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Μηδὲν Ἄγαν: Conviviality And Excess In The Symposium, Lauren B. Alberti

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This multi-disciplinary project demonstrates that the archaic and classical Greek symposium was a moralizing and educative space that governed the consumption of wine through the social protocol of the metron “measured restraint.” In Chapter One, I investigate sympotic drinking behavior contextualized within this concept of the metron as described by Theognis. Utilizing literary evidence and art historical representations of drinking at the symposium, I argue that a specified drinking protocol encouraged the community to benefit the male aristocratic citizen and ultimately their place in the polis. The symposium was an educative and moralizing space that encouraged communal harmony and …