In these passages, one further reason for their fascination with can-
nibalism, beyond motives of self-defence, was a concern with the problems
of resurrection. Cannibalism potentially represented the greatest threat to
bodily resurrection: if your body is consumed by another human, becoming
in turn part of his or her body, how can it be separated out and reassembled
when the time comes?

The solution, for Athenagoras (On Resurrection

,), was to explain, drawing on Galenic medicine, that human esh passes
through human bodies without being absorbed.
,
Elsewhere he suggests
(rather contradicting this medical argument, or at least assuming that most
of his readers will not have any condence in it) that the Christian con-
cern with resurrection makes the accusations of cannibalism by Christians
implausible: For who that believes in the resurrection would make himself
a tomb for those who will rise again. For it is not likely that the same people
will believe that our bodies will rise again and eat them as if they will not
rise again (Legatio ,o).
,c
Most shockingly of all, however, there are also signs that some Christian
writers at times welcomed the association with cannibalistic imagery. Some
go out of their way to draw attention to it in order to emphasise the
mistreatment and misunderstanding of Christianity: it is striking that most
of the evidence for the accusations is preserved in the writing of Christian
:
On Tertullians opposition to spectacle, see Barnes (:,;:) ,,:cc; Contreras (:,c) ,,,,; Goldhill
(:cc:) ::.
,
E.g. Justin, Trypho :c, 1 Apol. :o and 2 Apol. ::.:.

Tatian, Address to the Greeks :,, with mention of the cannibal feasting of Pelops and Kronos; cf. :,,
where the purchase of gladiators is referred to as providing cannibal feasting for the soul.
,
Theophilus, To Autolycus ,.,, and ,.:,.
o
E.g. Clement, Exhortation :, ,:.
;
E.g. Athenagoras, Legatio ,, ,: and ,,.

See Bynum (:,,,) ,:, and ,,o; also Bernard (:,;o) and Perkins (:,,,) ::c:.
,
See Bynum (:,,,) ,:,.
,c
See Bynum (:,,,) ,,.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts :,,
apologists
,:
(although of course one other reason is that relatively little
anti-Christian polemic was allowed to survive).
,:
Others, however, actually
rehabilitate and sanctify the image of cannibalism so that it stands as
a sign of the transgressive quality of Christian faith. The most famous
example is John o.,,oo (which predates most, if not all, of the cannibalism
accusations), a passage where the eucharistic associations of cannibalism
seem to be at play,
,,
in contrast with some of the examples quoted above: I
say to you, if you do not eat the esh of the son of man and drink his blood,
you do not have life among you. He who eats my esh and drinks my blood
has eternal life, and I will resurrect him on the last day. For my esh is the
true food, and my blood is the true drink (o.,,,). Many of his followers
react against those commands with horror (o.oc), and some even abandon
their devotion to him (o.oo).
,
Gerd Theissen and others have explored
the theophagic act of the Christian eucharist as one of several examples in
early Christianity of the crossing of taboo thresholds: this was a ritually
staged transgression of taboo.
,,
The strange, unsettling, life-giving quality
of the Christian message is here articulated through active appropriation
of age-old stereotypes of transgressive eating and drinking.
,o
food and fasting in the apocryphal acts
How, then, do the AAA respond to those trends within Christian self-
identication? How do they represent the acts of eating and drinking? And
,:
See Rives (:,,,) o,; Lieu (:cc) :c, (in relation to the aspect of the charges relating to incest): the
fact that such charges are reported mainly by Christian authors suggests that in so doing they are
simultaneously vaunting and denying the subversiveness of their claim to community.
,:
See Clark (:cc) :o:;.
,,
For summary of debate over how far this passage should be seen as having sacramental, eucharistic
overtones, see Keener (:cc,) o,,:.
,
See Feeley-Harnik (:,,) oo; on this passage; Keener (:cc,) o;,,; Webster (:cc,) :;, in
the course of a wider discussion of the way in which Johns gospel equates believing in Jesus with
consuming him; also Reed (:,,,) :, who refers also to the unclean eating of Acts :c.:, in the course
of a wider discussion (;;), inuenced by Bakhtin, of the carnivalesque and grotesque elements
in the New Testament and their role in articulating the disturbing transgressiveness of the Christian
message.
,,
Theissen (:,,,) :,: (this quotation from :,,); cf. Visser (:,,:) ,o;. Some scholars have suggested
that Greco-Roman sacricial ritual was similarly concerned with consumption of the divine, and
that the Christian eucharist was inuenced by those conceptions, but see Willis (:,,) :: and o: for
a sceptical account.
,o
For other examples, see Martyrdom of Polycarp :;, with Bowersock (:,,) :,c, where the crowds
rush to consume the cooked esh of the martyred saint after his death; and Kilgour (:,,c) :, on
the way in which Augustine attempted to move beyond a stark dichotomy between eater and eaten
towards a model of mutual consumption, whereby consuming the body of Christ involves also
being consumed in turn.
,cc Saints and Symposiasts
how do those representations compare with what we have seen for Greco-
Roman texts in the previous two chapters? The abiding impression left by
these texts is of the apostles estrangement from the society around them.
Their devotion to moderate forms of eating and drinking parallels in some
ways the representation of philosophers eating and drinking moderately in
Greco-Roman biographical writing. However, the form that moderation
takes is entirely foreign to the classical tradition: it manifests itself in
their observance of eucharistic hospitality and fasting, which makes them
disruptive, transgressive gures in relation to the pagan society around
them. Their escape from consumption by wild beasts and cannibals is
similar to what we see for many of the novelistic heroes and heroines, but the
explicitly Christian divine interventions which facilitate those escapes make
the apostles, again, quite alien to the world of Greco-Roman ction.
,;
In
what follows, I deal with those two different strands in turn. In neither case
do I intend to suggest that the AAA have an intricate and carefully designed
intertextual relationship with the novels; rather that they make a signi-
cantly different use of shared narrative resources and cultural reference
points.
First: eucharist and fasting. The rst thing to say is simply that these
two activities are often mentioned quite briey, and, in the case of some
of the AAA, only sporadically. That does not necessarily mean, however,
that they are unimportant themes. For one thing the very brevity of these
descriptions, especially in the case of eucharistic meals, implies that the
author does not need to say more, that author and reader are brought closer
together by their shared familiarity with Christian ritual. In some texts,
moreover, especially in the Acts of Thomas, as we shall see later, eucharistic
scenes recur so regularly that they act, despite their brevity, as important
structuring moments within the narrative, standing at the climax of each
episode of conversion. In the process these recurring scenes presumably
reect the regularity of eucharistic fellowship in the church communities
at which these texts were aimed. Indeed, the AAA are generally thought to
provide important (if not completely transparent or reliable) evidence for
eucharistic practice in the early church. One of their peculiarities in that
respect is the fact that they often seem to be describing bread-and-water
eucharists, which suggests that they come from the more ascetic end of the
spectrum of Christian practice.
,
,;
Although miracle-working was of course not so alien a concept to pagan readers in the Roman
empire as it is to us, as Strelan (:cc) shows for the canonical Acts of the Apostles.
,
On bread-and-water eucharists, see McGowan (:,,,); Finn (:cc,) ;oc; also oo, on fasting in
the AAA.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,c:
For now, however, the most important point I want to stress is that the
apostles feasting and fasting is repeatedly dened by contrast with pagan
ways of eating and drinking. They are presented, in other words, not just
as markers of Christian community but also, simultaneously, as markers
of freely chosen Christian alienation from the pagan world around them.
Andrew McGowan has helpfully catalogued the various occurrences of
eucharistic meals and of fasting in the ve major Acts.
,,
In the process he
rightly points out some of the differences between the different texts in
their treatment of this topic:
All the Acts give some picture of appropriate ritual food; the Acts of Paul (and
Thecla) and the Acts of John are only moderately concerned about the negative
side, i.e. eating wrong foods and eating with pagans. The Acts of Peter place more
emphasis on charity and the necessity of provision of food than on purity concerns,
even encouraging utilitarian dealings with unbelievers. The Acts of Andrew and
the Acts of (Judas) Thomas represent a rigorous position involving radical critique
of meat-eating as demonic or bestial behaviour, and outright condemnation of
commensality with pagans.
oc
Rather than reproducing McGowans list of passages here, I want instead
to look at just one text as an example, that is the Acts of Paul and Thekla.
Even here despite McGowans entirely convincing claim that it is less
concerned with separating Christian from pagan commensality than many
of the other Acts the contrast between pagan and Christian feasting plays
a signicant role.
o:
The narrative seems to have formed the third part of
the longer Acts of Paul, but also circulated independently of it.
o:
It has
often before been observed that this is a text which has a particularly strong
novelistic avour, especially in its handling of the relationship between
Paul and Thekla, apostle and female convert, which rewrites the relations
between novelistic hero and heroine with the difference that they are
,,
McGowan (:,,,) :,,; cf. :;o, on the pseudo-Clementine literature. Particularly telling pas-
sages from the minor Acts include (the third-century?) Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena :::, where
the newly converted Xanthippe refuses to eat with her husband Probus; Probus falls asleep after
dinner and orders the doors of the house to be locked, but Xanthippe bribes her way out, is baptised
by Paul and shares the eucharist with him; those scenes are later replayed in ::: where Probus is
baptised and receives the eucharist, shares a celebratory supper with Xanthippe, and then goes out,
leaving Xanthippe, to hear Gods word: see Elliott (:,,,) ,:, on this text. Another good example
is the (fourth- or fth-century?) Acts of John in Rome o;, where the soldiers taking John to the
emperor Domitian in Rome are astonished by his feats of asceticism and his refusal to share their
meals: on this text, see Schneemelcher (:,o,) :,,o; Junod and Kaestli (:,,) ,,o:.
oc
McGowan (:,,,) :.
o:
For an account of all of the key eating scenes in the Acts of Paul, see McGowan (:,,,) :,;.
o:
On the complex transmission of and relationship between the Acts of Paul and the Acts of Paul and
Thekla see Rordorf (:,o); Schneemelcher (:,o,) ,::,: (esp. ,,c, on the Acts of Paul and Thekla);
Elliott (:,,,) ,,c;.
,c: Saints and Symposiasts
united not by erotic love but by Theklas desire for the word of God
as Paul preaches it. That desire leads Thekla to distance herself from
the norms of pagan society, which provokes the fury of her unconverted
mother and anc e, and which does seem to be at least to some degree
paralleled by what we know of the prominent position of women in the
early church and their withdrawal from family life.
o,
The subversiveness
of her actions is marked in part by her refusal to eat for three days and
three nights (Acts of Paul and Thekla ), a detail which recalls among
other things the New Testament account of Pauls own three-day fast
after his conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts ,.,). In the Greek
novels, refusal to eat and drink is a standard feature of love-sickness,
o
but in Theklas case it signals instead her spiritual intoxication, and her
(in the eyes of her family) dangerous rejection of the norms of pagan
community. The fact that so much of the early part of the episode is
focalised throughthe eyes of Theklas unconverted mother and anc e allows
us almost to sympathise with their distress, and with their view of Paul as
a profound threat to the fabric of their lives. At the same time, however,
that sense of disruptiveness is interspersed by an awareness of the joy and
harmony of Christian community. For example, this opening section of
the text shows some signs of the deliberately unobtrusive representation of
Christian feasting referred to above. Paul receives hospitality in the house
of his fellow-Christian Onesiphoros: there was great joy and bending of
knees and breaking of bread and the word of God about abstinence and
resurrection (,). Here the very brevity of the reference to commensality
both paints it as a self-evident, unsurprising action, and involves the reader,
assuming that we know enough to understand precisely what kind of
communal or ritual activity lies behind the phrase breaking of bread.
o,
Later, after Onesiphoros has renounced worldly goods, we see him fast-
ing with his family and with Paul in a tomb outside his home city of
Iconium. After many days the children become hungry, and Paul gives
them his cloak to sell so that they can buy food (:,). At this point Thekla
is reunited with them, and their celebration of that reconciliation is rep-
resented as a feast: and there was much love (,tn) inside the tomb,
with Paul and Onesiphoros and the others all rejoicing. They had ve
loaves of bread and some vegetables and water and salt, and they rejoiced
o,
See above, notes ::, :: and :, on Cooper (:,,o) and others.
o
See Bremmer (:,,o) ::; Toohey (:,,:).
o,
On that phrase, and for the point that this seems to be a wine-free eucharist, see Bremmer (:,,o)
,,c and McGowan (:,,,) :,, who also points out that the phrasing here recalls the breaking of
bread in the canonical Acts of the Apostles.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,c,
(toqpcivcv:c) in the holy works of Christ (:,). The word love or agape
(,tn) was regularly used to describe feasting in early Christian commu-
nities; similarly the word rejoice (toqpcivcuci) was a word used in both
Christian and pagan contexts for convivial joy. Christian convivial happi-
ness, on this account, does not depend on abundance of nourishment: the
modest collection of food is enough.
Finally, in an earlier passage we see Pauls enemy Thamyris plotting
against him, inviting two perdious companions of Paul to dinner in order
to gain information: And Thamyris said to them, Come into my house,
gentlemen, and relax with me. And they came to a very costly dinner,
with much wine, and great wealth and a splendid table. And Thamyris
gave them wine to drink, loving Thekla and wanting to get her as his
wife (:,). Here, the feast Thamyris provides is a sign of his status as a
member of the elite, one of the wealthiest members of the city, standing
at the centre of civic life. And yet the text ultimately reveals the illusory
nature of his self-condence, associating the feasting of the pagan elite with
luxury and deceit, in contrast with Christian abstinence. Paul and Thekla,
by contrast, appropriate a marginal space, fasting in the tomb outside the
city,
oo
and turn it into a place of real, Christian community. And in doing
so they appropriate the virtues of self-control and moderation which had
for centuries been viewed as dening qualities of the Greco-Roman elite
(as we saw in Plutarchs Sympotic Questions).
My second category is the eating and drinking of wild beasts and canni-
bals. Here, too, the apostles separate themselves along with other converts
and potential converts from forces which threaten to absorb and over-
whelm them, just as they separate themselves through fasting from being
absorbed by pagan society. In many cases they even cleanse their tormentors
of their barbarism, converting barbaric communities, and in some cases
wild animals, to the Christian faith.
o;
For example, in the Acts of Paul and
Thekla ,,,, Thekla is nearly eaten by wild beasts in the arena, with all the
connotations of social humiliation that brings with it,
o
only to be rescued
by divine intervention. Other examples are particularly prevalent in the
oo
There are two similar eucharist scenes in tombs in Acts of John ;: and ,o, both of which recall
closely the tomb of Jesus and the narratives of his resurrection in the gospels, and so mark these
even more rmly than the Acts of Paul and Thekla as Christian spaces for communal eating. For
other evidence for Christians feasting in tombs, see Stevenson (:,;) :, and ,o;, esp. on feasts in
honour of the martyrs; Dunbabin (:cc,a) :;,:; and above, p. :, for John Chrysostom and others
denouncing drunkenness on these occasions; however, see also p. :,, above, on funerary feasting as
a common phenomenon within Greco-Roman culture.
o;
See Konstan (:cc,) ::c:o for that motif in the AAA and the way it is linked with the spiritual
development of the apostles.
o
See Bremmer (:,,o) ,, on the humiliation of naked execution.
,c Saints and Symposiasts
minor Acts, most of which probably date from the fourth or fth centuries
ce or in some cases even later.
o,
In the Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena ::
(which may date from the third century ce,
;c
though many commentators
place it in the fourth or fth), Polyxena dreams she is being swallowed by
a dragon; later she wards off a lion (:;) and various other wild beasts in
the arena (,;) through prayer. In the Coptic Acts of Andrew and Paul, a
young boy who had been fed by his mother to a dog is resurrected.
;:
That
scene surely engages with the anxieties about the possibility of resurrection
in the face of martyrdom and cannibalism already referred to. It offers us
a humorous, ctional reassurance that the consumed body is still resur-
rectable, in ways which parallel the reassurance offered by Theophilus and
Athenagoras and others. In the Acts of James the Less :;, the apostles Simon
and Jude, in contest with Babylonian magicians, turn a hoard of snakes
against their opponents, and then later make the snakes suck up their poi-
son again, which hurts the magicians even more. Later, in :,, they save the
Babylonians from two man-eating tigers.
;:
In the Passion of Matthew, Jesus
appears to Matthew and tells him to go to Myrna, the city of the man-
eaters, where he should plant a staff in the ground, which will grow into
a fruit tree whose fruit will cure the man-eaters of their barbarism. On his
arrival, a group of ten cannibal soldiers are sent to attack Matthew and his
companion, the bishop Plato, with orders to tear them apart and eat them
alive, but they are saved by divine intervention (:,).
;,
The ploy of mak-
ing the enemies of the apostles into cannibals is a ctional version of the
process of defending Christianity from cannibalism charges by directing
them instead against pagan religion. At the same time it is also presumably
intended to appeal to a taste for sensationalistic narrative. The Acts of Philip
(probably a fourth-century text)
;
tells of a talking leopard who decides
not to eat a kid when he hears it prophesying the arrival of Philip and his
companions, and is then converted to Christianity (,o:c:). Later they are
approached by an enormous serpent, who is followed by a crowd of other
snakes, but they succeed in destroying them (:c:o). Finally they come
to a city where the inhabitants worship another snake; they are tortured;
the people of the city threaten to feed the blood of the apostle John, who
comes to help, to the sacred snake: this is what the priests decided, saying,
o,
See also MacDonald (:,,c) , on cannibalismand human sacrice in the Acts of John by Prochorus,
dating from the fth to seventh centuries ce.
;c
See Elliott (:,,,) ,:.
;:
See James (:,:) ;,.
;:
See Elliott (:,,,) ,:,,: on this text.
;,
See Elliott (:,,,) ,:c,.
;
See Elliott (:,,,) ,:::, dating this work to the fourth or fth century; also Bovon (:cc:) :c:;
and for text and commentary, Bovon, Bouvier and Amsler (:,,,).
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,c,
Let us hang them upside down and squeeze out the blood from them,
and mixing it in a cup with wine let us offer it to the snake (:,:). In the
end the apostles turn the tables against their human tormentors, who are
swallowed up by the abyss: the abyss opened its mouth (nvcitv :c tcu:,
o:cuc); or alternatively, in another version, the abyss opened up and the
whole area where the proconsul and the snake were sitting was swallowed
up (sc:ttcn) (:,,). Jesus nally has mercy on them and brings them up
again, rebuking Philip for carrying his punishment too far. Philip dies and
a vine springs from his blood (:,, :;): pluck the grapes, Philip says in
his nal instructions before he dies, and squeeze them into the cup, and
partaking of it on the third day send up your amen to the heavens, in order
that the offering should be complete (:,).
The AAA thus stress, like the Greek and Latin novels, the untouchable
character of their protagonists, able to escape from the threat of grotesque
consumption. However, the ability of the apostles to escape from danger
and humiliation is based on powers utterly superior to the capacities of the
novelistic heroes and heroines, and utterly alien to the novelistic world.
Admittedly there are sometimes hints of divine protection surrounding the
invulnerability of characters like Theagenes and Charikleia in Heliodorus,
while Isis patronage of Lucius in Book :: of Apuleius Metamorphoses
prompts us to wonder in retrospect whether his lucky escapes in Books
::c have been divinely orchestrated. But there is nothing which matches
the apostles empowered invocation of divine help, which surely owes more
to the acts of power associated with the Old Testament prophets.
;,
At the same time, and paradoxically, the apostles sometimes share with
the protagonists of Achilles Tatius and Apuleius and others a tendency to be
contaminated by the dangers they face. Here again, however, the AAA use
that motif in different ways and take it to even more shocking extremes, not
least because the threat of contamination is often represented as something
the apostles welcome. In Apuleius Metamorphoses, Lucius subjection to
grotesque physical experience prepares the way for his nal conversion
to Isis, but is nevertheless wiped away from view with the help of the
goddess in Book ::. In the AAA and much other early Christian narrative,
by contrast, grotesque physical experience remains in place as a dening
feature of the apostles holiness. Most obviously, the majority of the apostles
do in the end succumb to martyrdom, even if they are miraculously rescued
over and over again before they get to that stage. As we have already seen,
;,
See Strelan (:cc), esp. :,, for summary, who makes that argument for the canonical Acts of the
Apostles.
,co Saints and Symposiasts
those martyrdom scenes are a key factor in articulating Christianitys new
association with the degraded body.
;o
Even when believers are rescued in
these texts, that often involves them in being tortured, consumed, exposed
to public view in the arena, before the moment of rescue arrives. Their
bodies are made unfamiliar and alien through pain and suffering (here
again Apuleius provides us with the closest novelistic parallel), precisely in
order to make us more ready to see them as material for the divine gift of
conversion and resurrection. At times, Christianity even appropriates, as a
constitutive, symbolic feature of its own identity, images drawn from the
horrifying and threatening forces it overcomes, for example in the passages
just mentioned from the Acts of Philip. In that case the consuming powers
of the snakes are taken on by the apostle in the punishment he metes out to
non-believers, who are swallowed up by the abyss. Philip himself is then
symbolically offered up for the consumption of the converted through
the fruit tree which springs from his blood. Here a divinely sanctied
form of cannibalism replaces the savage and unchristian appetite of the
snakes.
;;
One other, remarkable text also deserves a mention, nally, despite
the fact that it is not closely related to the Apocryphal Acts, and that
is the Narrations of pseudo-Nilus, which dates perhaps from the fth
century ce.
;
It describes a series of attacks by barbarian Saracens on the
monastic communities of the Sinai peninsula. Its concern with monastic
asceticism makes it close in some ways to the hagiographical texts I discuss
in chapter ::, but I discuss it here simply because it too deals with the
threat of cannibalismin ways which drawclosely on Greco-Roman ctional
parallels. The work is full of scenes of slaughter, mutilation and suffering
which are as vivid and graphic as any other killing scenes which survive
in ancient literature. In these scenes, the author draws a contrast, like the
Apocryphal Acts, between the dignied culinary discipline of believers and
the degraded cannibalistic savagery of the opponents of Christianity. He
;o
See Perkins (:cc,a), esp. ,:; she suggests that the occurrence of false death scenes and cannibalism
scenes in both early Christian narrative and Greco-Roman ction is due to the shared responses
of two different social constituencies using a closely related register of themes (mutilation, con-
sumption, death, and survival) to address the changing political and social landscape of empire
(,;); also Morard (:,:) for comparison of the novels and the AAA in their representations of death
and suffering. By contrast Bowersock (:,,) argues for the inuence of Christian narrative over
Greco-Roman narrative: see esp. ::,,o on cannibalism; cf. Ramelli (:cc:); also (:cc;) for the
claim that Petronius parodies the Christian eucharist in the cannibalism scenes of Satyrica ::.
;;
See MacDonald (:,,c) c, for the argument that many of these passages are inuenced by similar
narrative patterns in the Acts of Andrew and Matthias, discussed below.
;
For introduction and translation see Caner (:c:c) ;,:,,.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,c;
also closely imitates Achilles Tatius false sacrice scene.
;,
For example, in
an ethnographic excursus towards the beginning of the work, we hear that
the barbarians sacricial victim of choice is a beautiful child, but that they
make do with a white camel if necessary. The leader of the procession, we
are told, drawing his sword strikes vigorously down at the victims sinews
and is the rst one to taste the blood eagerly. Then the rest run up with
their daggers, and some cut off a small patch of the hide (ocp,) with hair
attached, others grasp whatever esh they see and cut it off, while others go
straight for the guts and entrails (Narrations ,.,). It is not unequivocally
clear from the wording of the passage whether this description refers just
to camel sacrices or to human ones as well. The word hide, usually
used for animals, and the detail of the attached hair, suggests the former,
but there is enough ambiguity here to infect the barbarians lifestyle with
overtones of novelistic cannibalism. That horrifying description is then
followed immediately by discussion of the ascetic moderation of the Sinai
monks: But those who embark upon the monastic life choose a few places
in the desert where it is possible to full the basic needs of the body with a
supply of water . . . few of them having any acquaintance with bread, only
those who are able by their diligence to compel the sterility of the desert
to produce grain (,.). Here, once again, Christian believers are separated
utterly from the degradation of their opponents through their habits of
eating and drinking. At the same time, however, the Christian bodies of
the work are repeatedly exposed to dehumanising degradation in other
respects, in the many scenes where they are sliced up and hacked apart by
the swords of their murderers.
acts of thomas
The Acts of Thomas (ATh),
c
composed probably in the early third cen-
tury ce, has a number of peculiarities in relation to the other four major
Acts. For one thing it is likely to have been composed originally in Syriac
(although the surviving Greek text, which I follow here, is likely to be
closer to the original version than the Syriac text as it survives). It also
seems to have theologically unorthodox characteristics, although the pre-
cise theology of the text is debated. It may have been heavily inuenced
;,
See Caner (:c:c) ;; on Achilles Tatius; also :, where he describes the Narrations as the last great
work of ancient romance.
c
I follow the Greek text of Lipsius and Bonnet (:,::,c,); for English translation and introduction,
see Schneemelcher (:,o,) :,,,:; Elliott (:,,,) ,,,::; for commentary on the Syriac text, see
Klijn (:cc,).
,c Saints and Symposiasts
by a distinctively Syrian version of Gnostic Christianity. There is even
evidence for its popularity within Manichaean communities. At the same
time it was clearly also popular in orthodox communities, and later versions
increasingly eliminate Gnostic material.
:
In this section, however, I want to focus more on what the Acts of Thomas
shares with the other AAA. The text is typical of the wider trends of repre-
senting food and feasting I have just discussed, even if it sometimes overlays
them with Gnostic resonances quite distinct from what we nd in the other
works. I want to focus in particular on one remarkable passage from the
beginning of the work where Thomas appropriates the position of disrup-
tive symposiast in ways which emphasise his alienness to pagan culture.
There is a useful parallel for that argument in a recent essay by Caroline
Johnson, who shows that the works many sentences of invocation, com-
mon especially in the eucharistic scenes already mentioned, draw not only
on early Christian liturgical traditions, but also on the language of magic
spells.
:
The work irts, in other words, with a risky image of Thomas
as magician, even if it ultimately draws back from that: The author han-
dles this comparison carefully, highlighting Thomas extraordinary power
yet simultaneously erecting a clear boundary between the apostle and a
magos. Importantly for this section, the image of Thomas as magician is
sometimes focused on scenes involving consumption: for example in ATh
:,:, he is described as a magician who enchants the people with oil and
water and bread. Thomas, it seems, has the ability to take on images and
personas which in other circumstances might make him a dangerous gure,
and to reappropriate them for his own socially disruptive Christian self-
portrayal.
The work opens with a scene of lot-drawing to determine where each of
the apostles will go to evangelise. Judas Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus,
draws India. Initially he refuses to go, claiming that he would be useless
because he speaks only Hebrew, but he is forced to change his mind when
Jesus sells him as a slave to the merchant Abban, who has been ordered by
the Indian King Gundaphoros to buy a carpenter and bring him back to
India. The rst stop as they sail for India is the city of Andrapolis:
:
For discussion of these (interrelated) problems, see Schneemelcher (:,o,) :;, :,,: and c:;
Tissot (:,:) for the texts composite quality, made up of a number of different strands without
a single author; and Tissot (:,) on the background of the ATh in Syrian encratism; Rouwhorst
(:,,c), esp. ,, and ;:, for scepticism about the arguments for the texts heterodox character;
Elliott (:,,,) ,,c; Sellew (:cc:) for scepticism about the likelihood that there was a specic
community of Thomasine Christians lying behind the text; Klijn (:cc,) : and ,.
:
Johnson (:,,,), esp. :,:.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,c,
And disembarking from the boat they went into the city. And look, the sound of
ute-players and water-organs and trumpets echoed around them. And the apostle
inquired, saying, What is this festival in this city? and the inhabitants said to him,
The gods have brought you here also to feast in this city. For the king has an only
daughter and now he is giving her to a husband in marriage. And so this festival
which you have seen today is the rejoicing and public celebration for the wedding.
And the king has sent out heralds to announce everywhere that everyone is to
come to the marriage, rich and poor, slave and free, foreigners and citizens. But if
anyone should refuse and should not come to the marriage, he will be answerable
to the king. (ATh )
In this passage we are led to anticipate a scene of feasting as an enactment
of community. The inclusiveness of the guest list is in line with what we
know of sacricial feasting in the Mediterranean world, where the whole
city, including foreign visitors, would in some cases feast together.
,
At the
same time it also parallels the rhetoric of social and ethnic inclusiveness
which was one of the dening features of Christianity, and more specically
echoes Galatians ,.:: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in
Christ Jesus.

