Concept
Symposium (ancient Greece)
Overview
In Ancient Greece, the symposium (Ancient Greek: συμπόσιον, sympósion, from συμπίνειν, sympínein, 'to drink together') was the part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems, such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara. Symposia are depicted in Greek and Etruscan art that shows similar scenes.
In modern usage, it has come to mean an academic conference or meeting, such as a scientific conference. The Latin equivalent of a Greek symposium in Roman society is convivium.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The Symposium is connected with the Phaedrus both in style and subject; they are the only Dialogues of Plato in which the theme of love is discussed at length. In both of them philosophy is regarded as a sort of enthusiasm or madness; Socrates is himself 'a prophet new inspired' with Bacchanalian revelry, which, like his philosophy, he characteristically pretends to have…
Plato, Symposium
Names Symposium several times; states what Symposium is.
said he. By Zeus, replied I, if any one then should ask him thus,—Simonides, what is the art, which, dispensing to certain persons something fitting and due, is called medicine, what, think you, would he answer us? That art, surely, replied he, which dispenses drugs to the body, and also meats and drinks. And what is the art, which, dispensing to certain things something fitting and due, is called cookery?
Plato, The works of Plato
States what Symposium is; the author is tied to Symposium in the knowledge graph.
Math. IX. 337) that Heraclitus said: “The part is something different from the whole and is yet the same as the whole; substance is the whole and the part, the whole in the universe and the part in this living being.” Plato says in his Symposium (p. 187, Steph.; p. 397, Bekk.) of Heraclitus’ principle: “The one, separated from itself, makes itself one with itself like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.” He then…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
Names Symposium twice.
Philosophers who discussed Symposium (ancient Greece)
Related ideas
- Socratic dialogue
- Latin
- Plato
- Symposium (Plato)
- Xenophon
- Ancient Rome
- Alcibiades
- Ancient Greece
- Cambridge University Press
- Ancient Greek literature
- Symposium (Xenophon)
Place in the tradition
Part of Xenophanes.
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