It looks as though Thomas initial fears about travelling as

a foreigner are about to be laid to rest by the hospitable welcome of the
Andrapolitans.
In what follows, however, the note of danger in the kings threat against
those who refuse to conform if anyone should refuse and should not
come to the marriage, he will be answerable to the king begins to look
increasingly ominous. Thomas oddity by the standards of his fellow diners
is immediately clear:
And the apostle, seeing them all reclining, reclined also in their midst. And they
were all looking at him as at a foreigner who had come from a foreign land . . . And
while they were eating and drinking, the apostle tasted nothing. Those who were
around him said to him, Why have you come here, neither eating nor drinking?
And he answered them saying, I have come here because of something greater
than eating or drinking and in order that I might accomplish the will of the king.
For the heralds proclaim the wishes of the king, and whoever does not listen to
the heralds will be liable to the judgement of the king. (,)
Here, as often in the AAA, fasting marks out the alienness of the Christian
messenger. That impression is enhanced in this case by the fact that Thomas
is quite literally a foreigner. And Thomas (to the Andrapolitans) enigmatic
claim about his own status as herald of the king is a subversive attempt to
,
See above, p. : and pp. :.

See Attridge (:,,;) ::,:c for this and other New Testament parallels.
,:c Saints and Symposiasts
trump the secular ruler of the city, appealing to the higher authority of the
heavenly ruler he serves.
,
The thing which marks Thomas alienness above all, however, is his
association with ritual and symbolic actions and theologically resonant
speech which his fellow-diners have no chance of decoding. He behaves
oddly, for example, when oil is passed round, anointing the crown of his
head, his nostrils, his ears, his teeth, and the area around his heart. One
of the peculiarities here is that the text prefers not to explain his reasons
for acting as he does, as if deliberately cultivating an air of enigmatic
strangeness, keeping the inner workings of Thomas mind a secret from
us as readers and from the Andrapolitans. All of these actions may be
easily interpretable by readers familiar with the sacramental rituals of early
Christianity,
o
but those who are not are, for now at least, put in the
position of the onlookers, confronted with Thomas unexplained oddity.
Thomas resistance to the festivities around him becomes even clearer
when he sings a hymn in Hebrew, often referred to as the Hymn of the
Bride (to distinguishit fromthe other famous hymnof the ATh, the Hymn
of the Pearl, included at :c:,).
;
Hymn singing in itself is not completely
alien to the Greco-Roman symposium tradition;

nevertheless it is clear
that Thomas version is very odd when set against the expectations of his
fellow diners. One of the problems is simply a language barrier: everyone
there stared at him; and he kept silent. They also saw that his appearance
had changed, but they did not understand his words, as he was a Hebrew
and the things he said were said in Hebrew (). Moreover, the subject
matter of the hymn a mystical, allegorical account of Gods wedding to
the Daughter of Light suggests that Thomas is attempting to portray
the marriage feast of the kings daughter as inferior to his own Christian,
metaphorical vision of marriage. The hymn is accordingly full of banquet
imagery, especially in the second half:
,
they have been lit up by the sight
of their Lord; they have received his ambrosial food, of which there is no
deciency; they have drunk also from his wine, which produces in them
neither thirst nor desire (;).
,c
,
See LaFargue (:,,) :.
o
See Attridge (:,,;) ::,: the anointing . . . has a sacramental quality, foreshadowing the baptismal
anointings that will take place later in the text; it also foreshadows [Thomas] own martyrdom in
a fashion similar to the anointing of Jesus in the Gospels.
;
On the Hymn of the Bride, see (among others) Schneemelcher (:,o,) ,:,; Marcovich (:,:);
LaFargue (:,,) ,:::,; on the Hymn of the Pearl, see Luttikhuizen (:cc:); and for the prevalence
of hymns, prayers and sermons within the ATh as a whole, and the sense of discontinuity they
produce, see LaFargue (:,,) :.

See above, p. :o.

,
See LaFargue (:,,) :.
,c
There are other links too between the hymn and the narrative, which reinforce the impression that
Thomas own enigmatic ritual actions, already referred to above, have been imprinted all along
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,::
Even if Thomas fellow diners could understand Hebrew, it is presum-
ably the case that they would have trouble seeing the full signicance of the
hymns imagery. The inaccessibility of the hymn thus outs the inclusive
norms of sympotic fellowship. Banquets not just in the Greek philosoph-
ical symposium tradition but also in Mediterranean culture more widely
were spaces where memorialisation and ritual and allusion to shared bodies
of knowledge were used to create community. Thomas actions and words
constitute a remarkable reversal and refusal of that process. He does indeed
use the banquet as an opportunity for acting out a role as part of a wider
community, but it is a community none of the other guests are part of.
They cannot understand or respond to him. Neither can the pagan reader
who is used to the interpretive conventions of ancient novelistic writing, for
the narrative requires techniques of interpretation, based around theolog-
ical and scriptural literacy, which are quite alien to Greco-Roman ction.
The community he appeals to, rather, is the community of Christian read-
ers outside the text: we, if we are Christian readers who comprehend,
are the only ones who can participate in the spiritual banquet he sets in
motion.
As the banquet progresses Thomas disruptive presence comes to have
more serious consequences, most importantly when he comes into conict
with one of the waiters:
And as the apostle looked at the ground, one of the wine-pourers stretched out his
hand and hit him. And the apostle raised his eyes and looked at the man who had
hit him, and said to him, My God will remove this sin from you in the coming
eternity, but in this world he will show his wonders, and I will soon see that hand
that struck me dragged along by dogs. (o)
A little later we hear that:
that wine-pourer who had hit him went down to the fountain to draw water. And
there happened to be a lion there, and it killed him and left him lying in that
place, after tearing off his limbs. And dogs immediately took hold of his limbs,
including one black dog, which held his right hand in its mouth and carried it
into the place of the symposium. ()
When one of the ute-girls a Hebrew speaker explains that she had
heard Thomas prophesying the cupbearers fate in Hebrew, we are told that
some believed her and some not, and that the king came to fetch Thomas
from the banquet, asking him to pray for his daughter.
with symbolic signicance: see LaFargue (:,,) : for the point that the description of the brides
bedroom in the hymn decorated with reeds (o) recalls the detail that Thomas took in his hand
a reed branch (,) after anointing himself.
,:: Saints and Symposiasts
At rst glance, Thomas in this scene goes out of his way to avoid unruly
behaviour. There is no suggestion that he has provoked the cupbearer;
instead we are told that he kept his eyes on the ground at all times. The
punishment of death and dismemberment is inicted on a non-believer
who is characterised in highly negative terms,
,:
whereas the apostle himself
is separated from any association with grotesque physicality. In addition,
his interaction with the ute-girl deliberately sidesteps the stereotypes of
sympotic seduction. Her rst appearance comes immediately before the
onslaught of the cupbearer: the ute-girl, holding her ute in her hand,
went round to all of them and played. And when she came to the place
where the apostle was she stood over him, playing over his head for a long
time (,). One possible reason for the cupbearers behaviour is jealousy, but
there is no mention of Thomas doing anything to encourage the attentions
of the ute-girl. Later, the romantic overtones of the ute-girls actions are
intensied. We hear that she was the only one to understand the hymn,
sung in Hebrew:
and leaving him she played her ute to the others, but for the most part looked
back at him and gazed at him. For she loved him greatly as one who was of the
same race as her; he was also beautiful in appearance above all who were there.
And when the ute-girl had nished playing, she sat down opposite him looking
over and gazing at him. ()
Gazing at ones beloved is a common feature of erotic encounter at symposia
in the novels.
,:
Once again, however, Thomas uncompromisingly refuses
to associate himself with the role of novelistic lover: But he looked at
no-one at all, nor did he pay attention to anyone, but kept his eyes only
on the ground, waiting till he was free to go from there (). Thomas thus
resolutely avoids some of the stereotypes of sympotic misbehaviour, even
as the actions of the other characters seem to force those stereotypes on to
him.
And yet despite that avoidance, it is hard not see him as a disruptive
gure here. His very determination to avoid unruly behaviour keeping
his eyes on the ground marks him out as a profoundly provocative and
unsociable dinner guest, and makes him a victim of an attack along the
same lines as the brawling in Lucians Symposium. And Thomas is in a
sense himself responsible for the grotesque intrusion of the cup-bearers
hand into the banquet hall, which risks casting him as a sorcerer, or even
,:
McGowan (:,,,) :,, suggests that the cupbearers fate is part of the texts wider devaluation of
drinking and drunkenness.
,:
See above on Achilles Tatius (pp. :;,); also Hopkins (:,,,) :o: on this passage of ATh.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,:,
as a destructive Dionysiac gure taking revenge out of proportion to the
insult he has received.
Paradoxically, then, Thomas is portrayed here in both positive and neg-
ative terms. What exactly does this doubleness signify? Michael LaFargue
has suggested that this ambivalent presentation of Thomas is a conse-
quence of the way in which the text hints simultaneously at two entirely
different allegorical interpretations of the banquet in Andrapolis, both of
which would have been clear to a reader familiar with Gnostic theology.
,,
On the one hand, it stands for the temptations of the world which the
ascetic prophet resists, in ways which are entirely admirable. On the other
hand it stands for the heavenly banquet to which God calls his followers,
described in terms which recall the eschatological banquet of Matthew
::, where punishment is similarly threatened against those who refuse the
invitation. On that reading, Thomas disruptiveness and resistance to the
offered hospitality is not just a sign of his resistance to worldly temptations,
but also simultaneously a metaphor for spiritual recalcitrance, which must
be overcome. That effect, LaFargue argues, is related to the way in which
Thomas is portrayed as a foolish prophet gure, in the manner of Jonah,
in the initial scenes where he refuses to travel to India.
That interpretation seems to me to be convincing. However it is also, I
suggest, perfectly compatible with the argument I have been making here:
Thomas combination of divinity and disruptiveness is entirely typical of
the way in which the other AAA also parade the social transgressiveness of
their apostolic heroes, even in banquet scenes which are lacking in these
kind of allegorical resonances.
Thomas distance from the convivial norms of pagan society are further
explored in what follows. In the paragraphs immediately following this
banquet scene, for example, Jesus, disguised as Thomas, ruins the wed-
ding of the kings daughter by persuading the bride and bridegroom to
embrace a life of chastity. Here, the kings fury (:o) leads him to represent
Thomas again as a sorcerer gure, while the daughter herself uses the lan-
guage of seduction to describe her conversion.
,
The theme of convivial
,,
See LaFargue (:,,), esp. ,,c.
,
Hopkins (:,,,) :o,, sees overtones of comedy and erotic sensationalism (paradoxically combined
with a hard-line message on abstinence) in the AAA in general and in this scene in particular; and
more generally see :c: in these apocryphal Acts, humour works in partnership with miracles to
break up our normal understandings. Humour works by inversion. It turns the normal world upside
down, and fractures conventions with unconventional juxtapositions. Humour softens us up, and
so makes us all the more prepared to accept the extraordinary elements of Christian belief, such as
man made God, the virgin birth, the resurrection of the body, and life after death. Eventually, the
incredible becomes, at least for believers, part of an expectable, acceptable normality.
,: Saints and Symposiasts
disruptiveness returns later too, when the converted Mygdonia refuses to
dine with her husband, and then further refuses to have sex with him after
he has dined himself (,c, ,o;). And Thomas own extreme asceticism is
mentioned a number of times, e.g. at ATh :c: He continually fasts and
prays, and eats only bread with salt, and his drink is water, and he wears one
cloak, both in good and bad weather.
,,
The importance of sacramental
feasting for Christian identity is also repeatedly asserted, in the many scenes
where Thomas delivers the eucharist (always bread-only or bread-and-water
eucharists) to his converts,
,o
scenes which are supplemented sporadically
by negative comments on pagan feasting and luxury, and images of the spir-
itual nourishment of Christianity.
,;
The dominance of eucharistic eating
increasingly drowns out the memory of the pagan feasting of Andrapolis,
as Thomas willingly marginal, transgressive practices increasingly attain
cultural dominance.
the acts of andrew and matthias
Perhaps the most eye-catching and sensationalistic manifestation of these
trends comes in the Acts of Andrew and Matthias (AAMt).
,
Once again we
must start with some caveats. The precise place and date of composition
of this text are not clear. It is hard to reconstruct one original version of
the text: it survives in many different versions in a number of different
languages. The likelihood is that it dates from the fourth or fth century
ce. Even if that is right, however, it need not mean that the AAMt needs
to be analysed according to completely different templates from those I
have used for major acts like the Acts of Thomas (ATh) and the Acts of
Paul and Thekla. We know from the wide circulation and later imitation
of the major Acts that Christian readers continued to identify with the
transgressive self-presentation of the apostles well beyond the early third
,,
Cf. Caner (:cc:) o, on the way in which the text represents Thomas ascetic practice as a
guarantee of his legitimate status as holy man.
,o
See Schneemelcher (:,o,) ,;: with a few exceptions all the stories of conversion in the ATh
conclude with a ceremony of initiation, the ritual of which is composed of several sacramental acts
(cf. c. :of., ,f., :::, :,,, :,;); and see also discussion of all these key passages by McGowan (:,,,)
:,:,; also Rouwhorst (:,,c) for cautious discussion of whether the ATh can be used as evidence
for distinctive liturgical traditions in the communities for which it was written.
,;
See ATh :, for an attack on gluttony followed by a eucharist scene; and ,o; for a similar
attack on gluttony and drunkenness followed by imagery of Christian spiritual nourishment; also
McGowan (:,,,) :,, on the way in which the text rejects sacricial feasting, with reference especially
to ;o;.
,
I follow the Greek text of MacDonald (:,,c), who also includes English translation (reproduced in
Elliott (:,,,) :,,c:) and introduction.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,:,
century ce (the date of the latest of the major Acts, the ATh). Dennis
MacDonald has even argued that the AAMt should be dated to the second
century ce (among other things, on the grounds that its engagement with
cannibal accusations ts most naturally with the second and third centuries,
when the bulk of Christian writing on this subject was composed), and
that it formed an original part of the second-century Acts of Andrew (AA),
with which it was widely circulated in later manuscripts,
,,
although most
scholars have been reluctant to accept that view.
:cc
The work opens, like the ATh, with a scene of lot-drawing.
:c:
Matthias
is assigned the city of Myrmidonia:
:c:
The people of that city neither ate bread nor drank water, but were eaters of the
esh of humans and drinkers of their blood. If any person arrived in their city they
would seize him and dig out and discard his eyes. They would make him drink
a drug prepared by sorcery and magic, and in drinking the drug his heart would
become altered and his mind changed. And then being out of their minds and
thrust into prison, they ate hay like cows and sheep. So when Matthias entered the
,,
MacDonalds other arguments include the point that both texts contain sustained engagement
with Homer, which suggests that they were together intended as a Christian version of the Odyssey;
and his suggestion that the AAMt can be shown to have inuenced the ATh, which it must
therefore predate. See esp. MacDonald (:,oa); (:,ob); (:,,c) :,,; (:,,) passim on Homeric
imitation, with ,; and ,:; on cannibalism accusations in the second and third centuries; (:,,;)
,,c on possible imitation of AAMt in ATh (disputed by Hilhorst and Lalleman (:ccc)). On the
end-date for cannibalism accusations, see Henrichs (:,;c) :; Rives (:,,,) o,; Hargis (:,,,) o,;
however for a much later, similar story of Christians threatened by and ultimately triumphing over
cannibalism, see Panegyric on Macarius , (with translation by Johnson (:,c) vol. ii, ::,c), which
is tentatively dateable to the sixth century ce; and cf. above on Ps-Nilus Narrations, perhaps from
the fth century ce.
:cc
MacDonalds argument is rejected most often on stylistic grounds: the style of the AAMt is very
different from what we nd in the AA, for example in its word order, and seems to be by a relatively
uneducated author, who may also have been a Semitic speaker, given some of the peculiarities in
his Greek, whereas the author of the AA seems to have considerable philosophical knowledge and
pretensions to a sophisticated rhetorical style: see Warren (:,,,); Zachariades-Holmberg (:,,,)
:,c. See also Prieur (:,o) (responding to MacDonald (:,oa)) and (:,,) vol. i, ,:,; Hilhorst
and Lalleman (:ccc); and most recently Roig Lanzilotta (:cco), who argues that the AAMt is not,
as has usually been assumed, the source for the four other surviving versions of the story, which
range in date from the fourth to the ninth century ce, but instead that all ve versions rely on
a common source, and who points out in conclusion (:,) that an earlier version of the story of
Andrews rescue of Matthias may have been part of the original Acts of Andrew, even if the AAMt
in its current form was not; he also provides a comprehensive bibliography of earlier discussions
on these topics (::::, esp. n. ,). Rejection of MacDonalds dating throws doubt on his view of
AA and AAMt as a coherent, Odyssean whole, but need not invalidate his claim that the AAMt is
full of Homeric reminiscences.
:c:
This scene has much in common with the lot-drawing scenes in ATh: see Kaestli (:,:b) for an
account of the lot-drawing motif which assumes that ATh is the earlier of the two texts.
:c:
MacDonald (:,,) ,, suggests that the choice of Myrmidonia is a reference to the Myrmidon
troops of Achilles in the Iliad who are described there as excessively warlike and sometimes almost
cannibalistic and thus an attempt to ascribe the taint of cannibalism to traditional exemplars of
Greek heroism.
,:o Saints and Symposiasts
gate of the city Myrmidonia, the people of that city seized him and gouged out
his eyes, and made him drink the drug of their magical deception, and led him
off to prison, and gave him grass to eat. And he ate nothing, for in drinking their
drug his heart was not altered, nor was his mind changed, but he prayed to God
weeping. (AAMt :,)
This passage immediately activates stereotypes of cannibalistic barbarism.
The claim that the people of that city ate no bread casts them in the mould
of the cannibal Polyphemus and many of the other savage communities
Odysseus visits in Odyssey ,::.
:c,
Moreover the blinding of their victims
paints them as more formidable enemies than the cannibal Polyphemus,
who leaves himself vulnerable to blinding. Their prisoners are degraded in
culinary terms too, animalised so that they eat the food of cows or sheep,
like the companions of Odysseus transformed to animals by Circe.
:c
The
apostle Matthias, however, breaks that pattern, being immune to the drug
and abstaining from the food, and so holding on to his human reason and
dignity.
That distinction between apostolic eating and the eating of the canni-
bals runs right through the rest of the work. One of its functions is simply
to sidestep the accusations of cannibalism commonly made against Chris-
tian communities by turning those accusations back against the apostles
pagan opponents. We hear that the cannibals prisoners are fattened for
thirty days before being slaughtered (each has a ticket tied to his right
hand to indicate the date of his arrival). When Matthias time of slaughter
is approaching, the apostle Andrew is sent to rescue him. There follows a
long description of his journey to Myrmidonia, together with his followers,
on a boat piloted by Jesus (in disguise) and his followers. Throughout that
episode Christian frugality is an important theme. For example Andrew
tells Jesus when they board the boat that they have no bread with them.
Jesus later instructs the angels to bring up three loaves from the hold and
offer themto the apostles, but they prefer not to eat: Brother, said Andrew,
may the Lord give you the heavenly bread from his kingdom. Leave them,
brother, for you see that the servants are disturbed because of the sea (;).
Here the metaphorical bread of heaven is viewed as more valuable than
literal bread, and the abstinence of the apostles is emphasised. Intrigu-
ingly, however, their failure to eat bread links them thematically with the
:c,
On echoes of the Polyphemus episode, both here and later, see MacDonald (:,,) o,, n. ::; and
see McGowan (:,,,) :,:, n. , on the way in which this passage draws on the ascetic connotations
of the bread-and-water eucharist, which is routinely contrasted in other texts with the wine and
sacricial meat of pagan debauchery.
:c
On echoes of the Circe episode, both here and later, see MacDonald (:,,), esp. ,c and ;,.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,:;
bread-shunning cannibals themselves, who similarly eat no bread, in a
way which prepares for the works later association of Christianity with
images of cannibalism. The point, perhaps, is that the apostles reasons for
refusing bread are utterly different from those of the cannibals. That said,
it is hard to avoid the feeling that some readers of this work might have
seen a note of humour in that detail, especially given that their abstinence
is motivated by seasickness rather than ascetic devotion.
Andrews actions when he arrives in the city similarly emphasise the
vast gulf between cannibalistic savagery and Christianity. First, he breaks
into the prison and rescues Matthias along with the other prisoners, telling
them to wait for him beneath a g tree on the edge of the city and to eat its
fruit. In that command divinely sanctioned eating replaces the animal food
of the prison.
:c,
And he caps that rescue with two other interventions in
the middle of the city. It is worth quoting these passages at length to bring
out their full horror. In the rst, when it is reported to the cannibals that
their prisoners have escaped they are anxious about what they will eat, and
they order the bodies of the seven guards from the prison, who dropped
dead on Andrews arrival, to be brought to the slaughter machine in the
middle of the city:
And there was an earthen oven built in the middle of the city, and next to it lay
a large trough where they used to slaughter the people, and their blood would
run into the trough, and they would draw up the blood and drink it. And they
brought the people and placed them on the trough. And at the moment when the
executioners raised their hands against them Andrew heard a voice saying, See,
Andrew, what is happening in this city. And Andrew looked and prayed to the
Lord . . . And immediately the swords fell from the executioners hands, and their
hands were turned to stone. (::)
The cannibals try again (their savagery seems so great that human esh is
the only thing they are able to eat):
What shall we do now? Go now, and gather up the elderly of the city, since
we are hungry. They went and gathered up all the old people of the city, and
found two hundred and seventeen. They brought them to the magistrates, who
made them cast lots, and the lots fell on seven old men. And in answer one of
those selected said to the attendants, I beg you! I have one small son; take him
and slaughter him in my place, and leave me alone . . . I also have a daughter in
:c,
The contrast between divinely approved and sacrilegious eating runs right through the work: in
AAMt :c, for example, Andrew gives an account told to Jesus, but still without knowing who
Jesus is of the gospel story of the feeding of the ve thousand; by contrast in :c he rebukes
the devil for turning the offspring of angels into cannibals (presumably an expansion of Genesis
o.:).
,: Saints and Symposiasts
addition to my son. Take them and slaughter them, only let me go. And he handed
over his children to the attendants for them to slaughter, and they dismissed him
unharmed . . . And it happened that as they brought them for slaughter, Andrew,
seeing what was happening, cried and weeping looked up to heaven, and said,
Lord Jesus Christ . . . I ask that the swords be loosened from the hands of the
executioners. Immediately the swords were loosened and fell from the hands of
the executioners like wax in re. (::,)
Here, then, we have a scene of averted death which is distantly related to the
thwarted execution scenes in the Greek and Roman novels, for example the
fake disembowelment of Leukippe in Achilles Tatius. Ultimately, however,
it is the differences which stand out: the instant, irresistible power of
divine intervention makes it clear to us, if we come to the text with Greco-
Roman ctional traditions in mind, that we are in a new and strange
world. The operations of that divine power reach their climax in the
extraordinary scenes of cleansing where the Myrmidonians are converted
from cannibalism to Christianity in the closing pages of the book: Andrew
is tortured by them, but endures; he calls down a great ood on the city
and plunges the executioners and the old man down into the abyss; and
then nally revives those who have died in the water and welcomes them
into the Christian community.
One might feel that the text wants to have it both ways, both con-
demning the monstrous appetite of the Myrmidonians and by extension
the barbarism of pagan culture as a whole
:co
while also slyly allowing
its readers to indulge their own appetites for sensationalistic, voyeuristic
entertainment.
:c;
Up to a point that must be right: the humour and sen-
sationalism of the AAA, one of the things they share with Greco-Roman
ction, must have been an important factor in engaging their original
readers. And yet it is striking that the text itself offers us a set of models for
how to look at the Myrmidonians which potentially prompt us to reect
on our own readerly appetites even as we indulge them. For the apostles
themselves tend to be strikingly lacking in voyeuristic or ethnographic
curiosity. We saw something of that in the Acts of Thomas, where Thomas
repeatedly keeps his eyes directed to the ground, and shows no interest in
:co
The sense that Myrmidonia embodies the vices of pagan society in monstrously exaggerated form is
particularly conspicuous at AAMt :o, where the devil complains that Andrew has disrupted normal
ritual observance, in terms which are reminiscent of pagan complaints against Christianity, and
thus suggest that the cannibalism of Myrmidonia might be taken to stand for pagan sacrice more
generally: you have made our temples into deserted houses so that no sacrices are conducted in
them for our pleasure (:o).
:c;
Huber-Rebenich (:,,,) :,: (referring to the later Latin version of the story) sees the function of
the cannibalism descriptions primarily in terms of entertainment.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,:,
engaging with those around him. Andrews reactions here are very similar.
The most striking example comes in ::: Andrew, having left the prison,
walked about through the city, and having seen in a certain street a pillar
with a bronze statue standing on it, he sat down behind that pillar in order
to see what would happen. Here we seem to have the apostle assuming the
pose of a curious onlooker, a voyeur or eavesdropper ready to gaze on the
unspeakable horrors which are about to unfold. But a closer look at the text
makes it clear that his gaze is much more disciplined and restricted than
that. The executioners lead out their prisoners and prepare to sacrice,
and then Andrew is prompted by the Lord to intervene, in the passage
already quoted above: And at the moment when the executioners raised
their hands against them Andrew heard a voice saying, See, Andrew, what
is happening in this city. And Andrew looked and prayed to the Lord.
Andrews gaze is not, it seems, an ethnographical or voyeuristic gaze after
all. For one thing there is no mention of the satisfaction or further arousal
of his curiosity. Not only that, but it is clear that his looking is beyond his
control: he looks only when he is prompted and allowed to look by the
Lords intervention; his looking is an entirely functional tool, dedicated
to the accomplishment of Gods will. Here the text seems to be asking
us whether we can look at these horrors in the same way as the apostle.
Can we put aside our novelistic, ethnographical curiosity and view with
apostolic eyes? Or is this a moment where we catch ourselves in the act of
voyeurism, unable to match Andrews more austere way of looking?
The sensationalism of its subject matter is not the only way in which
this text risks being contaminated by the practices it condemns. For one
thing Andrew himself, even as he rescues others from bodily degradation,
becomes vulnerable to it himself, in the lengthy scenes of torture before
his nal triumph. The Lord warns him immediately on his arrival in the
city of what he is to face: they will reveal to you many terrible insults and
they will impose tortures on you and they will scatter your esh on the
streets and alleyways of their city. And your blood will ow on the earth
like water (:). Those predictions are then carried out at hideous length
when he is captured after his intervention at the execution machine and
tortured, with the intention of sharing out his body as food once he has
died:
And tying a rope around his neck they dragged him through all the streets and
alleyways of the city, and while the blessed Andrew was being dragged, his esh
stuck in the ground and his blood owed on to the ground like water. When
evening came, they threw him into the prison having tied his hands behind him.
,:c Saints and Symposiasts
And he was exceedingly exhausted. When early morning came they brought him
out again and tying a rope around his neck they dragged him around, and again
his esh stuck in the ground and his blood owed. (:,o)
The torture continues for three days. Andrews body in the process is
exposed to the most horrifying public mutilation and humiliation. It is
represented, too, as a consumable substance, leaving shreds of esh on
the streets of the city and owing with blood like water. This is a classic
instance of the way in which the body of the Christian martyr is so often
associated with grotesque physicality. And as always one of the functions
of that association is to make strange the apostles body, preparing it for the
transformation which comes during the nal victory over death granted
by Gods intervention. In this case there is a very startling sign of that
estrangement of Andrews body at the end of the third day of torture:
Then a voice came to him speaking in Hebrew, Our Andrew, heaven
and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away. Pay attention,
therefore, and look behind you at what has happened to your fallen esh
and hair. And turning round Andrew saw that large fruit-bearing trees
had sprouted up (:).
Perhaps even more unsettling is the way in which the nal incorpora-
tion of the cannibals into the Christian community involves not so much
a cleansing of their earlier cannibalistic impulses, but rather redirection
and sanctication of them. For one thing, the water Andrew summons to
destroy the Myrmidonians itself has an anthropophagic quality: and the
water rose over the earth, and it was exceedingly bitter and it consumed
(nv sc:toicv) human esh (:,).
:c
Later the description of the moment
where the ground opens to plunge the worst of the offenders into the abyss
is described with precisely the imagery of drinking which had repeatedly
been used for the blood-drinking Myrmidonians: the earth opened and
drank down (sc:ttit) the water together with the old man; he was carried
down into the abyss together with the executioners (,:).
:c,
Here Andrew
seems to have taken on the esh-consuming powers of the cannibals, using
them for more righteous ends to bring about the cannibals destruction,
although those ends later turn out not to be righteous enough, when Jesus
informs him that even the men who have been plunged into the abyss
the executioners and the old man must eventually be revived and
:c
Cf. the same phrase in AAMt ,c.
:c,
Cf. very similar language in Acts of Philip :,,, discussed above, which may be imitating AAMt or
drawing on a common source.
Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts ,::
welcomed into the new Christian community (,,). That command forces
Andrew to face up to the fact that it is not only the cannibals powers which
Christianity is to incorporate, but also, perhaps even more shockingly, the
cannibals themselves, even the most vicious of them. Here the Christian
faith cannibalises the cannibals, welcoming the grotesque and the alien
into itself, incorporating it and transforming it.
Most startlingly of all, the new converts dependence on Andrew is itself
described several times through cannibalistic imagery. In ,:, when Andrew
proposes to leave them so that he can return to his disciples, they beg him
to stay longer: We beg you, stay with us for a few days, so that we might be
satiated by your spring (ctc, scptocutv :, o, tn,,), because we are
new converts (literally newly planted vtcqu:ci). And then in ,, Jesus
in his nal instructions to Andrew endorses their request: Andrew, why do
you depart leaving them fruitless (sptcu,) . . . ? Andrews sustenance of
them is not only literal, through the fruit of the tree which grows up from
his blood, but also metaphorical. And that use of cannibalistic metaphor is
surely there to remind us of the way in which Christianity welcomes its own
transgressive status, advertising its paradoxical ability to absorb and sanctify
and transform even the most degraded forms of human experience. Some
of these images for example the imagery of a spiritual source or spring,
spiritual fruit and spiritual satisfaction are admittedly fairly common
ones,
::c
but they take on special signicance here given the way in which
the language of glutting is linked with the cannibals earlier in the work.
The fruit grows directly from Andrews blood; the spring of Andrews
teaching parallels the rivers of blood which ow from the killing machine
and the source of the esh-devouring water which destroys the cannibals.
It is hard to suppress the grotesqueness of these images, their potential to
be contaminated by the horrors which have come before. The narrative
deliberately confronts us with that unsettling connection, as if to emphasise
the enormity of the paradox involved in Christian transformation of the
profane.
In summary: Greco-Roman narrative delights in exploring the involun-
tary contamination of high culture with degraded connotations through
its portrayal of eating and drinking. The AAA go much further than their
Greco-Roman counterparts in shutting out that association, presenting
the apostles as ascetic gures who stand utterly apart from the vices of
pagan society, and are immune to its dangers. At times, however, and
::c
See ATh o: for use of scptocutv and scptc, closely together.
,:: Saints and Symposiasts
paradoxically, they also go much further in welcoming humiliation and
grotesque physicality, as a way of advertising the transgressive, shocking
quality of the new Christian faith and the holiness of those who devote
themselves to it. In chapter :: we shall see some of the same concerns
resurface, albeit in rather different form, in the Christian hagiographical
writing of the fourth and fth centuries ce.
chapter 1 2
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography
introduction
Ascetic practices had always played an important role in the pre-
Constantinian church.
:
In the fourth and fth centuries ce,
:
however,
they underwent a rapid expansion within the Christian population, not
least through the foundation of monastic communities dedicated to ascetic
lifestyles of prayer and sexual abstinence and fasting.
,
In parallel with those
developments there was also an explosion of Christian hagiographical writ-
ing the writing of saints lives from the second half of the fourth century
ce, a genre which was to dominate European religious narrative for the
next thousand years or more, and whose ability to conjure up a fantasy
world of heroic and harsh devotion still has the capacity to astonish and
shock, and for some readers inspire, today. Here we nd gures whose ali-
enness to Greco-Roman sympotic culture is more extreme than any others
in the whole of ancient literature. They seem, for that reason, a tting
subject with which to end, standing as a nal reminder of Christianitys
capacity, at least in some of its manifestations, for radical rejection of the
Greco-Roman heritage.
Nevertheless, we shall also see that these texts have much in common
with the interest in transgressive or exotic feasting which was so widespread
in Greco-Roman literature. Often they use quite traditional imagery in
order to articulate the precariousness of ascetic virtue, which always had
:
E.g. Grimm (:,,o) oc:,o; Finn (:cc,), esp. ,,,; also above, chs. , and o.
:
It has often been suggested that asceticism developed to ll the gap once martyrdom was no longer
a possible route for the expression of Christian faith, after Constantine, although the dangers of
oversimplication in that view have now been widely acknowledged: see Markus (:,,c) ;c: for
nuanced discussion.
,
The bibliography on the developments of new understandings and institutions of asceticism is
now huge. Key works include (among very many others) Rousseau (:,;) and (:,,); Brown (:,)
(reissued as a second edition with additional introduction in :cc); Elm (:,,); Goehring (:,,,);
and for good introductory surveys, see Brown (:,,); Clark (:cc) oc;;; Finn (:cc,), esp. :cc,,;
Caner (:cc,); also Wimbush (:,,c) for an excellent collection of translated source texts.
,:,
,: Saints and Symposiasts
to face up to the risk of falling into sin and gluttony. They also show
a repeated interest in the way in which the social marginality and bodily
degradation of their saintly heroes could paradoxically become vehicles and
markers of holiness. In pursuing that latter topic the rest of this chapter
follows closely in the tracks of recent scholarship on the material turn in
early Christianity, in other words the new Christian interest in the physical
bodies of saints and holy men, particularly from the fourth century ce
onwards (although as we saw in the last chapter it has many precedents in
earlier centuries of Christian writing).

Nevertheless I aim to break some

new ground in surveying the way in which hagiographical fascination
with saintly bodies was often articulated through motifs of abnormal or
degraded consumption which stretch back to the sympotic, biographical
and ethnographic writing of Greco-Roman antiquity.
,
monasticism and marginality in the fourth
and fifth centuries ce
My interest in what follows, then, is not so much in the realities of ascetic
practice, but more in the imaginative universe which the hagiographical
texts of the late fourth and early fth centuries ce construct. My conclu-
sions are not conclusions about the real life of fourth- and fth-century
asceticism, but rather about the narrative patterns whereby the exotic,
marginal world of the ascetics was conjured up as a powerful fantasy for
early Christian readers. In that sense I am heavily inuenced by recent
scholarship which has similarly stressed the importance of understanding
the role of these texts as narratives, rather than straightforward reections
of actual events, within post-Constantinian culture.
o
I want to start, however, with a brief sketch of the changing realities of
asceticism, as far as we can reconstruct them. The narratives of the saints
lives may be unrealistic and idealised, but that is not to say that they were
completely unconnected with the lived experience of ascetic lifestyle in

See now Miller (:cc,), extending the conclusions reached in her earlier publications, many of which
are discussed in footnotes below; and see further discussion below of works specically on food and
fasting; also discussion of Perkins (:,,,) and (:cc,a) above, pp. :,,.
,
That issue has not, to my knowledge, received sustained treatment in earlier scholarship, although
the generic relationship between hagiography and Greco-Roman models has been much debated in
general terms: for recent discussion, see Rapp (:c:c), esp. ::c for further bibliography.
o
The works listed in n. ,, above, all include nuanced discussion of hagiographical texts as sources for
our understanding of ascetic practices, but there has also been a distinct strand of work focusing on
the texts in their role as imaginative, literary constructs rather than as evidence for ascetic reality: see
Cameron (:,,:).
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,:,
these centuries. The fantasy images of ascetic fasting which ll the saints
lives drew to some extent on actual practice and in turn inuenced and
inspired Christians in their own lives, if not always to literal imitation.
;
To be more specic, the self-marginalising quality of the heroes of the
saints lives both reected and in turn inuenced the realities of fourth-
and fth-century ascetic practice. It is fairly clear that the desire to stand
apart from the world was an important factor in the appeal of the ascetic
life, which in its more extreme manifestations offered a distinctive, inde-
pendent identity radically separated from the established structures of
Mediterranean society. That apartness must in itself have been a key factor
in the growing authority of the gure of the holy man post-Constantine.

Admittedly, Christian interest in abstinence and withdrawal from society

had much in common with both Jewish and Greco-Roman asceticism,
,
but
it was taken to much further extremes than either.
:c
Perhaps most signi-
cantly, sexual abstinence removed Christian ascetics from the conventional
ties of marriage (like Thekla in the AAA).
::
Habits of eating and fasting played a major role in that striving for
separateness.
::
Christian rejection of food and drink was clearly motivated
in part by the desire to renounce civilisation. Many ascetics seem to have
avoided meat diets, primarily because of the association between meat and
;
Hagiographical texts often make claims about their own capacity to inspire imitation: e.g. History
of the Monks in Egypt (HM) Prologue, : and ::. Augustine describes in Confessions .o.::, how
he was himself converted by hearing a story about two other men being converted by reading
the Life of Antony: see esp. Williams (:cc) :,; also Elliott (:,;) , (who argues that the
repetition of common narrative patterns of admirable behaviour in hagiography was a key factor
in its didacticism). See also above, p. :,:, on the protreptic quality of early Christian narrative
more generally, as discussed by Cameron (:,,:); and Rapp (:,,) on the process of spiritual
communication which joins the author and his audience in their participation in the sanctity of
the holy man or woman (,:).

See esp. Brown (:,;:); Rousseau (:,;). Many ascetics came into conict with the established church
precisely because of their authority: see (among others) Rapp (:cc,) :c,,. However, on monks
submitting to ordination, and in some cases leaving their retreats to act as bishops, see Sterk (:cc);
Rapp (:cc,) :,;,:.
,
See Grimm(:,,o), esp. :,,; Brown (:,,); McGowan (:,,,) o,o; Diamond (:cc), esp. ,,::c
on fasting in rabbinic culture; Finn (:cc,) ,,;.
:c
See Brown (:,) xvi: the sharp and dangerous avour of many Christian notions of sexual renun-
ciation, both in their personal and their social consequences, have been rendered tame and insipid,
through being explained away as no more than inert borrowings from a supposed pagan or Jewish
background.
::
The bibliography on female asceticism is now large: see Elm (:,,), including discussion of the
increasing, though debated, move towards segregation of male and female ascetic communities;
G. Clark (:,,,); E. Clark (:,) and (:,o).
::
All of the works listed in n. ,, above contain important discussion of fasting practices and attitudes
to fasting; and see also (among many others) Musurillo (:,,o); Elliott (:,;) :,;; Rousselle (:,)
:oc;; Shaw (:,,); also Dembinska (:,,) ,, for an attempt to reconstruct the diet of the
early monks.
,:o Saints and Symposiasts
civic celebration.
:,
Others did not eat bread or any other cooked food
because of its association with culture.
:
Human civilisation, which in
Greco-Roman literature was so often celebrated through culinary sophis-
tication, was rejected by the ascetic in favour of nature, or at least a
spiritualised version of nature.
:,
Solitary ascetics took a further step away
from civilisation by eating on their own. Admittedly celibacy, rather than
fasting, often seems to have been, at least in theory, the primary goal for
the ascetic. And yet the day-to-day challenge of hunger and thirst must
for many have been the biggest and most wearing pressure.
:o
The two
were anyway connected, given that fasting was widely thought to aid the
suppression of lust (an assumption which has a physiological basis: malnu-
trition tends to reduce sexual desire, and to inhibit the female menstrual
cycle).
:;
That said, the hagiographical image of fasting ascetics separated from
civilisation needs to be treated with some caution. We need to be aware of
the way in which hagiography could exaggerate, and the way in which it
could project an impression of uniformity on to a very complex reality. For
example, geographical difference was important. Monastic culture prolif-
erated rst of all in the deserts of Egypt, the setting for the majority of the
texts I examine in this chapter. However, it is all too easy, because of the
geographical bias of the texts, to underestimate the richness of asceticism
elsewhere in the Mediterranean world, especially in Syria,
:
Asia Minor,
:,
and Palestine.
:c
Each area had its own distinctive characteristics and local
pressures (although there was regular exchange and relatively easy travel
between, for example, Egyptian and Palestinian monastic communities).
::
More importantly for this chapter, not all ascetic practice was so blatantly
incompatible with the traditional lifestyle of the Greco-Roman elites as the
saints lives might lead us to believe. There was a wide range of different
models of ascetic community. For some, asceticism was indeed a solitary
pursuit: the early desert fathers enacted a rejection of the ties of city and
family. The most famous and revered gures from the saints lives were
:,
See Leyerle (:cc) :cc,; (:cc,) :,:o; also Shaw (:,,) :,; on the way in which Basil of Caesarea
links a meat-free diet with the vegetarian simplicity of life before the Fall.
:
See Elliott (:,;) :,c; and many examples discussed below.
:,
See Elliott (:,;) :,:,.
:o
See Brown (:,) ::; cf. Leyerle (:cc) ; on the way in which food was a particularly suitable
metaphor for all kinds of sin, because of the link between consumption and appetitiveness.
:;
See Corrington (:,,:); Grimm (:,,o) ::; also :o;: on that assumption in Jerome; Shaw (:,,)
:;::; Leyerle (:cc) ,,.
:
See V o obus (:,,); Brown (:,;:) :,:; Brock (:,;,); and see further below, pp. ,,:, for discussion
of Theodoret; and above, pp. ,c; on the Acts of Thomas as a source for early Syriac asceticism.
:,
See Elm (:,,) :::,; Silvas (:cc,) ,:,.
:c
See esp. Binns (:,,).
::
See Binns (:,,) :,o:; and below on the prologue of the HM.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,:;
solitary ascetics who were said to have performed extraordinary feats of self-
denial, which clearly did have at least some basis in reality. However, the
majority of desert ascetics lived in monastic communities,
::
which must in
some cases have provided economic security and stability, compared with
the precarious peasant life from which they had come: probably only a
minority of ascetics were highly educated men like Evagrius or Jerome, for
whom monasticism meant throwing aside the material comforts that came
with high social status. Even those who chose to live the lives of solitary
anchorites were often more involved in communal life than has often
been supposed.
:,
Very many others practised asceticism to various degrees
within village or urban contexts, for example within domestic communities
very different from the Pachomian model of large-scale, highly organised
monastic communities, as it arose in Egypt.
:
There are numerous examples
of preachers and writers with ascetic experience trying to forge a version
of ascetic practice which is compatible with the day-to-day urban lives of
their readers and congregations: for instance, that is a constant concern of
John Chrysostom.
:,
This range of models of ascetic community brought with it a wide variety
of different attitudes to the proper use of food and drink. Away from the
eye-catching superstars of ascetic virtue, many monastic communities seem
to have been less concerned with extreme deprivation, and interested in
a more balanced kind of frugality, acting out their self-discipline through
adherence to monastic rules, rather than through the extremes of fasting
for which the solitary saints were so renowned.
:o
Particularly important
evidence for that comes fromthe genre of monastic rules which proliferated
from the mid-fourth century ce onwards.
:;
These texts are not transparent
windows on to real life they too are in their own way idealised attempts
to project a particular image of ascetic lifestyle but they do take us at
::
See Chitty (:,oo); Rousseau (:,,).
:,
See Rousseau (:,;) ,,,; cf. Goehring (:,,:), who argues that the boundaries between solitary
and communal asceticism in Egypt were very uid.
:
On urban, domestic asceticism, see Goehring (:,,,) and (:,,o); Binns (:,,) on the monks of
Palestine, who were generally more involved in urban life than their Syrian and Egyptian counter-
parts; Sterk (:cc), e.g. :,o and c on Asia Minor; Silvas (:cc,) ;,,. Gregory of Nyssas Life
of Macrina is a key source, although there is some debate over whether it describes in any sense an
institutionalisation of ascetic practice: see Rousseau (:cc,).
:,
See Shaw (:,,) :,:, on his preaching against female gluttony; Hartney (:cc) ;, on his
criticisms of mixed male-female communities in the city; and above, pp. :,,, on Johns own
ascetic experience.
:o
See Leyerle (:cc), esp. ,,;.
:;
There are, of course, earlier precedents for regulating Christian consumption through written
instruction: see above, pp. :::,c on Clement and Paul and others.
,: Saints and Symposiasts
least a little closer to actual practice than the hagiographical writing of the
same period.
Of course, the rule texts do share many of the preoccupations I will dis-
cuss below for the saints lives. They are repeatedly interested in the danger
of falling into the sin of gluttony.
:
They draw attention to the separateness
of ascetic experience from the rest of the world in other ways too, in some
cases recommending habits deliberately far removed from non-ascetic con-
vivial behaviour.
:,
The obvious example of this for monastic commensality
is Pachomius Rules (especially Praecepta :,,,), which requires monks to
cover their faces and keep silence while eating, a move which utterly rejects
the traditions embedded in Mediterranean culture about meals as times for
the sharing of conversation and fellowship.
,c
Nevertheless the rules tend to be more understated than the saints lives
in their description of fasting behaviour, treating it in less sensationalistic
fashion in order to project an impression of the condence and calm
control over appetite, adapted to the different bodily and spiritual needs of
each individual, which comes from ascetic experience.
,:
Their avoidance of
sensationalism is also due to the fact that many of the rule authors have an
acute awareness of the dangers of excessive abstinence, with its capacity to
lead to spiritual pride, as one of the great practical problems of day-to-day
life in a monastic community.
,:
That problem is not entirely ignored in
:
See Shaw (:,,) :,,, and Sinkewicz (:cc,) xxvi on Evagrius; also John Cassian, esp. Institutes
,, with Leyser (:ccc) ,,c on Cassians conviction (unlike Augustine) that the sin of gluttony
was the cause of the Fall, and his greater urgency on questions of diet; and Conferences :.: for a
cautionary tale (cf. further discussion below on cautionary tales in collective hagiography).
:,
For a good example of monastic commensality portrayed as incongruous with the usual standards of
elite dining culture, see Basil of Caesarea, Asketikon, Longer Rules ::, entitled When the time comes
what should we observe concerning sitting and reclining?, a topic which has overlaps with debate
over proper seating arrangements in the Greco-Roman sympotic questions tradition. The answer
Basil gives that we should always seek to recline in the lowest seat out of humility, although we
should not jostle each other aside in trying to get to it rst, echoing Luke :.;:: self-consciously
overturns (much more radically so than Plutarch, QC :.: and SSC ,, discussed above, p. o) the
common assumption in pagan feasting literature about competition for the best place at table.
,c
See Rousseau (:,,) ,; Rousseau also stresses, however, both there and at ::c, the relative leniency
of the Pachomian diet; moreover, it seems likely that the accounts of Pachomian mealtimes which
survive from hagiographical sources exaggerate their exoticism: see esp. p. ,o below on HM ,.
,:
For a good example of the understated (and, by the standards of some of the anchorites of the saints
lives, permissive) character of some of these instructions, see the Rule of Saint Augustine ,.: (see
Lawless (:,;) ,): Subdue your esh by fasting and abstinence from food and drink, as far as your
health permits. But when someone is unable to fast, let him at least take no food between meals,
except when he is sick.
,:
John Cassian is again a good example: his vehement concern with stamping out gluttony is tempered
by insistence that each individual must fast in his or her own way (e.g. Inst. ,.,) and by denunciations
of excessive fasting (e.g. Inst. ,., and Conf. :.:;; and cf. Casiday (:cco) :::: on the theological
basis for those worries). For Evagrius, see Shaw (:,,) ::,. For good discussion of similar issues for
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,:,
the saints lives, as we shall see, but it does not stop the hagiographers from
portraying, often in largely admiring terms, gures whose devotion goes
to life-threatening extremes. For the rule writers, concerned with practical
recommendations for daily life rather than mythicising narrative, that kind
of excessive behaviour needs to be carefully constrained and unequivocally
condemned.
dietary characterisation in early christian hagiography
How do these preoccupations translate into the more sensationalistic tex-
ture of early Christian hagiographical writing?
The genre originates with the Life of Antony, written in Greek by Athana-
sius, probably in the late ,,cs ce or perhaps early ,ocs, soon after Antonys
death after many years of ascetic life in Egypt. It has a good claim to
being one of the most inuential of all texts of classical antiquity, repeat-
edly alluded to in later hagiographical writing.
,,
Early imitators included
Jerome, in his Life of Paul of Thebes, Life of Hilarion and Life of Malchus,
which were published separately over several decades. Many other lives
followed along similar lines as the fth century ce went on. At the same
time, observers began to collect stories of the sayings of famous fourth-
and fth-century ascetics, which now survive in a collection known as the
Apophthegmata Patrum(Sayings of the Fathers).
,
And then in the late fourth
and early fth centuries ce we see the origin of collective ascetic biographies
which combine those two different strands, treating the lives of different
ascetics in turn: most notably the anonymous History of the Monks in Egypt
(HM), dating perhaps to the early years of the fth century;
,,
Palladius
Lausiac History (LH),
,o
written probably around :c; and also Theodorets
slightly later Religious History (RH),
,;
on the lives of Syrian ascetics (unlike
all of the other texts just mentioned, which relate to Egypt), written proba-
bly in the cs. All three of these texts were written in Greek, but the genre
Basil of Caesarea, see Silvas (:cc,) :,,:, who discusses the way in which the Asketikon is inuenced
by the Council of Gangra, which pronounced against the movement towards excessive asceticism
led by Eustathius of Sebasteia; also Finn (:cc,) :::, and Silvas (:cc,) o, on Basils move from
advocacy of solitary asceticism towards a more moderate, community-based model in the decade
leading up to the publication of the Asketikon.
,,
See esp. Bartelink (:,,) o;c; Williams (:cc).
,
For introduction, see Burton-Christie (:,,,) ;o:c, and Harmless (:cc) :o;:;,, esp. :;o; on
food and fasting; also Gould (:,,,).
,,
For text and translation see below, p. ,,, n. .
,o
Text in Butler (:,c); translation in Meyer (:,o,), with helpful discussion of the difculties of
reconstructing the original text in :.
,;
Text in Canivet and Leroy-Molinghen (:,;;,); translation in Price (:,,).
,,c Saints and Symposiasts
came to inuence western monasticism through Latin translations (for
example through Runus translation of the History of the Monks in Egypt).
One of the distinctive, shared features of these collective hagiographies
is their combination of biography with travel writing, discussed further
below for the History of the Monks in Egypt, although the travel element
tends to drop away in later examples, and even by the time of Theodoret
is coming to have less importance.
,
It is important to stress, nally, that
these traditions of collective hagiography also ow out into other kinds
of ascetic writing. For example, John Cassian grafts brief vignettes of his
own travels to meet the monks of Egypt on to his rule-writing, in ways
which make it clear that the boundaries between the genres of rule and
hagiography were not absolute.
,,
The single most important technique all of these texts use for mark-
ing out the oddity and alienness of their subjects is the motif of dietary
characterisation, in other words the technique of including a brief sum-
mary often only a sentence or two of the ascetics eating and drinking
habits. This has much in common with the techniques of biographical
characterisation we saw for Diogenes Laertius and others in chapter ,:
generally speaking, with some exceptions, Greco-Roman biography is a
more important reference-point for the saints lives than the Greco-Roman
novels, in contrast with what we have seen for the Apocryphal Acts.
c
However, the varieties of rigorous ascetic discipline described through this
technique tend to go far beyond the (more moderate) abstinence valued
within Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, and indeed within Jewish
ascetic practice and Jewish narrative.
:
In that sense they help to paint the
Christian saints as startlingly new and peculiar gures even as they conform
to Greco-Roman biographical frameworks.
,
See Frank (:ccc) ::.
,,
See Conferences .: for a good example of the way in which Cassian, like the authors I examine below,
stresses the alienness of monastic fasting and feasting by the standards of urban, elite commensality
in describing the frugal hospitality of Abba Serenus.
c
However, see below on Jeromes use of Apuleius; and for discussion of the relation between novels
and hagiography more generally, see Clark (:,) :,,;c and Perkins (:,,,) :cc:; also Morales
and Leclerc (:cc;) ,,;: for discussion of both Greco-Roman biography and the novel in relation
to Jeromes Lives.
:
On the relatively moderate character of Jewish fasting, see Lowy (:,,); Grimm (:,,o) :,,;
MacDonald (:cc) :c,:c and ::,:. However Diamond (:cc), esp. o:;, warns against the way
in which arguments about the relative laxity of Jewish fasting traditions have been used to denigrate
Jewish practice. There are also plenty of exceptions: e.g. Grimm (:,,o) :o on rabbis fasting till their
teeth were blackened; Weingarten (:cc,) :;, for comparison of Jeromes Life of Paul with the
Talmudic narratives of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, who similarly lived in a cave on a meagre diet;
also Philos account of the Therapeutai, discussed above, pp. :,,o (as Merrills (:cc) :: makes
clear, Eusebius, writing in the fourth century ce, chose to appropriate the Therapeutais asceticism
by representing them as Christian).
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,:
These techniques of dietary characterisation are also kept separate from
classical models through being overlaid with typological reminiscences of
the scriptures, repeating patterns of behaviour familiar from Old and New
Testament models, especially from the life of Jesus (the ultimate model
for all Christian fasting and food miracles), and from the lives of earlier
monastic heroes, especially Antony.
:
Typological styles of characterisation
have special signicance for the eating and fasting descriptions of these
texts, which rewrite assumptions, shared in common across Mediterranean
culture, about the way in which dining creates continuity and community
between past and present. Like the symposiasts of Plutarch and Athenaeus,
the Christian ascetics as they are presented in the saints lives act out their
connection with the people and the texts of the past, but the role models
and quotations which matter for them are scriptural, not philosophical
ones.
I want to look rst at the Life of Antony, partly just because of its paradig-
matic status for later hagiographers.
,
It offers a relatively straightforward
version of these strategies of dietary characterisation. The view of Antonys
fasting it projects reects Athanasius theologically sophisticated vision of
Christian devotion, focused particularly on the question of how to manage
the relationship between body and soul.

We hear that Antony, even in his

youth did not badger his parents for varied and costly food nor did he seek
the pleasures which it brings; he was satised with what he received and
did not seek more (Life of Antony :.,).
,
Later, when he begins to devote
himself to an ascetic lifestyle, we hear that he used to eat once a day after
sunset, sometimes once every two days, and often even once every four.
And his food was bread and salt, and his drink only water (;.o). Later
still, Athanasius tells us, Antony lived for many years in a deserted fort,
surviving on six months supply of bread at a time, and without saying a
word to his suppliers when they passed the bread through the roof (::.,,).
By comparison with the extraordinary, attention-seeking practices which
some later hagiographers record, these practices are relatively subdued.
:
See Coon (:,,;) ::;; Krueger (:cc) :,,: (a later version of Krueger (:,,;)); Williams (:cc)
::; also Miller (:ccc) (esp. :,c, on the History of the Monks in Egypt) on the way in which this
technique produces a sense of sameness in the repeated stories of the collective hagiographies, very
different from the urge to differentiate which is a standard feature of the Greco-Roman collective
biographies.
,
Text by Bartelink (:,,); for translation (based on Evagrius Latin version) see C. White (:,,).

See Brakke (:,,,) :o, on Athanasius discussion of fasting in his other works, and :,c, on food
in the Life of Antony; and for summary of debates about the authorship of the work, see Bartelink
(:,,) :;,,; Rousseau (:ccc) :cc.
,
For other similar accounts of ascetics in childhood, see the First Greek Life of Pachomius , (where
Pachomius parents give him wine from the libations to pagan gods and he vomits it up) and ,, for
Pachomius successor Theodores rejection of his familys luxurious dining.
,,: Saints and Symposiasts
Even so, Antony appears as an anti-social, entirely unconvivial character,
eating alone and depriving himself of conversation. Athanasius clearly had
a wide familiarity with classical literature, and it seems likely that one of
his aims is not only to present Antony as an imitator of various scriptural
models of asceticism (especially the prophet Elijah and Jesus tempted by
the devil),
o
but also to trump the claims to holiness of pagan ascetics and
philosophers.
;
Theodorets Religious History, written three-quarters of a century later, is
similarly full of this kind of dietary characterisation: nearly all of his thirty
chapters contain some material along these lines. Take, for example, the
ascetic Sabinos, disciple of Markianos:
He did not eat bread nor any cooked food, but his food was wheat-meal soaked
in water. He used to mix together all his food for the month in such a way that
it rotted and emitted a great stench. For he wanted the appearance of this kind of
food to blunt the appetites of his body, and to quench pleasure by the stench of
the food. (,.::)
The rst detail here, about Sabinos refusal of cooking, is typical of the
ascetics in this text and others, but the details of the rotting vegetables in
the second half act as a trademark, separating Sabinos from the practice of
his ascetic colleagues, while also marking out the grotesque extremity of his
moderation by the standards of Greco-Roman philosophical behaviour.
Typical, also, though in a different, less repulsive fashion, is the gure
of Abraham in RH :;:
This admirable man did not take bread during his time as bishop, nor pulses, nor
vegetables which had come into contact with re, nor even water . . . but instead
he used lettuce, endive, celery, and all the other plants of that type as both food
and drink, showing that the professions of baker and cook are superuous . . . Even
as he wore down his body with labours of this kind he devoted abundant care
to others. For strangers who came to visit him a bed was ready, and shining
loaves of the highest quality were brought out and wine redolent of owers (cvc,
vcouic,) and sh and vegetables and all the other things one would expect
with these foods. And he himself at midday sat together with the feasters, offering
portions to each of them from the food lying before them, and passing cups to
all of them and encouraging them to drink, and imitating his namesake, I mean
the Patriarch [i.e. Abraham in Genesis :.], who served his guests but did not eat
with them. (RH :;.o;)
o
See Bartelink (:,,) ,,; Williams (:cc) :c,:.
;
See Clark (:ccc) ,;; Harmless (:cc) o,;; that said, it is important to stress that we are
not invited to imagine Antony himself reacting self-consciously against those models, since he is
presented in the work as an uneducated gure: see Rubenson (:ccc), esp. ::,:,.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,,
Here Abraham exhibits the traditional biographical virtue of moderation,
but takes it to a distinctively Christian extreme, not least, again, through the
avoidance of cooking. He also exhibits the virtue of hospitality, described in
language which recalls the Greco-Roman discourse of luxurious dining, for
example in the phrase wine redolent of owers (cvc, vcouic,) which
has a distinguished past in the sympotic literature of archaic and classical
Greece,

and which paints him here as a gourmand, a man of taste. At the

same time, of course, Theodoret also makes clear, by Abrahams abstention,
his vast distance from elite norms of conviviality and luxury even as he pays
lip service to them. And his reference to the patriarch Abraham is a good
example of the way in which eating (and not eating) in this text allows
Theodorets ascetics to act out an ideal of community with the great gures
of the biblical past.
,
For the most part these dietary details are included for the purpose of
characterising the ascetic subjects in admiring terms, as icons of virtue, even
while they acknowledge their oddity and exceptionality by normal stan-
dards. They are not always, however, unequivocally positive. One common
strategy is to describe ascetics who have fallen into sin through succumb-
ing to the temptations of gluttony and pride. A good example comes in
Palladius LH :o, on the failed monk Heron. Initially, we hear, he was
excessively abstemious in his way of life, so that many of those who knew
him well reported that often he ate only every three months, being satised
with the fellowship of the mysteries and with any wild herbs that might
turn up (:o.:). Later, however, he went to Alexandria and fell willingly
into a state of indifference. There he
went to the theatre and circuses and spent his time in the taverns. And so,
through eating gluttonously and drinking immoderately (,co:piucp,cv sci
civcqu,cv) he fell into the lth of womanish desire. And when he was resolving
to sin, having met a mime-actress he discussed with her the way in which he had
been wounded by desire. After these things had been done, a pustule grew on his
genitals, and he was so ill, for six months, that his private parts rotted and fell
off. (:o.,)
Later, Palladius tells us, he repented and confessed.
,c
Particularly telling
here is the characteristic ascetic assumption that gluttony brings sexual

Good examples include Aristophanes, Wealth c; and Lucian, Saturnalia ::; and on Theodorets
classical education, and the classical character of his writing, see Urbainczyk (:cc:) ::,, with
further bibliography.
,
See Krueger (:cc) :,,: on Theodorets unusually explicit use of typological reference; and for
another good example of fasting habits in imitation of biblical gures, see RH :,.;.
,c
For other examples of failed monks who pull back from the brink, see HM :.,,; also the First
Greek Life of Pachomius ,,, where Pachomius weeps for his two companions, who have eaten cheese,
gs and olives greedily, and so brings them back to an abstinent lifestyle.
,, Saints and Symposiasts
desire in its wake. Striking, too, is Palladius choice of vocabulary: the vices
of ,co:piucp,ic (gluttony) and civcqu,ic (drunkenness) have a long
pedigree, stretching right back to the literature of classical Athens, with the
result that Herons fault is represented as a fall back into the traditional
vices of pagan society. Similarly in LH :; we hear of a monk called Ptolemy
who lived for :, years on dew, collected with a sponge every winter, and
whose isolation eventually drove him into sinful behaviour, and who is
described by Palladius wandering about in Egypt even today, having given
himself up as a prisoner to gluttony and drunkenness (,co:piucp,i sci
civcqu,i), having no companionship with anyone.
,:
The motif of virtue at risk has a number of different attractions. It is
prevalent partly because hagiographical writers felt compelled to avoid the
blasphemous implication of their subjects perfection;
,:
also because any
plausible and inspiring portrayal of abstinence from desire required the
presence of appetite in the rst place.
,,
Above all, however, it reects an
awareness of the difculty of ascetic practice, especially in more extreme
forms.
,
That risk came partly from the paradoxical fact that release from
the body often required close attention to it.
,,
In addition many hagiog-
raphers show an awareness of how difcult it is for their subjects to please
everyone. Asceticism was always a matter of debate, and vehement denun-
ciation of rivals and rival interpretations was common.
,o
One contributing
factor must have been anxiety about the difculty of spotting impostors. A
particularly vivid example comes in the late fourth- and early fth-century
writings of the Egyptian writer Nilus of Ancyra where he denounces wan-
dering monks as gluttonous parasites pestering the rich men of the city:
they hang around the doors of the rich no less than parasites. They run
next to them through the marketplaces like slaves . . . These things they do
because of the poverty of their tables, not having learnt to suppress the
pleasure they take in gluttonous meals (Nilus, De monastica exercitatione
; PG ;,.;:cd).
,;
We nd similar accusations of gluttony made regularly
,:
See Caner (:cc:) .
,:
See Miller (:ccc) :,,, with reference to the HM.
,,
See Harpham (:,;) ,oo; Leyerle (:cc) ,;, :::.
,
Cf. Wyschogrod (:,,c) :, on the way in which hagiography always depicts lives lived forward, i.e.
reputations in the making, rather than ready-made, forged from individual struggle and imperfec-
tion; cf. Miller (:ccc) :,, for a similar point in relation to the HM.
,,
See Shaw (:,,) :,o.
,o
See Caner (:cc:), esp. :,:c, on the accusations made against wandering monks; Gleason (:,,)
on the care taken by ascetics to preserve their reputations; and see also above, n. on conict
between ascetics and church institutions, with Wyschogrod (:,,c) ::::.
,;
See Caner (:cc:) :;;,c, including good discussion of the likely dependence of Nilus language on
Greco-Roman satire.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,,
in hagiographical writing even against gures who hardly seem to deserve
them. For example, Publius, in Theodoret, RH ,, ercely polices his col-
leagues ascetic disciplines: They say that he even carried a set of scales
and tested out accurately the weight of the bread, and that if he ever found
more than the allowed amount, he would get angry and accuse those who
did this of being gluttons (,co:piup,cu,) (,.,). Other monks accuse
themselves of gluttony in similar terms.
,
Conversely, some ascetics are tainted by the suspicion of excessive fasting,
falling onthe other side of the ascetic tightrope, showing too muchdevotion
rather than too little. Admittedly the danger of ascetic excess is not always
a prominent theme. Palladius goes out of his way to avoid sensationalistic
accounts of ascetic achievement, in line with his disapproving attitude to
excessive fasting, outlined in his preface: for drinking wine with reason is
better than drinking water out of vanity (LH, prologue :c).
,,
Theodoret
too, on the whole, avoids portraying the more sensationalistic extremes
of fasting practice.
oc
Even in the work of these two authors, however,
there are exceptions, where certain individuals are open to criticism for
having gone too far.
o:
The examples already quoted from Palladius the
lives of Heron and Ptolemy are clearly intended as cautionary tales
against excessive fasting and excessive isolation, which can themselves lead
to sin, since both of these monks are unusually and extravagantly self-
disciplined before they go wrong. Moreover, denunciation of excess does
not always take place within the context of describing failed monks. It
has been suggested, for example, that Theodorets portrayal of the famous
stylite Symeon is intentionally disapproving of his excessive qualities, which
involved, among other things, almost starving himself to death several times
during his youth.
o:
,
E.g. Markianos in Theodoret, RH ,.::, who describes himself as a tavernkeeper and a proigate;
Makarios of Alexandria in Palladius, LH :.:o; and Palladius of himself in LH ,,.:c.
,,
Cf. LH ;:.: for Palladius portrayal of himself, claiming that he has never eaten with desire nor
fasted from desire.
oc
This may be partly because it is a high priority for Theodoret to emphasise his own involvement
with, and inuence over, the Syrian ascetics, in order to enhance his own authority; in that sense
he stands apart from the more exoticising portrayals in Palladius and the HM, whose narrators,
as we shall see, represent themselves as outsiders to an exotic culture: see Frank (:,,) and
Urbainczyk (:cc:), esp. ,,:. Cf. Cameron (:,,,a) :,, who suggests that Theodoret to some
extent normalises his Syrian subjects by describing them within a Greek biographical framework.
Brock (:,;,) :c:,, however, stresses the oddity and the distinctively Syrian quality of Symeon and
the other Syrian ascetics as described by Theodoret and others.
o:
See Frank (:ccc) o: on Palladius.
o:
See esp. RH :o., (where Symeon quarrels with his superiors over his fasting habits) and :o.; where
he fasts for c days and nearly dies; and see Urbainczyk (:cc:) ,,:c: on elements of disapproval
in Theodorets portrait of Symeon.
,,o Saints and Symposiasts
Ascetic virtue is thus frequently represented as a precarious thing. Failure
is vehemently deprecated and deplored, but also represented as an inevitable
risk. In some cases, however, it even seems to be the case that hagiographers
deliberately welcome negative imagery, recognising the way in which the
excessive devotions of the most sensationalistic ascetics can be a source of
charisma and authority as well as a problem. As is so often the case in
early Christian narrative, the saints lives portray degradation and holiness
as closely entwined, aunting their own capacity to rehabilitate negative
stereotypes and imbue them with sacred power. Here, once again, Geoffrey
Harphams conception of the grotesque is a useful one: the grotesque, on
his account, is dened by its paradoxical combination of incompatible
elements which between them often have the potential to open up new
spaces for the imagination.
o,
These texts, like the Apocryphal Acts but even
more vigorously, aunt Christianitys capacity to embrace and transcend
paradox, to take on negative images and reappropriate them, aunting
their own ability to do so without contamination, and using them to open
up new images and ideals to the imagination. Christian asceticism was
subversive,
o
and the hagiographers of great ascetics do not try to hide
that fact; instead, at least in some cases, they advertise it and welcome it.
That paradox is often articulated through images which in Greco-Roman
narrative stand for social degradation. Where the Greek novel gives us
idealised heroes and heroines whose elite dignity and physical beauty is
compromised only slyly and obliquely, the saints lives welcome dirt and
suffering and disgurement, as Judith Perkins has stressed.
o,
Susan Harvey
has examined the sense of smell in early hagiography and other Christian
literature, stressing the way in which grotesque bodily sensation the
unwashed saint, the sore-covered body and the fasters breath is not
denied within asceticism, but rather embraced and reinterpreted as a sign
of spiritual health.
oo
Sabinos rotten vegetables in Theodoret RH ,.:: are a
case in point.
Those phenomena are perhaps clearest of all in the case of the so-called
Holy Fools, individuals who voluntarily took on the most degraded social
o,
See discussion above, esp. p. :o; cf. Jasper (:cc), esp. ,: on the way in which early hagiography
struggles to express the inexpressible.
o
Cf. Francis (:,,,) for the subversive position of asceticism within Greco-Roman culture.
o,
Perkins (:,,,), esp. :c:,; see also Miller (:,,) on the way in which emaciated and mutilated
ascetic bodies, fundamentally changed by fasting, were paradoxically viewed at the same time as
angelic bodies thanks to their alienness to normal bodily form; and Miller (:cc) on the way in
which hagiography represents saintly bodies as both ephemeral and tangible at the same time in
order to articulate a sense of how the holy can be present in the world in a non-idolatrous way.
oo
Harvey (:cco).
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,;
position, living as beggars and inviting abuse through behaviour which
ostentatiously violates social convention, behaviour which is closely remi-
niscent of Diogenes and his Cynic followers.
o;
Even these most degraded
and parasitical of gures paradoxically represent the glories of Christian
self-abasement. It is a genre which mainly comes into its own in later cen-
turies, but it has a powerful precursor in the story of the nun who feigns
madness in Palladius, LH ,, following the direction of : Cor. ,.:: If any
one seem to be wise among you by the standards of this age, let him become
foolish among you that he may be wise:
She tied a rag to her head all the rest are tonsured and wear cowls and served
with that appearance. None of the cc sisters ever saw her chewing during the
years of her life. She never sat at table, nor took a fragment of bread as her share,
but wiping up the crumbs from the tables and washing up the pots, she was
satised with what she got in this way. (LH ,.::)
She is a degraded gure, even in the eyes of her fellow nuns, who abuse her
physically, in the manner of the parasites of classical comedy:
o
they later
confess, one that she had poured the washing-up water from a plate over
her; another that she had hurt her with her knuckles; another that she had
blistered her nose with mustard (,.;). When the monk Piteroum visits,
however, he recognises her sanctity and compels the other nuns to respect
her, much to their surprise.
o,
Parasitical degradation becomes here a sign
of sanctity.
Elsewhere the motif of the ascetic as an animal gure, foraging and eating
uncooked food, plays an important role in articulating Christian ascetic
transgressiveness and liminality.
;c
There is a particularly strong strand of
animal imagery in the Syrian tradition,
;:
but it also permeates the whole of
hagiographical literature, and resurfaces repeatedly in the Greek collective
hagiographical texts. As we have seen already, the common motif of the
ascetic eating raw food only underlines his or her place outside civilisation.
In some cases the animalisation of the ascetic is taken to further extremes. In
o;
See Krueger (:,,ob) on the seventh-century life of the Holy Fool Symeon, incl. ;::c; on Leontius
use of Diogenes as a model for Symeon.
o
Cf. Alciphron, Letters, esp. ,.: and ,.:, for parasites who have water and leftover food poured over
them, discussed above, pp. :,o.
o,
See Vogt (:,;) for detailed analysis, including the suggestion (:c,) that Palladius is using this
narrative to bolster his own conception of ascetic authority outside ecclesiastical hierarchies.
;c
See Elliott (:,;) :o;c; also Miller (:,,o) on the gure of the centaur in Jeromes Life of Paul of
Thebes as a gure for the wildness central to ascetic identity.
;:
See Caner (:cc:) ,c:; Kleinberg (:cc) :::, with reference to Amars (:,,c) translation of a
Homily by the Holy Mar Ephrem On Hermits and Desert Dwellers.
,, Saints and Symposiasts
Palladius, LH :, for example, we hear of Makarios of Alexandria suckling
from an antelope.
One other area, nally, where this transgressive association with the
grotesque and degraded is particularly obvious is in the subgenre of the
lives of female harlot saints, whose early life as prostitutes is later replaced
by ascetic devotion, recently studied by Virginia Burrus and Patricia Cox
Miller (the latter drawing on Harphams discussion of the grotesque).
;:
The
transgressiveness of these gures, they suggest, is precisely the point: it is
not the case that their earlier depravity is simply wiped clean and negated at
the moment of their conversion, but rather that it is somehow incorporated
into their future selves, making theminto gures who hold together features
which ought otherwise to be incongruous with each other. For Miller, it
is the paradoxical idea of the holy woman that they above all seek to
give expression to: the gure of the harlot-saint is a grotesquerie a not-
quite coherent construct and as such brings to its most acute expression
the problematic quality of early Christian attempts to construct an image
of female holiness.
;,
The Life of Maria Meretrix (Maria the Prostitute),
probably dating from the mid-to-late fth century ce, originally written in
Syriac and later translated into Latin, offers a wonderful, quasi-sympotic
example.
;
Maria lives with her uncle the hermit Abraham in chastity for
twenty years before being seduced by a monk and leaving home. After two
years of searching, Abraham tracks her down in a brothel and poses as a
client to rescue her. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that he plays his role
rather too well, rst dining with her and then retiring to the bedroom:
And so while they were sitting and drinking, this amazing man began to
fondle her; and she got up and put her arms around his neck and began
to caress it with her lips (;; PL ;,.o,,d). It is only after they have eaten,
when he is sitting on her bed, having asked her to bar the door, and when
Maria has offered to remove his clothes, that he nally reveals his identity.
As Alison Elliott rightly states, the authors exploitation of a horizon of
expectation set up by secular romances is clear in this account.
;,
The
point, however, is not simply that one of the functions of hagiography was
to provide entertainment, and that a good deal of disguised salaciousness
slips through under the cloak of edication,
;o
but also that the text is
deliberately testing the boundaries of propriety, experimenting with the
;:
Burrus (:cc); Miller (:cc,).
;,
Miller (:cc,) ,c:.
;
For Latin text (which I follow here) see PL ;,.o,:oc; for English translation and introduction,
see Ward (:,;) ,:c:; for translation of the Syriac text with introduction, see Brock and Harvey
(:,;) :;,,, esp. :; for dating; and for discussion, see Elliott (:,;) ::;,c; Burrus (:cc) :,:;.
;,
Elliott (:,;) :,c.
;o
Elliott (:,;) ::, n. o:.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,,
idea that sanctity can be manifested paradoxically within a situation of
debasement and temptation, and aunting the capacity of its saint to
emerge from the encounter intact and enhanced:
In his fty years of abstinence he did not taste bread, but now without hesitation
he chewed meat in order to save a lost soul. The choir of holy angels, rejoicing at
the discrimination of this blessed man, was greatly stunned, because eagerly and
without doubting he chewed and drank, in order that he might pull up a soul
sunk in the mire! (;; PL ;,.o,ob)
the lives of jerome
Early Christian hagiography thus shares a considerable amount of common
ground with the discourse of food and the symposiumin classical literature,
despite its determination to mark out the separateness of Christian eating
habits. Christian ascetics are repeatedly characterised in dietary terms
praised for their moderation, or marked out by their eccentricity in
much the same way as the subjects of Greco-Roman biography. At the same
time, however, they are also described surprisingly often with precisely the
kind of language which is usually attached to parasites and other kinds of
gluttonous and degraded diners in the sympotic tradition.
In the second half of this chapter I want to illustrate those phenomena
further by giving close attention to two other collections of saints lives
which were inuential in the early development of hagiographical writing.
The rst of those collections is the Lives of Jerome.
;;
The earliest of
them is the Life of Paul of Thebes, the rst saints life written originally
in Latin, composed probably in the late ,;cs ce. It is clearly meant as a
response to the Life of Antony, which had been translated into Latin in
two separate versions. The Life of Antony represents Antony as the rst
ascetic, but Jerome attempts to outdo that claim, representing Paul (Life
of Paul of Thebes ) as a gure who was older than Antony and had fasted
in the desert for longer. The work describes the meeting between Paul and
Antony in the nal days of Pauls life (Paul being aged ::,, and Antony ,c).
Like the Life of Antony, Jeromes Lives present their subjects against the
background of a rich range of paradigms drawn from Jewish and Greco-
Roman (especially Latin) literature, which he knewwell.
;
Like Athanasius,
;;
Text from Morales and Leclerc (:cc;); for translation see C. White (:,,).
;
See esp. Weingarten (:cc,), discussed further below; and on Jeromes classical education more
generally, see Kelly (:,;,) :c:;. It is important to stress, however, that Jeromes knowledge of Greek
literature came relatively late in life, not as part of his school education, and seems to have been
focused above all on Christian works and pagan philosophical works: see Kelly (:,;,) :,:, :; and
,c Saints and Symposiasts
Jerome was probably writing primarily with an educated, urban audience
in mind.
;,
Given Jeromes aim of outdoing Athanasius it is no surprise that he
develops the technique of dietary characterisation in new directions. Nev-
ertheless it is important to stress that Jeromes portrayal of Pauls asceticism
is still relatively muted and unsensationalistic compared with what we
nd in later hagiographies. Pauls frugality, like Antonys, is represented as
admirable, but not excessive. Early on in the work Jerome tells us that Paul
lived by a palm tree which gave him food and clothing. He then reassures
his readers about the feasibility of that claim: in that part of the desert close
to Syria and bordering on the territory of the Saracens, I attest that I myself
have seen monks (and I see them still), one of whom has been enclosed
now for thirty years, and lives on barley bread and muddy water. Another,
who lives in an old water tank . . . is sustained on ve gs a day (Life of
Paul of Thebes o.:). Here Paul is linked by Jerome with the ascetic culture
of prodigious feats of endurance, although Pauls own self-denial seems
to be relatively muted by comparison with these other ascetics. Jeromes
caution about avoiding an impression of extravagant fasting for Paul may
be a reection of his own involvement in bad-tempered contemporary con-
troversies about (among many other things) the proper balance between
ascetic moderation and excess.
c
However, the oddity of Pauls relationship with food and with the tra-
ditions of the literary symposium comes more fully into view later in
the work, when Antony visits Paul in his retreat and we come across the
following peculiar scene:
:
In the course of these conversations they looked up to see that a raven had settled
on the branch of a tree; it ew down gently from there and placed a whole loaf
of bread before their eyes while they looked on in wonder. After it had gone, Paul
said, See, the Lord has sent us lunch; truly he is faithful, truly he is compassionate.
For sixty years now I have always received half a loaf of bread, but for your arrival
Christ has doubled the ration for his soldiers. When they had given thanks to the
Lord, they sat down together on the bank of a spring as clear as glass. At this point
,,. See also Rubenson (:ccc) ::,: on the way in which Jeromes own education relates to his
portrayals of Paul and Hilarion, both of whom are represented as coming (unlike Antony, and like
Jerome himself ) from a highly educated background.
;,
See Elm (:,,) esp. ,;:; also Life of Paul of Thebes :;:.
c
See Shaw(:,,) :c:: for that point; and more generally Kelly (:,;,) :c, on Jeromes involvement
in controversy over asceticism and o,o on his own ascetic experience in the Syrian desert.
:
Many scholars have found it a puzzling passage and have found it difcult to reconcile the atmosphere
of comedy and absurdity with the eulogistic and protreptic aims of hagiography: see Weingarten
(:cc,) ;, with further bibliography.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,:
a disagreement arose about who should break the bread; it continued almost until
it had turned day into evening. Paul insisted, basing his argument on the customs
of hospitality; Antony refuted him with the rights of old age. Finally they made
a plan that each of them should grasp the bread at his own end and each should
pull it towards himself and each should keep the piece left in his hands. Then they
drank a little of the water, leaning over with their faces close to the spring; and
offering a sacrice of praise to God, they passed the night in vigil. (Jerome, Life of
Paul of Thebes :c.:::.:)
This scene marks out the holiness of the two saints, and their marginal
relation to mainstream culture, in a range of different ways. For one thing,
Pauls raven echoes the raven who brings bread and meat to Elijah in :
Kings :;.o; the difference being that Pauls raven brings bread only a
sign, perhaps, of the even greater dietary discipline of the Christian saints
by comparison with their Old Testament precursors.
:
Moreover, their
debate marks them out as very peculiar, almost comical gures in relation
to Greco-Roman feasting traditions, with which Jerome must have been
familiar not least via his knowledge of Latin satire.
,
Their competitive
discussion about convivial tradition at rst sight would be at home in the
sympotic conversation of Plutarch and others, but the paralysing effect
of their humility at the same time shows their alienness to that tradition.
The peculiar tug-of-war which forms their nal solution carries to absurd
extremes the principles of equal sharing which had for centuries been
important for Greco-Roman hospitality. Finally Antony and Paul end up
rewriting the comic motif which we nd in Lucian,

where we see august

philosophers coming to blows over who has the bigger portion and in the
process literally pulling at the disputed food, unwilling to let go.
In the Life of Hilarion, written probably some twenty years later, in
the ,,cs ce, we nd a similar selection of dietary snapshots, which make
the saint a model of spiritual discipline, while also stressing his distance
from normal life. In conjuring up that picture Jerome irts with images
of excessive asceticism rather more frequently than in the Life of Paul of
Thebes. Hilarion is described as Antonys spiritual heir: with his limbs
covered only in sackcloth, and with a tunic of skins, which the blessed
:
See Weingarten (:cc,) oo; Williams (:cc) ::,.
,
On Jeromes use of satire, see Wiesen (:,o); Weingarten (:cc,) :,:,. And for other striking
examples of Jeromes engagement with Latin literary traditions in the same work, see the scene in
Life of Paul of Thebes ,, where Antony pleads to be admitted to Pauls dwelling, which recalls the
locked-out lover motif of Latin elegy, as discussed by Leclerc (:,) :o:, and Burrus (:cc) ,c
(but see also :;,, n. for scriptural parallels); also the nal paragraphs of the work (:;:) where
Jerome denounces urban luxury, and which owe a great deal to Latin satirical and philosophical
writing, as Wiesen (:,o) ,c points out.

See Lucian, Symposium, ,.

,: Saints and Symposiasts
Antony had given him when he set out, and a rustic cloak, he found
pleasure in the vast and terrible solitude between the sea and the marshes,
consuming (comedens) just fteen gs a day after sunset (Life of Hilarion
,.:). Later his fasting intensies:
from the time he was twenty-one until he was twenty-six, for three years he ate
half a pint of lentils soaked in cold water and for the other three years he ate dry
bread with salt and water. Then from the time he was twenty-seven until he was
thirty-one, he sustained himself with wild herbs and uncooked roots of certain
shrubs. From the time he was thirty-one until he was thirty-ve his food consisted
of six ounces of barley bread and lightly cooked vegetables without any oil. But
when he sensed that his eyes were clouding over and that his whole body was
contracting under the inuence of impetigo and some kind of rough skin disease,
he added oil to the diet just mentioned, and until the sixty-third year of his life
he continued at this level of abstinence, tasting nothing else, neither fruit nor
beans nor anything else. Then when he realised that he was physically worn out
and thought that death was close at hand, from the time he was sixty-four until
his eightieth year he abstained from bread with incredible mental fervour . . . He
would make himself a little soup out of our and chopped vegetables, so that the
food and drink weighed scarcely ve ounces. This is the order he followed in his
life, and never did he break his fast before sunset, not even on holy days nor in the
most serious illness. (,)
This description, like so many of those we have looked at already, draws on
the biographical technique of praising individuals for their moderate eating
and drinking. One of the extraordinary things about it, however, is simply
its detail: Jerome parades his own command over this body of knowledge
with the precision and exhaustiveness of a historiographical or scientic
writer. That authorial care imitates the kind of rigorous self-attention to the
mundane details of bodily existence which lifelong ascetic devotion must
have required. By depicting Hilarions care in this scene his scrupulous
desire to adjust his diet to the needs of his body Jerome deliberately avoids
the impression that he is indulging in mindlessly excessive self-denial.
,
However, even if we acknowledge Jeromes (and Hilarions) caution in that
respect, it is clear that the text here displays an obsession with abstinence
whose intensity is quite alien to the classical tradition, both on the part
of Hilarion as faster (with his determination to avoid cooked food) and
Jerome as chronicler. It may not be too fanciful to see this passage as
the distant inheritor of traditions of gastronomic listing which are most
famously manifested in the work of Athenaeus: certainly the diet Jerome
,
See Shaw (:,,) ::c::.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,
outlines here is in its way just as exotic as any of the luxurious menus
recounted by the deipnosophists.
Elsewhere in the work Hilarion is at risk of grotesque and absurd types
of eating and drinking, although he manages always to resist them. In ,.::,
for example, we hear that he is tempted by visions of naked women and
splendid banquets (largissimae dapes). That sense of the grotesque world
clamouring on the edge of Hilarions consciousness is articulated among
other things by the allusions to Apuleius Metamorphoses with which the
work is packed.
o
In ,.::, for example, a demon jumps on Hilarions back
and whips him like a donkey, tempting him with barley, in an attempt to
associate him with the kind of humiliating animal appetites which Lucius
in Apuleius novel at rst resists but ultimately succumbs to.
;
Hilarion is
pitched into an Apuleian world of the absurd and the grotesque, and at
times struggles to avoid being associated with it, but always nevertheless
rises above it.
Jerome is thus heavily inuenced by traditions of dietary characterisation
in biographical, and even novelistic and convivial, writing. For the most
part his holy men are sober gures who outdo the asceticism of Greco-
Roman philosophers, of the kind described by Diogenes Laertius. However,
even in these relatively understated hagiographies there are, every so often,
links between Christian saintly consumption and more degraded or exotic
types of consumption which are usually given a negative valuation in the
classical tradition.
the history of the monks in egypt
I want to turn now nally to the History of the Monks in Egypt, which
dates probably from the early fth century.

In this text, too, the monks

stand apart from customs of civilised conviviality which stretched right
across Mediterranean culture; in fact their asceticism must have seemed
extreme and exotic even by comparison with the day-to-day devotions and
disciplines of the texts original Christian readers. In what follows I want
to focus especially on the way in which the text welcomes the cultural and
social marginality of its subjects. I also aim to show, once again, how this
marginality is depicted through imagery which was familiar from centuries
o
See Weingarten (:cc,) ,:c,.
;
See Weingarten (:cc,) ,,:c, on donkey imagery both here and elsewhere in the text.

For text, see Festugi` ere (:,o:); translation in Russell and Ward (:,c); and on the problematic
character of the surviving Greek text, see Rousseau (:,;) :o, n. :, and Bammel (:,,o).
, Saints and Symposiasts
of earlier Greco-Roman as well as Christian discussion of eating and drink-
ing. Admittedly there is little sign in this work of close engagement with
specic classical texts, sympotic or otherwise. There is little sign that the
author had a classical education, in contrast with Jerome and Athanasius
(and indeed Palladius and Theodoret). Nevertheless the text does show,
once again, a basic familiarity with motifs of luxury which look back to
classical as well as Christian sources. It also clearly has a basic grounding in
ethnographic conventions: the common techniques of dietary character-
isation are repeatedly overlaid with ethnographic and paradoxographical
associations, which enhance the impression of the exoticism and oddity of
the ascetic practices under review, in ways which must have made them
seem, to their original readers, all the more to be valued.
,
The ethnographic character of the work is immediately obvious in the
preface. The anonymous author makes it clear there that he is an outsider
to the Egyptian communities he describes. He is writing for a Palestinian
audience: I have been asked repeatedly by the pious brotherhood that
lives on the Mount of Olives to write them an account of the practices of
the Egyptian monks I have witnessed, their fervent love and great ascetic
discipline (HM pr.:). The very opening lines, a little before that passage,
make the ethnographic character of the work immediately clear: Blessed
be God, who wants all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of
the truth [: Tim. :.], and who led us to Egypt and showed us great and
wonderful things which deserve to be remembered and recorded (ut,c
sci cuuco:c sci uvnun, sci ,pcq, cic) (pr. :). That phrase clearly
recalls Herodotus prologue to the Histories, where he famously announces
in the opening sentence that his aim is to make sure that the great and
wonderful deeds (tp,c ut,c sci cuco:), both of the Greeks and
barbarians, should not go unrecorded.
,c
In the HM as a whole, the nar-
rator gives a great deal of space to miraculous deeds. Those miracles help
to paint the Egyptian ascetics as divinely inspired gures, inheritors of the
mantle of Christ and the apostles and the prophets of the Old Testament.
,:
However, they also contribute to the works ethnographic, paradoxograph-
ical character, which is marked by the authors quasi-Herodotean style of
accumulating marvels and listing, often in deliberately brief and disjointed
,
That approach is indebted especially to Frank (:ccc) ,,;; for an earlier version, see Frank (:,,);
and see also Merrills (:cc) on similar use of ethnographic motifs (esp. :, on diet) to describe
ascetics in late antique historiographical texts, including Sozomens Historia Ecclesiastica.
,c
See Frank (:ccc) ,, on that echo.
,:
See Ward (:,:); Frank (:ccc) ,o; Williams (:cc) :,,:.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,
fashion, the dening characteristics of the communities he visits.
,:
Within
that tradition Egypt had always had a reputation as a place of particular
marvels.
,,
There is, in other words, an air of exoticism and exceptionality
hanging over these gures right from the start.
,
That said, it is important to be clear about the fact that this is a strange
version of ethnography. Herodotus subject is the different peoples of the
world and their different character. In the History of the Monks in Egypt, the
wildness of the ascetics and their distance from normal human civilisation
is mitigated, for those who can understand them, by their membership of
a different, unearthly community. The following famous passage from the
preface is a good example:
For I saw there many fathers living the angelic life, advancing in imitation of our
divine saviour; and others who are new prophets and who have achieved divine
accomplishments by their divinely inspired and amazing and virtuous way of
life . . . For it is possible to see them scattered in the desert, waiting for Christ like
legitimate sons waiting for their father, or like an army waiting for its king, or like
a solemn household waiting for its master and liberator. (pr.,;)
Here the image of wildness and solitariness scattered in the desert
stands in tension with images of communality, domesticity and family.
In the twenty-ve chapters that lie between the preface and the epilogue,
there are many classic instances of brief dietary characterisation. Many of
these descriptions emphasise the peculiarity of the Egyptian ascetics by the
standards of normal convivial behaviour. Moreover, the collective quality
of the text, which examines many different ascetics in turn, enhances the
exoticising quality of these passages, leaving the impression (unlike what we
have seen for the Life of Antony or the saints lives by Jerome) of a vast and
varied panoply of different customs. That is especially the case given that
the text includes accounts of the dining habits of particular communities
,:
See Frank (:ccc) ,, on the ethnographic, paradoxographical tradition, and ,,oc on listing and
brevity as ethnographic techniques.
,,
See Frank (:ccc) o;.
,
The self-portrayal of the narrator also plays a role in articulating the power and exceptionality of
the ascetics: on the one hand he stresses, like Herodotus and many later ethnographic authors, that
he has seen the things he describes, and that he has been inspired by them; on the other hand he
emphasises his own unworthiness to describe them, and so his own distance from them, particularly
in the works epilogue where he emphasises his own cowardice and lack of strength by comparison
with his subjects: the rst time, having wandered through the desert for ve days we nearly fainted
from hunger and thirst (ep. ). On the combination of familiarity and exoticism in the HM and
other hagiographic texts, see Jasper (:cc) ,,,; Williams (:cc) :,o;; however, see also Krueger
(:cc) ,:c, (esp. ,; on HM) for discussion of the common practice of authorial self-denigration
in hagiographical writing, as a technique which is intended to bring the author closer to his subjects,
allowing him to match their humility, rather than distancing them.
,o Saints and Symposiasts
as well as individuals. At the same time, even as the author accumulates
examples of such a wide variety of distinctive local ascetic cultures, he also
makes it clear that they are all also representatives of the single, angelic life,
lived in imitation of Christ,
,,
and that they are all part of a wider, virtual
community of fasters, following scriptural or earlier monastic precedents.
For a particularly good example of the ethnographic portrayal of a whole
communitys eating habits,
,o
one might look at chapter ,, on the monk
Ammon and his community of ,ccc brothers following the Pachomian
rule
who are also called Tabennisiots. They live a very disciplined life: they wear
sheepskin cloaks, eat with their faces covered and looking down, so that no-one
should see anyone else; and keeping a great silence, so that you would think you
were in the desert, each of them practises his own disciplines in secret, sitting at the
table only for the sake of appearance, so as to seem to eat, and trying to avoid being
observed by the others. Some of them raised their hands once or twice to their
mouths, having taken bread or olives or something else from what lay before them,
and having tasted once from each dish they were satised with that food. Others,
chewing their bread slowly with no attempt to dissemble, disciplined themselves
in this manner. Others tasted their soup only three times and restrained themselves
in respect to the rest. (,.::)
Some of these details are corroborated by other sources on Pachomian
monasticism. Nevertheless, the exoticising emphasis of the account is in
part the authors choice. It exaggerates for effect the strangeness of Pacho-
mian commensality as far as we can reconstruct it from other sources.
,;
This strange table community, as the narrator describes it, goes out of its
way to deny its own communality and to stamp out the fellowship which
is traditionally a dening part of both symposium and eucharist. Ironically
the exotic, spectacular nature of the dining room is vastly increased by their
constant dissembling, which becomes itself a part of the spectacle.
,
The portrayal of individual ascetics also often has an ethnographic feel in
its emphasis on the way in which they are marked by their contact with the
wild landscape they inhabit and by their distance from mainstream civili-
sation. Ethnographic portrayal of exotic peoples from Herodotus onwards
similarly often pays close attention to their physical environment and their
,,
See Miller (:ccc) :,c,, discussed above.
,o
For another good example of a community with distinctive eating habits, see :c.:c and :c.:; on
the monks of Nitria: Many of them ate neither bread nor fruit but only endives (:c.:;).
,;
See Pachomius, Praecepta :,,, and above n. ,c; and compare also Palladius, LH ,:, (esp. ,:.o)
and Cassian, Institutes .:;, both of whom seem less interested in exoticising than the HM.
,
See Frank (:ccc) , on the exoticising character of this description.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,;
marginal physical location. In the History of the Monks in Egypt that theme
is often combined with an emphasis on their avoidance of cooked food, and
in some cases also by their association with animals. Theon, for example,
ate uncooked plants. And at night, they say, he went out from his cell and
grazed together with the wild beasts and gave them water to drink from his
own supplies. For it was possible to see tracks of antelopes and wild asses
and gazelles and other creatures around his retreat, creatures he always took
great pleasure in (o.).
,,
Elias, too is an outsider:
No report can describe that harsh desert in the mountain as it deserves, in which
he sat, never going down to the inhabited region. The path taken by those who
went to him was a narrow one, so that even those who pressed themselves forwards
could only just get along it, because of erce rocks on either side. He used to sit
beneath a rock in a cave, so that even the sight of him was greatly terrifying . . . And
in his old age he ate three ounces of bread in the evening and three olives. In his
youth he was consistent in eating just once a week. (;.:,)
The terrifying quality of the landscape is matched by that of Elias himself,
who has become almost a part of it. And its infertile harshness is matched
by the inhuman austerity of his diet.
At the same time, for all the anti-social oddity of this diet, all of these
descriptions are acutely aware of their own place within a tradition of cata-
loguing habits of abstinence which stretches back to Hilarion and Antony
and even beyond to the Old and New Testaments. All of these monks
are presented, through their fasting practices, as part of a community of
abstainers just as powerful in its way as the imagined sympotic community,
stretching back to Plato and even Homer, which preoccupied Plutarch and
Athenaeus and their contemporaries.
The monks of the text are thus often presented as strange and uncivilised,
even by the standards of the monastic narrator. It is important to stress,
however, that there is also another strand in the text which shows how
social marginality can be made compatible with more sociable, convivial
kinds of behaviour, in the case of ascetics who adopt positions closer to
civilisation.
:cc
Abba Or, for example, gradually through his life moves
away from solitary existence back towards civilisation, and is even depicted
providing hospitality to the author, rather like the gure of Abraham from
Theodoret, RH :;:
after washing our feet with his own hands, he turned to teaching . . . He explained
many key passages in the Scriptures for us, and having taught us the orthodox
,,
Cf. the uncooked vegetable diet of the monk Apollo in .,.
:cc
:.,, is a similar example of a monk who moves from solitary to communal asceticism.
, Saints and Symposiasts
faith, he turned to prayer. For it is a custom among these great men not to give
food to the esh before giving spiritual nourishment for the soul, which is the
companionship of Christ. Having partaken of this and having shared the eucharist,
he directed us to the table, sitting with us and always reminding us of serious topics
(:cv otcuocicv) as we ate. (:.;)
Ors compatibility with secular, Greco-Roman convivial traditions is care-
fully limited, however: it is striking that his version of sympotic talk pre-
cedes dinner rather than following it; also that it connes the conversation
to serious topics, as if deliberately shutting out the laughter and frivolity
which was always to be combined with seriousness in the classical sympotic
ideal of spoudogeloion.
In other cases, the monks even seem happy to consume food which in
other contexts would be associated with luxurious, civilised dining, so long
as it is divinely sanctioned. In .,:, for example, the monk Apollo prays
that he and his fellow monks should receive the food they desire, and
immediately some men arrived at the cave at night, complete strangers to them,
saying that they had travelled from far off, and bringing things they had not
even heard of before, things which do not grow in Egypt: fruits of paradise of
all kinds, grapes and pomegranates and gs and nuts, all of them found out of
season, and honeycombs, and a jar of fresh milk, and enormous dates, and loaves
of bread which were white and warm despite being brought to them from a foreign
country. (.c)
:c:
Occasionally, then, convivial behaviour and rich food seem to be allow-
able. More often, however, these things are associated with the risk of
falling into sin. For example, the author is often anxious in these passages
about the difculty of trusting the foods of paradise, simply because of the
danger that they will tempt one towards gluttony. Abba Helle, the subject
of chapter ::, described in this passage by another monk, Copres, is a good
example:
On another occasion, when he was on his own in the desert, a desire for honey came
into being (ttiuuic uti:c, ,t,cvtv). Immediately he found some honeycombs
beneath a rock. Leave me, unbridled desire, he said, for it is written, Walk in
the spirit and you will not full the desire of the esh. And leaving them he went
away. (::.:)
Here appetite or desire, ttiuuic, is described as a phenomenon which
almost has a mind of its own, arising independently (ttiuuic uti:c,
:c:
On this anecdote see Russell and Ward (:,c) ,o;; Brown (:,) :::; Shaw (:,,) :,; Frank (:ccc)
,;.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,
,t,cvtv a desire for honey came into being or came upon him) and
driven away by being addressed in the vocative as if it is a demon. This
capacity for desire to arise from within the individual, but also at the same
time to take on its own unpredictable momentum, gives us a glimpse of
why it is such a terrifying thing for Helle, and why he must shrink from
the honeycombs so decisively.
:c:
Similarly Makarios the Egyptian in ::,
wandering in the desert, is led by an angel to a paradise in the desert, and
stays there for seven days. He then returns to his fellow monks, carrying
some fruit as a proof, in the hope of persuading them to go back with him
to the paradise, but they refuse: Might it not be the case that this paradise
has come into existence for the destruction of our souls? (::.::).
:c,
That
ever-present sense of fear helps to further enhance our sense of the oddity
of the monks position: foods which in urban society and in the Greco-
Roman literary tradition are vehicles for elitist gastronomic pleasures and
(at worst) temptations to unphilosophical over-indulgence, become in the
world of the desert something much more alien, the focus of wonder and
celebration, when provided by miraculous means, because of the way in
which the ascetics were thought to have regained, through their heroic
fasting, a taste of the original paradise,
:c
but also at the same time a source
of spiritual terror, requiring constant vigilance.
The risk of being characterised as gluttonous is thus ever-present to the
desert ascetic in the HM. The scare-image of the immoderate, parasitical
eater, crazed by his appetite, which was common to both the Christian
and the Greco-Roman tradition, is one the monks of this text seem to be
terried of. Nearly always they resist it. Nevertheless it is an image they
are surprisingly willing to identify with in moments of humility, as they
recount their own failings or their own temptations. At times this imagery
is even appropriated as a way of conveying the monks social marginality.
My nal example, which makes that point clear, comes from chapter :.
There we hear about Antony testing a follower of his, named Paul the
:c:
Three weeks later, the pattern is repeated: still fasting, he nds some discarded fruit, but once
again resists the temptation (::.:). Later in the chapter, by contrast, we have a whole stream of
examples where the miraculous provision of food is shown to be acceptable through being given
divine sanction of various types (esp. ::., and ::.:,).
:c,
Cf. the anecdote following (::.:,:) where none of the monks is willing to eat a bunch of grapes
brought to Makarios as a gift.
:c
See Brown (:,) ::::; Miller (:,,) :,: paradoxically . . . it was the body produced by fasting
that elicited perceptions of the corporeal plenitude of paradise; Shaw (:,,) :o:::,; Rapp (:cc,)
::,:o; however, see also Miller (:cc,) on the way in which the Makarios anecdote in itself shows
us the problems associated with dangerous fantasies of attaining transcendence on earth (::).
,,c Saints and Symposiasts
Simple, by telling him to do whatever he instructs.
:c,
First he makes Paul
stand motionless in the sun:
and coming out after a week had passed, he said to him, Come here and take
food with me. And when he had prepared the table and set out the food, he said,
Sit down and do not eat until evening; simply keep watch over the food. When
evening arrived and Paul had still not eaten, Antony said to him, Get up and pray
and then sleep. (:.,)
Later Antony set the table and again ordered him to eat. But when Paul
had lifted just his third piece of bread to his mouth, Antony ordered him
to stand up and not to touch any water and sent him out to wander
in the desert, saying to him, Come back here after three days (:.
,). This odd, and by normal standards cruel disruption of a scene of
communal dining, places Paul in the position of a parasite deprived of
food.
:co
Paul, however, resists that association, showing no sign of appetite
or frustration, turning humiliation and degradation, like so many of his
ascetic counterparts, into a sign of sanctity.
We have seen, then, that the History of the Monks in Egypt never allows
us to forget the oddity and exoticism of its subjects: the alien peculiarity
of the Tabennisiots, or the animalistic wildness of Theon or Elias. Their
peculiar, anti-sympotic eating habits play a major role in articulating that
impression. The desert saints of fourth- and fth-century ce hagiography
represent perhaps the most radical rejection of the polite rituals of elite
conviviality in the whole of classical literature: their harsh regimes of absti-
nence mark them out as members of an imagined community of fasters
looking back to Antony and to Jesus in the Gospels and even beyond to the
prophets of the Old Testament. Even in these texts, however, long-standing
classical stereotypes of convivial luxury, and even sympotic conversation,
are important reference-points, images against which the fasting saints are
dened. Most often these things stand in contrast with frugal monastic
behaviour, or else they are mentioned as dangers which lie in wait for the
monk who succumbs to temptation. It is also striking, however, that the
authors of the saints lives sometimes welcome an association with motifs
of transgressive or abnormal conviviality which had a long prehistory in
the discourse of Mediterranean feasting culture. These are just the strangest
and the latest in a long line of eccentric, dysfunctional eaters and drinkers
:c,
For a parallel account, see Palladius, LH ::: the culinary disciplines Antony imposes in Palladius
account are similar although less harsh.
:co
For a parasite tantalised by slow service of food, see among other examples Alciphron, Letters ,.,,,
discussed above, pp. :,: and :,,.
Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography ,,:
which stretches far back into the Greco-Roman traditions of the ethno-
graphic and sympotic writing. Their eccentricity and marginality would
have been taken, of course, primarily as signs of holiness and sources of
inspiration and admiration by their original Christian readers.
Conclusion
Classical traditions of writing about food and the symposium had a long
and rich history in the Roman imperial period and into late antiquity.
They continued to matter to their original readers: they had the capacity
to communicate distinctive ideas about how to talk and how to think,
distinctive models of the relationship between past and present, distinctive
and often destabilising visions of identity and holiness. The primary aim
of this book has been to make that clear.
A more detailed recap may be helpful. Part i focused on a set of table-
talk texts which inherit the tradition, begun by Plato and Xenophon,
of recording philosophical conversation in a sympotic setting. From the
Hellenistic period onwards, there was an increasing tendency to overlay
that tradition with miscellanistic or encyclopaedic writing, accumulating
questions and facts in enormous bulk within the context of reported sym-
posium conversation. Recent scholarship has begun to appreciate the fact
that compilatory writing had great prestige and prevalence in Greek and
Roman culture, even though it may appear at rst sight to modern eyes as a
functional, low-status form lacking in originality. Part i took those insights
as a starting-point in attempting to shed some light on the attractions of
sympotic compilation for its contemporary audiences (and perhaps even
for us although it takes a certain leap of imagination for modern readers
to inhabit the kind of mindset which these texts were originally intended
to appeal to). I was interested in particular in the way in which these
texts deal with the idea of literary voice: one reason for the popularity of
the symposium form was the fact that it offered a powerful frame for the
fantasy of entering into dialogue with the authors of the past, who are
quoted and discussed by successive speakers. I also focused on the way in
which the table-talk texts of the Roman empire dramatise particular types
of intellectual community in the present, challenging us as readers to work
out how far we belong. In many cases that was a community associated
with distinctive ideals of ingenious, competitive speech, of the kind which
,,:
Conclusion ,,,
accepts more than one answer to any particular question. That style of
speech goes a long way towards explaining its attraction for the Greek
authors of the second to third centuries ce. I also argued that it makes
a signicant contribution to the wariness about the literary symposium
that we nd in Christian and late antique pagan writing: increasingly, the
playful indeterminacy of sympotic conversation comes into conict with
new models of monologic authority, and new beliefs about the importance
of consensus, reverence and submission to the word of God within the
Christian world.
Part ii dealt with the way in which idealised images of sympotic order
in ancient literature are often disrupted by, among other things, represen-
tations of transgressive or grotesque consumption. Here I focused, broadly
speaking, on narrative prose literature, interpreting that category widely to
include not only novelistic prose ction, but also satirical and biographical
writing. Throughout Part ii I was interested above all in the way in which
there was always a risk even in the most idealising portrayal of consump-
tion of contamination with negative, often grotesque associations. That
repeated theme is used by a wide range of authors to reect on the difculty
of maintaining the boundaries between high and low social status, between
philosophical virtue and absurdity, between Greek or Roman moderation
and barbarian oddity and excess. Some Christian authors responded to that
challenge, in their representations of virtuous apostles and fasting saints,
in particularly daring fashion: the eating habits of the saints mark out
their virtue, while also revealing, by acknowledging the ever-present risk
of transgression, the struggle they face in avoiding sinfulness and negative
reputation in their ascetic practice. In some cases, Christian authors, partic-
ularly within prose narrative texts dealing with the deeds and lives of saints
and apostles, even seem to welcome the negative associations of Christian
consumption, as a way of demonstrating the capacity of Christianity to
incorporate and transform grotesque and low-status components, and as a
way of advertising Christianitys marginal and subversive position in rela-
tion to traditional norms. For the most part, then, Christianity rejects the
culture of Greco-Roman conviviality, dissociating itself from the models
of argumentation particularly associated with the symposium tradition,
and from the luxury of elite dining practices. At the same time, however,
as we saw in chapters :: and ::, some early Christian writing paradox-
ically also embraces the gure of the disruptive, transgressive, eccentric
symposiast, rehabilitating subject positions which had traditionally been
associated with degradation and low status and turning them into signs of
the triumph and newness of Christian culture.
,, Saints and Symposiasts
Lying behind all of this there is also, of course, a set of overarching
questions about the relationship betweenGreco-Romanand early Christian
literature and culture. It would be rash to attempt any generalisation about
that relationship on the basis of the material I have presented here. The late
history of literary symposium traditions is only one tiny part of the very
complex story of the interaction between classical and Christian culture.
Nevertheless it may be helpful at this point to summarise some of the
recurring patterns which have emerged again and again in the preceding
chapters. Inevitably, there are elements of both similarity and difference,
both connection and disjunction.
Disjunction rst. In chapters ,, o, ;, :: and ::, my emphasis was more
than anything on the way in which early Christian authors rewrite the
sympotic heritage in defamiliarising ways, as the summary above makes
clear. Many of the texts we have looked at the gospel narratives of Jesus
feasting with sinners and Pharisees, the Educator of Clement of Alexandria,
the Symposium of Methodius, the Apocryphal Acts, the hagiographical
writing of the early fourth and fth centuries ce reshape classical sympotic
and gastronomic discourse in peculiar and estranging ways. Of course, we
need to be careful not to overstate the uniqueness of early Christianity
and its difference from the world around it. Nevertheless, it is undeniable
that the idea of separateness and newness was a powerful feature of early
Christian rhetoric, as many recent studies have shown. In the context of
this recent expansion of work on early Christian self-denition which in
itself builds on decades, if not centuries, of scholarship on the relationship
between Christian and classical literature my argument about the way in
which early Christian discourse radically reshapes the resources of Greco-
Roman literature will not, in its broad contours, be a particularly surprising
one. But it is a story whichhas not beentold before indetail for the literature
of feasting and the symposium.
Despite this prevalence of the rhetoric of separateness in early Chris-
tian writing, however, what I want to emphasise even more forcefully
is the remarkable continuity between Christian and Greco-Roman lit-
erature. Once again, there is nothing particularly new in that message.
There has been an increasing interest in recent decades in challenging
the disciplinary boundaries between classical and early Christian studies,
between the Roman imperial period and late antiquity. Nevertheless, the
prevalence of traditional sympotic language even in texts which are on the
face of it so heavily resistant to Greco-Roman sympotic ideology still has
the capacity to surprise, particularly in the hagiographical writing I dis-
cussed in chapter ::. Perhaps it should not. Many of the Christian authors
Conclusion ,,,
I have discussed Methodius, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome,
Athanasius, Theodoret, Nilus of Ancyra and others were steeped in
classical learning, and were clearly familiar in broad terms with the Greco-
Roman discourse of luxury and traditions of philosophical speech, even if
they did not all know Platos Symposium off by heart (although Methodius
may have done). Certainly, the history of sympotic literature in the clas-
sical world does not end with Athenaeus; it needs to be extended much
further and not only to Methodius and Macrobius, both of whom are
characteristically given a kind of appendix or postscript status in surveys
of the Platonic symposium tradition.
What I want to stress nally, however, is not the books engagement
with these big questions of cultural inheritance, but instead the challenges
and attractions of so many of these texts individually. Most straightfor-
wardly, their extravagant, often outlandish portrayals of food and feasting,
and their ability to project us back into the company of famous gures
from the past, appeal to a sense of fantasy. Of course, the pleasures of
imagining consumption still have a strong hold in the modern world.
But that was surely very much more the case for Greco-Roman and early
Christian culture. Perhaps most importantly, descriptions of consumption
and commensality in ancient literature often draw attention to the way
in which eating and drinking and talking contribute to the formation of
community, and to the experience and projection of identity. In doing
so, they have a remarkable capacity to engage their readers for example
by drawing us in (as I argued in Part i) to reproduce for ourselves the
dynamic processes of dialogue which they put on show, or disturbing and
unsettling unthinking assumptions about the value of dominant models
of high-status commensality and identity (as I argued in Part ii). If I have
succeeded in conveying even some of these challenges and pleasures both
for their ancient readers and potentially even for us then this book will
have served its purpose.
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Index
NB passing mentions of authors I discuss repeatedly as points of comparison especially Plato,
Plutarch and Athenaeus are not included here.
Abraham, :oo, ,,:,
Achilles Tatius, Leukippe and Kleitophon, :oo,
:o, :;:o, :;,, :, ,c,, ,c;, ,:
Acts of Andrew, :,c, :,:, ,c:, ,:,
Acts of Andrew and Matthias, ,:::
date, ,::,
Acts of Andrew and Paul (Coptic), ,c
Acts of John, :,c, ,c:
Acts of Paul, :,c, ,c:
Acts of Paul and Thekla, :,,, ,c:, ,:, ,:,
Acts of Peter, :,c, ,c:
Acts of Philip, ,c,, ,co
Acts of the Apostles (canonical), :,,
Acts of Thomas, :,c, ,cc, ,c:, ,c;:, ,:,
theology of, ,c;, ,:,
Aelian, Letters of Farmers, :,,
agape, ::,,, ,c,
Alcaeus, ;
Alcibiades see under Plato, Symposium
Alciphron, Letters, :,:o,, ,:
date, :,
links between parasites and readers, :,o,
manipulation of letter-writing traditions,
:,:,
names, :,;
representation of disappointed desire, :,,
representation of social hierarchy, :,
role-playing (by parasites and other
characters), :oc, :o,,
thematic overlaps with Athenaeus, :,::
use of sophistic language, :o:,
Alexandria, ::, :,,
allegory, :,, :,, :,;, :o,, :oo, :;,, :,:, ,:c, ,:,
Anacreon, , ;
andr on (dining room, Greek), ;, :o
anthropological approaches to eating and
drinking, :,, ::,, :o;
Antioch, ::, :,c:cc, :,
mixture of religions, :,c
pagan festivals, :,:, :,,
Antiphanes, :cc
Antony, Saint (see also Athanasius, Life of
Antony), ,,,:, ,,,c
Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (see also under
individual titles), :,,, :,,, :,c,::, ,,c,
,,
relationship with the Greek and Latin novels,
:,c:, ,cc, ,c::
representations of fasting and asceticism,
:,,,c,, ,:
Apophthegmata Patrum, ,:;, ,:,
Apuleius
De Platone, :c
Metamorphoses, :oo, :o, :;:, :;o, :;,,
:,, ,co, ,,
Book ::, :, ,c,
equation between eating and reading,
:,
human and animal food, :::,
:
parasite imagery, ::, ::,
representation of conversion, :c
representation of landscape, :
worries about elite status, :;,, ::,
Sympotic Questions, :;, :c, :;
Archestratos, Life of Luxury, :,
Arion of Lesbos, ;
Aristides, Milesian Tales, :;
Aristophanes, :c:, :c:
Frogs, ,,
Wasps, :c::
Aristotle, ::, ,c:, oo, ;:, ;,, ;,c, :;, :o,
:,
Arkesilaos, :,,
,,
Index ,,,
art of the symposium and convivium, ,, :,,
:c:, ,c,, :c:, :,c:, :,,:,
:,;
Artemidoros (gastronomical writer), :,
asceticism (see also under Apocryphal Acts of the
Apostles; hagiography; Methodius,
Symposium (chastity); John Chrysostom;
Julian), ,, ,c;
ascetics as animal gures, ,,;, ,,, ,;
ascetics equated with parasites, ,,, ,,;,
,,,c
distinction between communal and solitary,
,:o;
excessive, ,:,, ,,,, ,:, ,:
Greco-Roman (see also under Julian), :, ,:,,
,,c
growth of in the fourth century ce, :,, ,:,,
Jewish, ,:,, ,,c
pre-Constantine, ::,, ::, :,:
urban, ,:;
womens, ,c:, ,:,
Asia Minor, ,:o
association dining, ,, :,, :,:
relationship with early Christian feasting, ::,,
:,:
Athanasius, ,
Life of Antony, ,:,, ,,::, ,,,c, ,,, ,;
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists (see also under
Macrobius and Alciphron), :o:;, ,::,
,c::c, :;,, :;, :,:, ,:,
as an act of cultural salvage, ,;
blurring of voices between speakers and
quoted authors, ,o, ,, :c,:c
didactic functions, ::, ,,
framing conversation with Timokrates, ,,, ,,,
:c,, ::,, ::
guest-list, ,, :co
Kynoulkos, ,:,, :c;,, :
Larensis, ,o, :,
literary ancestry, :,
moralising intent, ,;
parasites, :,, :,
preface, ,:
recent scholarship, :
relationship with broader intellectual culture
in the Roman Empire, ,:
representations of Rome and Romans, ,o
structure, ,,
styles of speech, ,,, ,:c,
Ulpian, ,:,, ,,:c:, :co;, :::o
Athenagoras, :,
Athens, :, ;:, ,, :,o
athletic imagery, :;:, :;,
Augustine, :c:, :c,, ::;, ,,,
attitudes to dialogue, :,
Cassiciacum dialogues, :o,
City of God, :o
Contra Faustum Manichaeum, :,
Contra Litteras Petiliani, :,
Gesta cum Emerito, :,
Soliloquies, :;
unfamiliar with Platos Symposium, :
Aulus Gellius, see Gellius, Aulus
Bakhtin, Mikhail, ,:,, :c, ::,:c,
:c;
carnival, ,;, :,o, :oo;
double-voiced speech, ,,,
polyphony, ,,, ,,
bandits, :;:, :;,, :
barbarian food and feasting see under
ethnographic writing
Barthes, Roland, :
Basil of Caesarea, Asketikon, ,:,
Beirut, :c
benefaction, ,, :, :, ,
biography, see Diogenes Laertius, hagiography
body (see also under Christianity)
links with identity, :o,
Bourdieu, Pierre, :,
Branham, Bracht, :,,c
bread, , ::,, :,:, :,:, ,c:, ,c;, ,c, ,:, ,:,:;,
,:o, ,,:, ,,:, ,,,, ,,;, ,,,, ,c:, ,:,
,o, ,;, ,,c
Brechet, Christian, ;;, c
Brown, Peter, :,
Burrus, Virginia, ,,
cakes, ,;, :,:, :,,
Cameron, Averil, :,:
cannibalism
(and consumption of human esh) in ction,
:;:, :;o, :o, ,cc;, ,:,::
accusations against early Christians, :,,,,
,c, ,:,, ,:o
Catiline, :,;
Ceccarelli, Paola, :c,
celibacy, see sexual abstinence
Chamaileon of Herakleia, ::,:o
Chin, Catherine, :c
Choricius of Gaza, :c
Christianisation of the elite in the fourth
century ce, :;;
Christianity, early
and paganism, relationship in the fourth
century ce, :;;:, :,c:cc
attitudes to dialogue (see also under
Methodius), :c:, :,,
attitudes to the human body, :,,, ,co,
,:
cc Index
Christianity, early (cont.)
attitudes to symposium literature (see also
under Clement of Alexandria and
Methodius and passim chapters ,, o, ;, ::
and ::), :,c, :,;, :;;:cc
feasting practices, :::,c, :,:
recent scholarship on, :
relationship between early Christian and
Jewish feasting and feasting literature,
::,,c, :,, :,:, :,,
rhetoric of separateness in relation to other
religious and cultural traditions, ::,o,
:,,, ,,
Chrysippus, oo, :,,, ::;
Cicero, ,c, :,,, :, :c,, ::, ::,, ::,, ::c
Dream of Scipio, ,
Clark, Gillian, :,o
Clement of Alexandria, :,, :o,, :;,, :,
ambivalent relationship with Greco-Roman
learning, :,
Educator, :::, :,;, :c, ::, ::,c, :,:, :,,
,,
representation of the word (logos) of God, ::,
:,, :,o, :;, :,,c, :;, :,
Clementina, :,:
clubs, see association dining
comedy, classical Athenian (see also under
individual authors), :::,, ,, :, :;
competition and competitiveness, :c, :, ,,
oo;:, ,,, :,o, :o, :o;o, :,
::;:;, ,:
compilatory writing, ,, ,,, :c,
Connolly, Joy,
Constantine, ,, :;;, :,, :,,
convivium, :o,
Conybeare, Catherine, :o;
Cooper, Kate, :,:
courtesans, o, :c, :,,, :,;, :o:, :o,
Crete, ,
Cynics, Cynicism (see also under Diogenes), :,,
,:, :cc, :c;,, :, :,
Damon, Cynthia, :
Dante, :
deipnon (dinner), o
as literary genre, :,
Democritus, c
Demosthenes,
Dickens, ,
dialogue and debate see under Methodius,
Macrobius, Christianity, and styles of
speech under Plutarch, Sympotic
Questions and Athenaeus
Didache, ::,o
Didymos (grammatical writer), :c:
dining-room, see andr on and triclinium
Dio of the Academy (sympotic writer), ::
Dio Chrysostom, :,:c, ,, o:
Diogenes, :,,, ,,;
Diogenes Laertius, :,,, :, ,,c, ,,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c
Dionysus, ,, ::c, :;, ::, :,::, :,,
Diphilos (comic poet), :c
Dostoevsky, ,
Douglas, Mary, :o;
drinking cups, ::c::, ::,:, ::o
drunkenness, , ,, :c, ::, :, ::o, ::;, :,:, :c,
:,, :,, :,, :,:, :,, :,,, :, :;:, :,,,
,,,
Dunbabin, Katherine, :;
eating alone, :,,, ,:o, ,,:
education in symposia and convivia, o
Egypt (see also History of the Monks in Egypt),
:;, ,:o, ,,c, ,,
ekphrasis, :,o, :,,
Elijah, ,,:, ,:
Elliott, Alison, ,,
Emerson, Caryl, ,;
encratism, encratites see Methodius
encyclopaedic writing, see compilatory writing
Ennius,
Epaminondas of Akraiphia, :
Epicharmos, :cc, :;
Epicurus, Epicurean philosophy, ::, :,, o;, :o,
::,, :,, :
epigrams, ::, :,, ::,
Eros, ::, :o:
ethnographic writing, barbarian eating and
drinking, o, :,:,, :o, :,;, ,c;, ,::,,
,,, ,o;, ,,:
ethopoieia, :,,oc
eucharist, ::,o, :,:, :,;, :;,, :,,, ,cc;, ,:
bread-and-water eucharists, ,cc, ,:
Eunomus of Locris, ;
Eupolis, Flatterers, :
Euripides, ;,
Eusebius, :,
Evagrius, ,:;, ,,:
fasting, see asceticism
Favorinus, :,, c, ::
Feast of the Tabernacles, :,o, :,
Feeley-Harnik, Gillian, ::,
festivals, as settings for symposium literature, ,,
,o, :,, :;,, ::c
Flaubert, :
food shortage, ,
foods of paradise, ,,
friendship, ,:, ,,, o,, :;:
Index c:
Fronto, :c,
frugality, see moderation
funerary dining, ,, :,, :,
Galen, :,:c
On the Souls Dependence on the Body, ,c:
Garden of Eden, :,;
gardens, :,o;
Gellius, Aulus (see also under Macrobius), :,,
,:
imitation of Plutarch, :o, :
gospels, eating and drinking in, :,c
Gowers, Emily, :,:
gluttony, ,:, ;, :,:, :,,, :, :;,, :,;, :,,,
::o, ::;, :,:, :,,, :,, ::, :, :,, :,,,
:::, :,, :,,, ,:, ,:, ,,,,, ,,
grammarians, o,o, o,, :c, :,
Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina, :,;, ,:;
grotesque, :,,, :oo, :;,, ,,o, ,,
guilds, see association dining
Gunderson, Erik, ,:, :c
hagiography, :, ,:,,:, ,,
representations of community with the
ascetics of the past, ,,,, ,;, ,,c
relationship with real-life ascetic practices,
,:,, ,:o
harlot saints, ,,,
Harpham, Geoffrey, :,o, :o, :,, ,,o, ,,
Harvey, Susan, ,,o
Heath, John, :,
Hegemon of Thasos (comic playwright), :,
Heliodorus, Aithiopika, :;:, :;,, :;, ,c,
Herakles, ,, ::, :,:
Hermes, ,;
Herodes Atticus, :o, :
Herodotus, :,:, ,,
Hesiod, ,
hetairai, see courtesans
Hieronymos, ::
Hippocrates, ,c:
Hipponax, ,
History of the Monks in Egypt, ,:,,c, ,,,:
Holy Fools, ,,o;
Homer, :, , o, ;, ,;, :;, :o,, :;, :c,,
:,, :o:, ,;
Iliad, ,:,
Odyssey, ,, oo, ::o, :,:, :,:,, ,:,, ,:o
Hopkins, Keith, :,
Horace, :;, :
hymns in the symposium (see also under
Methodius), :o
Iamblichus, Babyloniaka, :;:
insults, ,, :c, ,,, :,:, :,;
Io, :,,
Ion of Chios, ::
Irenaeus, :,
Isis, :;,, :,, ,c,
Jacob, Christian, ,
Jerome, :,;, :;;, ,:;, ,, ,,
Life of Hilarion, ,:,, ,:,, ,;
Life of Malchus, ,:,
Life of Paul of Thebes, ,:,, ,,,:
Jesus, ::o, :,c, :,;, :,, :,,, :,,, ,:,, ,:o,
,::, ,,:, ,,:, ,,
Jewish feasting and feasting literature (see also
under Christianity, early)
responses to the Greco-Roman symposium,
:,;
Jezebel, :,,
John, gospel of, :,c, :,:, :,,
John the Baptist, :,:
John Cassian, ,,c
John Chrysostom, ::, :,,,, :c:, ,:;, ,,,
asceticism, :,,
condemnation of luxury, :,,
Homily on St Babylas, :,o
restriction of church expenditure, :,,
sectarianism, :,
Johnson, Caroline, ,c
Jonah, ,:,
Joseph and Aseneth, ::o
Julian, ::, :,o:cc
asceticism, :,o, :,,
attitudes to sacrice, :,o;, :,,
lack of interest in sacricial feasting, :,;
Symposium or Caesars, ,, :,;:cc
Justin, :,
Kalends, festival of, :,:, :,
Kallixeinos, :c,::
Kaster, Robert, :c, :c, :::,, ::, ::o,
::;
Kayser, Wolfgang, :oo;, :o
Kephisodoros (comic poet), ::,
kolax (atterer), ::
Krates (grammatical writer), :c:, :c:
Kristeva, Julia, :o;
Lactantius, :,;
LaFargue, Michael, ,:,
Last Supper, ::,, ::o, :,:
Latin satire, eating and drinking in (and see
under individual authors), :,:, :;, ,:
laughter, ;, ,:c, :;c, ::,, ::
Lent, :,,
lentils, :c;, ,:
Letter of Aristeas, o,, :,,
c: Index
letters (see also under Alciphron)
describing dinners, :,:,
received in a symposium setting, :;c, :;,
Libanius, ::, :,:,
Autobiography, :,,
Declamation :, :,:
Descriptio ,, :,:
Descriptio o, :,,
Descriptio :,, :,:
exible approach to religious allegiance, :,,
:,o
Letters, :,,
Oration ,, :,:
Oration : (On Avenging Julian), :,o
libations, o
Life of Aesop, :,;
Life of Maria Meretrix, ,,,
Lim, Richard, :,
Logos (i.e. divine word), see under Clement and
Methodius
Lollianus, Phoinikika, :;:, :;, :
Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, :,,, :o,;c, :;:,
:;,
love, sex and seduction in convivial contexts, ;,
::, ;,, :o,, :o,;:, :;:, :;,, :;, :o,
:,o, ,::, ,,
Lucian, ,;, ,, :,, :;,:
Charon, ,
Conversation with Hesiod, ,
Dialogues with the Dead, ,
Downward Journey, ,
Fisherman, ,
Lexiphanes, :
Menippus, ,
Nigrinus, :;
On Salaried Posts, :, ::, :;, :,, :;o
On the Parasite, :;, :o:
portrayal of philosophers, ::,, :;,:
satirical treatment of the symposium, :;:,
Symposium, ::,, :c:, :,:, ,::, ,:
True Stories, o;
Lucilius, ::
Lucretius, ,c
Luke, gospel of, :, :,c, :,;
lyric poetry and the symposium, ;
treatment in Plutarch and Athenaeus, :;
MacCormack, Sabine, :c,, :c;
MacDonald, Dennis, ,:,
McGowan, Andrew, ,c:
Machiavelli, :
Macrobius, ::
life and career, :c::
Saturnalia, :c::
Avienus, :::, ::,:, ::,, ::,
Evangelus, ::c, ::::, ::o, :,:
Greek guests, ::c, ::c, :::, :::, ::,
ideals of harmony, :c, :::
preface, :c,o
relationship with Athenaeus, :c,, ::,, ::;
relationship with Aulus Gellius, :c,, :co,
:c, ::, ::
relationship with Platos Symposium,
:co;, ::,
relationship with Plutarchs Sympotic
Questions, :o, :c:, :c,, ::c, ::o,
::;:o
representation of dialogue and debate, :c:,
:::
representation of Roman identity, :c,,
:c:
representation of the past, ::,:
Servius, :c:, :c, ::,:, ::o, ::,
Symmachus, :c:, :c,, :::, ::::, ::,
verbatim quotation, :c:, :c,, :c;
Vettius Praetextatus, :c:, ::c, :::, ::, ::,,
:::
Virgil, :c:, :c,, :c,, :c;, :c,, :::, :::,
::o
Maecenas, :;
Marcus Aurelius, :,, :,,
Mark, gospel of, :,:
Martyr Acts, :,,
martyrdom, martyrs, :,:, :oc, :;,, :;;, :,,,
,c,o
feasts of the martyrs, :,
Matreas of Pitane, :,
Matthew, gospel of, :,:
meat (see also under sacrice), :c, :, :, :,,
,c:, ,:,o, ,,,, ,:
medical writing on food (see also under Galen),
:,
Menander, :,, :,,
Menippus, Menippean satire, :, :;, ,, ,, ,o,
:,
metaphors of eating and drinking, , ,;, ,c, :,,
:;,, :,, :
applied to reading (see under Apuleius)
Methodius
career, :,:,, :;;
Symposium, :,;, ::, :,:;o, ,,, ,,,
chastity, :,::, :,,, :,,, :,;, :oc:, :o:,
:o, :oo;
framing conversation, :,:, :,,, :o::,
:o,;:, :;,
hymn, :,, :oc:, :o
imitation of Plato, :;,, :,:, :,,, :,o;,
:o:, :o,, :;c, :;::, :;,, :;, :;,
millenarian character, :,o;
miscellanistic character, :o,,
Index c,
relationship with encratism, :,:, :,,, :o:,
:;:, :;,
representation of community, :,,o:
representation of dialogue and debate, :,,,
:o;o
representation of divine Logos, :o;, :;,
:,
setting, :,o,
Thekla, :,,, :oc, :o, :;,
theology, :,:,
Mildenhall treasure, :,:
Miller, Patricia Cox, ,,
Minucius Felix, :,;
miscellanistic writing, see compilatory writing
Mithras, :,,
moderation (see also asceticism), , :;, o, ,;,
:c, :,, :,, :::, :,:, :,;, :, ,c,
monks, monasticism (see also hagiography, and
asceticism), :,, ,co;, ,:o,
Morales, Helen, :;,, :;,
music, musicians, ;, :c, ::, ,,, ;, o, ::,, ,c,,
,::::
Neoplatonism, :,,, :,,, :o,, :o, :, :,:, :,;,
:cc
New Comedy, :,, :,:
Nikander of Kolophon, :c:
Nilus of Ancyra, ,,,
Nonnus, :;,, :::, :c:
novels, Greek and Latin (see also under
Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, and
under individual author names), :,,
:oo,
distinction between ideal and
comic-realistic, :;:,
representation of the human body, :o,
Numenios of Herakleia, :,
OBrien, Maeve, :c
Odysseus, ,, ,, ;, ,, ::o, ::,, :;:, ,:o
Origen, :,, :;,
Ostia, ::, :,c
Pachomian monasticism, Pachomius Rules, ,:;,
,:, ,o
Palestine, :::, ,:o;
Palladius, ,
Lausiac History, ,:,, ,,,, ,,,
Pan, ::
Panamara, :
paradox in early Christian self-denition, :,,
,,o
parasites (see also under Alciphron, Apuleius,
asceticism, Athenaeus, philosophers),
:,,, :,,, :,,, ::;, ,,,
Parmeniskos, :c;,
Passion of Matthew, ,c
Passover, ::o, ::,, :,
patronage system in Roman culture, :o, ,o, :,
:,, :;, :, :,
Paul (see also Acts of Paul, Acts of Paul and
Thekla), ::;, ::,, :,:, :,,, :oc, :o,, :o;,
:;:, :;, ,c:
Pausanias, ,, :,,
Pelling, Christopher, :co
Perkins, Judith, :o;, :,,, ,,o
Petrarch, :
Petronius, Satyrica, :;, ,,, :oo, :;:, :;o;
imitation of Platos Symposium, :;o;
Pharisees, :,:, :,,
Pherekrates (comic poet), :c:, :c:
Philo, On the Contemplative Life, :,,o
Philomela and Tereus story, :;,o
Philopappos, ,
philosophers (see also Plutarch, Symposium of the
Seven Sages and Sympotic Questions, and
under Lucian), ,, ,c, :oc, :o:, ,:
characterised by eating and drinking habits,
:,o:, :, ,cc, ,,c
equated with parasites, :,,, :,, :;,:
Philostratus
Life of Apollonius, :,:
Lives of the Sophists, ,, :o:,
Philoxenos of Leukas, :,
Pieters, J urgen, :
Plato (comic poet), :,, :c:
Plato, :, ,, ,c:, ;,, :,,, :;, ::,, ::, ,;
Gorgias, :c
Laws, ::, ,c, o,
Phaedrus, :,;, :c
Protagoras, ,, :;:
Symposium, ::, ::, ,:, ,o, :,,o, :,, :o:, :,,
:;
Alcibiades, ::, :;, :,, ::,, :,:
framing conversation, ,::, :, :co;
imitation of (see also under Methodius,
Macrobius, Petronius), :, ;, :,;, :,
use of dialogue form, :,
pleasure, ,::, :,o, :c, :,, :,,, :,, :,, ::,,
:o;, ,,:, ,,:, ,,, ,:
Pliny the Younger, :c,
Plotinus, :,,
Plutarch
How the Young Man Should Listen to Poetry,
c
How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, ,,,
:,, :,
Lives, o:
Natural Questions, o;
On Garrulity, ,,
c Index
Plutarch (cont.)
On Isis and Osiris, o
On Listening, oc:
On the E at Delphi, o
On the Face in the Moon, c
On the Intelligence of Animals, ,
Platonic Questions, o;
Symposium of the Seven Sages, o:, :,,, :,,
Sympotic Questions (see also under Macrobius),
:;, ,::, oc,, :,, :,, :;,, :c
Ammonius, ,,, o, ;::
community with the authors of the past,
;,:, ,,:
didactic functions, ::, oo;,
literary ancestry, ::, :o
Plutarchs self-presentation, ;c, ;,
prefaces, ,c:
recent scholarship, :
relationship with broader intellectual
culture in the Roman Empire, ,:
representation of Plutarchs family and
friends, o,
representation of Roman symposiasts, :,,
o,, ;c
representation of young symposiasts, ;c,
;:,, ;,, :o, :;,
settings, o,, ,
Sosius Senecio, ,c:, ,o
styles of speech, oo;:
Porphyry, :,,
Porter, James, ;, :,,
Pratinas of Phlios (tragic poet), ::o
Prince, Michael, :,, :o
Prytanis (sympotic writer), ::
pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, o;
pseudo-Lucian, Onos, :,
pseudo-Nilus, Narrations, ,co
pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, ,;
Pythagoras, Pythagorean philosophy, o;, :c, :,
Quadrigarius (Latin historiographical writer),
::
Qumran, ::,
reclining, ;, :c, ::, :,, ::
regional food traditions, ,,
religious identity, food and (see also under
Apuleius, Metamorphoses, Book ::;
asceticism; Christianity; eucharist), , ,
Relihan, Joel, :,,
Renaissance dialogue traditions, , ,, ,, ::c
resurrection, :,,, :,, ,c, ,co
Rimell, Victoria, :;;
Rome, Romans (see also convivium and under
Athenaeus; Macrobius; Plutarch), :;
Romeri, Luciana, ,,, :c,
Rosenmeyer, Patricia, :o,
Runus, ,,c
rules, monastic, ,:;,, ,,c
sacrice and sacricial feasting (see also under
Julian), ,, :,,
banning of in the fourth century, :;,
Christian attitudes to sacricial meat, ::;
human sacrice, :;,, :,;, ,c;
imagery of sacrice, :,, :,,
meat from, :, , :,
relationship with symposium, :,, :
symbolic of communal identity, :,, ,c,
venues for, :
Sallust, :c,
Sandwell, Isabella, :,
Saturnalia, ,;, :,,, :c:, :,,
Schmitt-Pantel, Pauline, :,
Schmitz, Thomas, :o:
scripture, quotation from, :;, :o,
seating arrangements, :, o, :,:,
Seleukos (grammatical writer), :c:, :c:
Seneca, ,
Apocolocyntosis, ,, :,
Letters, :,
sermo humilis, ::
Servius see under Macrobius
Seven Sages (see also under Plutarch), :,,:
sex in symposia and symposium literature (see
under love)
sexual abstinence (see also under Methodius,
Symposium, chastity), ,:o
Shumate, Nancy, :c
Simonides of Amorgos, ::,
Simonides of Ceos, ,
skolion game, :c
social status, food and (see also under
symposium, links with elite community
and identity), ,
Socrates, Socratic dialogue, ::::, ::, c, ,, ,:,
,,, ;, ;, :c, :,;, :,,, :,o, :o:, :;,
:::, :,;
Song of Songs, :o:, :o:
sophistic oratory, ;,, :o:,, :o,
Sparta, ,
Speusippos, ::
spoudogeloion, ,, ::o, ,
Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon, :,,o, :,
Stesichorus, ;
Stoics, Stoicism, :,, :, o,o, :,, :o, :
sumptuary laws, ,
Sydenham, Floyer, :,
Symeon the stylite, ,,,
Symmachus (see under Macrobius)
Index c,
symposiarch, o
symposium and symposium literature
early Christian attitudes to see under
Christianity
in archaic and classical culture, o::
in Hellenistic culture, :::,
links with elite community and identity, o,
:c, :, ,,, :,,c, :, :;,c, :,,
:;, :,:, ::c, ::, :,,, :;, ,c,, ,,,
links with the past, ::,, c:, and passim
chapters :
rules and conventions for conversation (see
also styles of speech, under Plutarch and
Athenaeus and representation of
dialogue and debate under Methodius
and Macrobius), ;, ::, :,, :,, ,,, :,o,
:o, :c, ,
satirised (see also under Lucian), :;:c
Syria, ,:o, ,:,,c, ,,;, ,c
Syros, :
syssitia, ,
taboo, :,,, :o;, :,,
talkativeness, ,,, :o
Talmud, Palestinian, :,o;
Tatian, :,
teasing, :c, ,,, ;,, ;,, ::c:
Tertullian
Apology, :,;
De Spectaculis, :,
theft, :,
Theissen, Gerd, :,,
Thekla, see Acts of Paul and Thekla and under
Methodius
Theocritus, :oc
Theodoret, ,, ,,,
Religious History, ,:,, ,,:,, ,,,
Theognis,
Theophilus, :,
Theophrastus, ::
Theopompus, :c,
therapeutai (see Philo)
theurgy, :,;
Thysdrus, ,c:
Timachidas of Rhodes (gastronomic writer), :,
Todorov, Tzvetan, ,:,
Too, Yun Lee, :c,
transcription of debate in early Christian
culture, :;
triclinium (dining room, Roman), ::, :o
typology, ,,:, ,,,
Ulpian see under Athenaeus
unswept oor mosaics, ,::
Varro, :;, ,c, :::, ::
Vice, Sue, :o;
Virgil, Aeneid (see also under Macrobius), ,
voices of the past (see also under symposium,
links with the past), :,:
wedding imagery, :o:
White, Allon, see under Stallybrass and White
Whitmarsh, Tim, :,
wine (see also drinking cups), o, , :o, ,,, ;,, ,
::c, ::,, :,:, :,:, :, :,, :;, :,, :;,
:,,, :,,, :,;, :;:, ::, :o, ,c,, ,:c,
,,:,, ,,,
Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira, :,o;
women at dinners and symposia, o, :o;, o,, :,
:::, :,,, :,,oc, :o,;c, :;,, :;
Xenophon, ;,, :c:, :c
Cyropaedia, :,;
Symposium, ::, ::, ,:, ,o, o,, ;, :,,o,
:,
Zeus, ,;, :,
Zimmerman, Maaike, :;
Zorzi, M. Benedetta, :o:
Index locorum
The index locorum covers passages of the book which refer to specied subsections of ancient texts;
the general index covers passages which refer to whole texts.
Achilles Tatius
Leukippe and Kleitophon
:., :;,
:.o.: :;
:., :;,
,.,.: :;
,.:.: :;
,.:, :;,
,.,.; :;,o
,.,. :;,o
,.;. :;o
,.::: :;,
. :o,
.:, :o,
Acts of Andrew and
Matthias
:, ,:,:o
; ,:o:;
:c ,:;
: ,:,
:c ,:;
::, ,:;:
:: ,:,
:,o ,:,:c
:o ,:
: ,:c
:, ,:c
,c ,:c
,: ,:c
,: ,::
,, ,:c:
Acts of James the Less
:; ,c
:, ,c
Acts of John
o; ,c:
;: ,c,
,o ,c,
Acts of Paul and Thekla
, ,c:
,c:
:, ,c,
:, ,c:
:, ,c:,
,,, ,c,
Acts of Philip
,o:c: ,c
:c:o ,c
:,: ,c,
:,, ,c,, ,:c
:, ,c,
:; ,c,
Acts of Thomas
,c,
, ,c,:c
, ,::, ,::
o ,::
; ,:c
,:c, ,::, ,::
:o ,:,
:c ,:
:, ,:
,o; ,:
o: ,::
,c ,:
,o; ,:
:c:, ,:c
:,: ,c
co
Index locorum c;
Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena
::: ,c:
:::: ,c:
:: ,c
:; ,c
,; ,c
Adesp. el. 27 (IEG)
lines , ;
Alcaeus
fr. ,o
Alciphron
Letters
:., :oc
:.:, :o,
:.:c :,,
:.: :,
:., :,
:.: :,
:.,: :o
,.: :,, :,,o, ::
,.: :,c, :,o;, ,,;
,., :,o, ::
,. :,:, :,o
,.; :,o
,. :o:,
,., :,c, :,o
,.:c :,
,.:: :,
,.:: :,c, :,:, :,o
,.:, :,
,.:; :,, :,
,.: :,o
,.:, :,
,.:c :,
,.:, :,
,.:, :,c, :,:, :,o, :,;, ,,;
,.,c :,o
,.,: :,c, :,o
,., :o
,.,, :o,
,.,, :,:, :,,, ,,c
,.: ::
.; :o:
.:, :,,, :o,
.: :,,
Aelian
Letters of Farmers :c :oc
Ammianus Marcellinus
Res Gestae
::.:., :,;
::. :,o
::.::.o :,o
::.:., :,o
:,..:; :,o
Anthologia Palatina
;.:,
;.:;
;.,c
;.c
;.,,o
:,.,
Apuleius
De Deo Socratis ::,,: :c
Metamorphoses
:.: :,
:. :,, :,
:.,:, :,o
:.; :,
:.::, :,
:.: :o
:.:o :,
:.:o :;
:.:c :o
,.:, :,
.: ::
.: :,
., ::
.:, :o
.:: :::
,.:;: :o
,.:; :;
o.:o :, :;
o.,: ::
o.,: :
;., :;,
;.:o :
;.:: :
.:: :o
.:, :;
.:; :;
.:,:: :;
.:: :;
.:, :;
.,: :
,.: :,
,.:: :;,
,.:, :,
,.,: :;
,.,:, :,
,.,o :;
,.,; :;
,., :
:c., :o
c Index locorum
Metamorphoses (cont.)
:c.:,: ::
:c.:, ::
:c.:o ::
:c.:c:: :,
:c.:o :o
:c., :;,
::.:, :,
::.:: :
::.:, :
::.:; :
Aratus
Phainomena :,, :oc
Aristophanes
Wasps :::::,,; :c::
Wealth c; ,,,
Athanasius
Life of Antony
:., ,,:
;.o ,,:
::.,, ,,:
Athenaeus
Deipnosophists
:, :ac ,,
:, :de :cc
:, :ab ,,
:, :bd ,o
:, ,ab :,
:, ,ac ,;
:, ::f ,;
:, :obc ,;
:, :;f ,;
, ::ac :,,
, :,oa:,a :c;,
, :,od:,a :,,
, :oce:od :
,, :,oa:c,b :c,::
,, :,;bc :::
,, :c:ef :::
o, :,c:,,e :,
o, :,c:o:a ::
o, :a :,,
o, :,f:,ca :,
o, :,:f :,
o, :,:c :,
, ,o:ef ,o
,, ,ooa ,,, :c,
,, ,ooa,of ,,:c,
,, ,o,a,;,a :::
,, ,,bc ,,
,, ,ode ,,
:c, b ::
:c, ,,b ::,, :,:
::, ,,d;:d ::,:
::, ,,d ::,:
::, ocab :::,
::, ocb ::,
::, o:a ::o
::, o:bc ::,:o
::, o:e ::o:;
::, ,c:b :,:
:, o:,e :
:, oco,c :,:
:, o:o,c ,
:,, ooc :c;
Athenagoras
On Resurrection , :,
Legatio
, :,
,: :,
,, :,
,o :,
Augustine
De Beata Vita
:.o :,
:., :,
.:, :,
.,o :,
Confessions
.o.::, ,:,
Contra Academicos
:.:, :
:.,.:, :
:.:,.:, :
,.:c. :
De Ordine :.:c.:, :;
Rule ,.: ,:
Aulus Gellius
Attic Nights
pr. : :c,
:.: :o
:.: :, ,:, :o;
:., ,:
:.:c.: ::
:.:o ::
:.:: :;
:.:: :,
,., :o
,.o :o
,.:, :,
.:: :o
o.:o :;
;.:, :
Index locorum c,
:c.:o ,:
:,.:: :;
:;. :
:;.:: :o
:;.:c :
:.: :
:,.; :
Basil of Caesarea
Asketikon, Longer Rules ::
,:
Callimachus
fr. :; (=, M) ::
Iambics : ,, ,
Chariton
Chaireas and Callirhoe
:. :;c
., :;c
Claudius Mamertinus
Speech of Thanks to Julian ::::
:,o
Clement of Alexandria
Educator
:.: :o, :
:.: :
:., :
:., :o
:. :
:., :, ,,,
:.o :
:.; :
:. :
:.:c :
:.:: :
:.:: :
:.:, :
:.: :, :,, :;,
:.: :;, :
:., :, :,, :;,
:
:. :
:.o :
:.; :o
:. :, :;,
:
:.:: :
,. :
,., :
,.o :
,.; :
,. :
,., :
,.:c :
,.:: :
,.:: :
Exhortation :, ,: :,
Demosthenes
On the Crown
,c :,c
:,o ,
,c :,c:
Didache (anon.)
.: ::
, ::,, ::o
,:c ::,
:.: ::o
Dio Chrysostom
:;.: :,o
:;. :,
,c.:, :,
,:.,, :,
Diogenes Laertius
:.;o :,
:.:c, :,
:.:: :,
:.;, :,
:.::,,c :,
:.:,,c :,
. :,
.c :,,
. :,,
.o: :,,
o. ,
o.o :,,
o.;, :,,
o.;o :,,
o.,c :,
;.: :,
;.:;o :,,
;.:, :,,
;.: :,,
;.:, :,,c
., :,
.:::, :,
.:, :,
.,, :,
.,, :,,
,., :,,
:c.o :,
Ecclesiasticus
,:.; :o
:c Index locorum
Ephraem the Syrian
Hymns against Julian :., :,o;
Epicurus
Fragment c :,,
Epiphanius of Cyprus
Panarion
:o., :,o
.: :,o
Epistle of Barnabas
:, ::;, ::;
; ::;
:c ::;
Eunapius
Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists ,:,
:,;
Eusebius
Praeparatio Evangelica :c., (oaob)
:,,
First Greek Life of Pachomius
, ,,:
,, ,,:
,, ,,,
Galen
Method of Healing ,: :,
On Prognosis
: :,
:.o, :o,
:c.:, :o,
On the Souls Dependence on the
Body
:, ,c
:: ,:
On the Therapeutic Method :.,
:,
Greek Anthology
::.:o :,
Heliodorus
Aithiopika
:.:, :;:
,.:.: :::
,..o :::
,.:c:: :;:
,.: o
,.:,,, :;:
,.,: :;:
Hermogenes
On Method ,o :c
Herodotus
Histories :.: ,
History of the Monks in Egypt
pr. : ,:,, ,
pr. : ,
pr. ,; ,,
pr. :: ,:,
:.,, ,,,, ,;
:.; ,;
,.:: ,o
o. ,;
;.:, ,;
., ,;
.,: ,
::.: ,,
::., ,,
::.:, ,,
:c.:c ,o
:c.:; ,o
::.:: ,,
::.:,: ,,
:.,, ,,,c
ep. ,,
Homer
Iliad
,.:c:o
Odyssey
.::,: ,,
;.:::,: :,o
;.:;c: ;o
::.,,c ,
:,.;:c c
:c.,c:: ::,
:.::c: ,
Horace
Satires
:. :;
Iamblichus
Babyloniaka
;b,:: :;:
;;a:,b :;:
Ignatius
Letter to the Philadelphians ::,
Letter to the Smyrnaeans ::
Isocrates
To Demonicus :: ,
Index locorum ::
Jerome
De Viris Illustribus
c :,;
, :,:
Life of Hilarion
,.: ,::
,.:: ,,
,.:: ,,
, ,:,
Life of Paul of Thebes
:, ,,,
o.: ,c
, ,:
:c.:::.: ,c:
:;: ,c, ,:
John Cassian
Conferences
:.:; ,:
:.: ,:
.: ,,c
Institutes
.:; ,o
, ,:
,., ,:
,., ,:
John Chrysostom
Concerning Blessed Philogonius (PG .;,,o)
:,
Homily after the Remains of the Martyrs
(PG o,.o;) :,
Homily on the Martyrs (PG ,c.oo,) :,
Josephus
Against Apion :.,:c: :,o
Julian
Caesars
,c;b :,,
,:ob :,
,,,b,,a :,,
Letters
:, (Bidez and Cumont) :,;
: (Bidez and Cumont) :,o
;:c (Foerster) :,o
;:: (Foerster) :,o
Misopogon
,,b,,,c :,;
,cbc :,o
,oc :,;
,,cbc :,;
,o:d,o,c :,;
Oration ,.:: :,,
To the Uneducated Cynics :,oc :,o
Justin Martyr
Dialogue with Trypho
:c :,o, :,
:c ::;
::, ::;
c: ::;
Discourse to the Greeks
:c
First Apology
:., ::,
:o :,o, :,
oo ::,
Second Apology :,
Juvenal
Satires :,.;,: :,:
Letter to Diognetus
: ::;
, ::
Libanius
Autobiography ::, :,,
Letters
:.,.o :c
Orations
:c.:, :,:
::.: :,;
::.,, :,o
:o.: :,o
:.::o; :,;
:.:,c :,o
,,.:, :,:
Life of Aesop
,:, :,
Life of Maria Meretrix
; (PL ;,.o,,d) ,,
; (PL ;,.o,ob) ,,,
Longus
Daphnis and Chloe
,..: :o,;c
.,o :;c
.,c :;c
Lucian
Demonax
o, :
o :
Dream or the Cock ,:: :
Fishermen , :
Hermotimus :: :
Icaromenippus :; :cc
:: Index locorum
Lexiphanes
:,:
:o :
Nigrinus
, :
::, :
:, :
:o :;
,:, :
,; :
Runaways :, :
Saturnalia
:: ,,,
,: :;
Symposium
, :,c
:,c:
, ::,
:: :,
:, :,
:, :,
,, :,c
,o :,
,, :,
o :,o
Timon ,, :
True Stories
:., ;
:.; ;
:.::o ;, :,
:.: ;
:.:, ;
:.:c o
:.: ;
:.:, ;
Lysias
Against Eratosthenes :
,
Macrobius
Saturnalia
:. pr. : :c,
:. pr. , :co
:. pr. ,, :co
:. pr. , :co
:. pr. ; :co
:. pr. , :co, ::
:.:.: :c,::
:.:. ::,
:.:., :c
:.:.:: :co;
:.:.:,:, :::
:., ::::,
:., ::,
:. ::,:, ::o
:., ::
:.,.:: ::,
:.o: ::,
:.;.: ::,
:.;. ::c
:.;. ::c
:.::.: ::,
:.:. ::,
:.:.,: :::
:.:.:o :::
:.:.:; :::
:.:.: ::,
:.: ::,
:.:.: ::o
:.:., :::
:.:.,o ::,
:.:.:o ::o
,.::: :::, ::o
,.,o ::o
,.:,:c ::o, ::;
,.:,.:c:: ::;
,.:,.:o ::,
,.:.: ::,
,.:. ::,
.:o :::
,.:.; :c,
,.::: :c;
,.::.: ::o
o.:, :c;
;.: ::c
;.:.:: ::,
;.:, ::c
;.,.: ::c, :::
;. :::
;..: ::o
;., ::::, ::,
;.,., ::,
;.; :::
;.;.: :::
;.,. ::,
;.: ::,
;.:, ::,
;.:,.: :::
;.:o.: ::,
;.:o ::
Martyrdom of Polycarp
:; :,,
Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas
o ::;
Maximus of Tyre
Oration :: :,
Index locorum :,
Methodius
Symposium
pr. : :o,;c
pr. , :,;
pr. ; :oc
pr. :,;, :,,
pr. , :,
pr. ,:c :;:
:.:, :: :,, :oc
:.:, :, :oc
:.:, :o: :oc
:.,, :, :oo
:.,, :c :o;
:.,, :: :;,
:., ::, :oo
:., :: :;:
:.,, :o :o:
:.,, :; :oc
: ::;
:.:, : :;::
:.:, :, :oo
:.:, ,: :o
:., ,; :;:
:., ,c :;c
,.:, ,: :;:
,.,, o: :o;
,.:, ,: :o;
.:, ,, :o;
.,, ,, :o,
.o, :c :;c
,.,o, ::c: :,
,.,, ::, :;,
,., :,: :;c
o :o:
o.:, :,:, :;,
o.:, :,: :;c
; :o:
;.:, : :o
;.,, :,o :;,
.:, :o,;,
:;
.:, :;, :;
.:,, :c, :;
.:;, :,: :;,
,.:, :,, :;,
:c.:, :,; :o:,
:;,
:c.:, :oc :;c
::, :, :,,, :,,
::, :, :;
hymn, ,, :o :o:
ep. :,, :;c
ep. :,, :;c:
ep. ,cc :;,
ep. ,c: :o::
Metiochus and Parthenope fragment :o,,
:;c
Minucius Felix
Octavius
,.,; :,o
,c,: :,;
,c :,;
Nilus
De monastica exercitatione (PG ;,.;:cd)
,,
Origen
Contra Celsum
., :o,
.,: :o,
o.:; :,o
Ovid
Heroides
,.: :,,
,.: :,,
;.,o :,,
::.:: :,,
:.:: :,,
Pachomius
Rules, Praecepta :,,, ,:, ,o
Palladius
Dialogue Concerning the Life of John Chrysostom
, :,,
:: :,,
Lausiac History
pr. :c ,,,
: ,,;
:.:o ,,,
:: ,,c
:o ,,,
:; ,,
,:, ,o
, ,,;
,,.:c ,,,
;:.: ,,,
Panegyric on Macarius
, ,:,
Passion of Matthew
:, ,c
Petronius
Satyrica
:, :;
: Index locorum
Satyrica (cont.)
:o:, :,
:o; :;o;
; :;;, ::
, :;;
oc :;;
, :;
,c, :,
::,: :;
:: :;;, ,co
Philo
On the Contemplative Life
co, :,,o
;,, :,o
Philostratus
Lives of the Sophists
:, c: ,
:., ,c :o:
:., ,: :o,
:.::, ,:, :o,
:.::, ,::
:.::, ,:, :o,
:.::, ,: :o:
:.:,, ,,c :o:
:.:c, ,,o :,:o
:.:c, ,o;
:.:,, ,, :o
Photius
Bibliotheca :;, :,
Plato
Laws ;,a :,,
Letters ; :
Phaedo e :;c
Phaedrus
:,cb :,o
:;,de ,:
Protagoras
,,,a,a ,
,,,de :;:
Republic
,:c :,;
o:bo::d ,
Symposium
:;,e :o,, :;c
:;ad ,,
:;a ;
:;oa :o
:;;d :;:
:oa :;:
:,a :o,
:,,d :o,
:::d::,e :;
Timaeus ,:b :,,
Pliny the Elder
Natural History ,o.: ,:
Pliny the Younger
Letters
:.o :,,
:c.,o ::, :,o;
:c.,; ::,
Plutarch
Advice about Keeping Well
::,d::;c o:
Artaxerxes :, ::,
How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend ,cce
:,
On Garrulity
,, ,c:f,c,a ,,
, ,c,de ,,
, ,c,d,cb o:
:;, ,::ab o,
::, ,:c :,
On Listening
o, cb oc:
, c oc
:c o:
: o:
On the Face in the Moon
, c
o c
:o c
Oracles at Delphi
;, ,,;b ::,
:,, c:b ::,
Symposium of the Seven Sages
:, :ob o:,
: o:
, o:, ,:
,, :,ab o
;:: o,
Sympotic Questions
pr. : ::, ,c:, o,
:.: :, o, ;:, ;o;, :,,, ,:
:. o
:., o
:., o,o, ;c, ;,
:.:c ;:, ,,
:.: , ,,, ;,, ;,, ::c:
:.: o,, ;,, ;, ,
:., o, ;, ::
:. ,o,
:., ,
:.o ;, :,
Index locorum :,
:.; ;
:. ;
:., o, ;,
:.:c ;, ,
,.: ;::, ;,, :
,.: o;, ;:, ;,
,. o, ;:
,., o,
,.o ;,, ;,, :o
,.; ;:,, ,
,.:c ::
pr. ,:
.: ,, :, :,, :::
. o, c
pr. , ,:
,.: ,
,.: ;c, ,, o
,., ;:,, ,, ::,
,. ;c
,., o,
,.o o
,. o
,., o
,.:c ;c
pr. o ,::, c
o. ;c
o., ;c
o.o ;c
o. ;,, ,
;.: ::
;.: o, ,
;., o, ;,
;., ,
;.; ;,c
;. o,
;.:c ::,
.: ;
., ;,
. o,, ,, ;,
., ;,
.o o,
.; o,
.:c :,, c
,.::, ,
,., ;,
,.: o,, :o
Porphyry
Life of Plotinus : :,,
(Ps.-) Lucian
Onos
o :o
:;: ::
:: ::, :o
:: :o
:, :
: :o
:, :
: :
,, :
,,c :,
; ::
,: :,
,o :,
(Ps.-) Nilus
Narrations
,., ,c;
,. ,c;
(Ps.-) Plato
Axiochus ,;:d :,o, :,
Seneca
Letters .::c :c::
Sesonchosis fragment
P.Oxy. ,,:, (col. ,, :;:,)
:;c
Sidonius Apollinarius
Letters ,.:,., :c
Sozomen
Historia Ecclesiastica :, ,
Tatian
Address to the Greeks
:, :,
:, :,
Tertullian
Apology
;.: :,;
,.::: :,;
,.: :,;
,.:: :,
,, :c
Theocritus
Idyll ;.:,:, :o
Theodoret
Religious History
,.:: ,,,
,.:: ,,:, ,,o
,., ,,,
:;.o; ,,:,
:o., ,,,
:o Index locorum
Religious History (cont.)
:o.; ,,,
:,.; ,,,
Theognis
,;c
o;,o , :c
Theophilus
To Autolycus
,.,, :,
,.:, :,
Virgil
Georgics .,c ::o
Aeneid ,.;; ::o
Vitruvius
On Architecture ,.pr. :;: ,,c
Wisdom
.: :;,
Xenophanes
fragment :
Xenophon
Symposium
: :,;
:.: :o
BIBLICAL SOURCES
Genesis
:, :,,
o.: ,:;
Leviticus
:,.,,, :,o
:o.:, :,
Deuteronomy
::.::: :,:
:.,,; :,
1 Kings
:;.o ,:
2 Kings
o.:o, :,
,.,c; :,,
Psalms
:,o :o,
Isaiah
:,.o:c :,o
Jeremiah
:,., :,
Lamentations
.:c :,
Ezekiel
,.:c :,
Matthew
:: ,:,
:, :o:
:o.:o ::,
Mark
:.:: ::,
Luke
:.:,: :,:
.: :,:
;.,o,c :,:
;.,, :,:, :,,
::.,;, :,:, :
::., :,:
:.: :,,
:.:: :,:
:.;:: :,:,,
,:
:,.:: :,:
::.:;:c ::,
John
o.,,oo :,,
:,.:: ::o
Acts
:.: ::,
:.o ::,
,., ,c:
:c.,:o ::;
:c.:, :,,
:c.: ::;
:c.; ::,
Romans
:.::, ::,
1 Corinthians
,.: ,,;
.::: ::;
:c.:o:; ::,
Index locorum :;
::.:,o ::,
::.:;, ::, ::;,
::,
Galatians
:.: ::,
,.: ,c,
Ephesians
,.:c :o
Philippians
,.:, :
1 Timothy
:. ,
Hebrews
:.: :o
Jude
:: ::