Xenophon's Symposium lies at a confluence between two trends in modern scholarship. On the one hand, its author and his writings have recently attracted a resurgence in interest and credibility. No longer is Xenophon regarded as merely a ‘literary dilettante’, a dull, unimaginative and ultimately incompetent philosopher, or a conservative gentleman of the British old school. He is rather a political radical, an innovator in literary form, and the defender of a ‘trendy and shocking philosopher’. In this vein, his Symposium has been rescued from condemnation as a poor imitation of Plato's dialogue of the same name. No modern reader of Xenophon's work would go so far as Eunapius in declaring its writer to be ‘the only man out of all the philosophers to adorn philosophy in word and deed’. Yet, as Huss's comprehensive commentary has shown, the Symposium is much more than the product of an amateur philosopher and writer. It is a work of considerable complexity which draws on a variety of literary influences beyond Plato's Symposium, mixing seriousness with jest in order to explore, among other issues, beauty and desire.
‘Ancient Rome!’ The door of the iconic police box squeaks open. The camera pans, following a dark-haired man as he emerges, pushes through a curtained doorway, and, with a glint in his eye, glee in his smile, and a touch of London in his voice, announces their destination to his redhead companion. So begins ‘The Fires of Pompeii’, the second episode in the fourth season of the current BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) science-fiction drama Doctor Who. And so, no doubt, began the scribbling of pens on notebooks, as classicists who examine popular receptions of ancient Greece and Rome recognized a fresh opportunity to explore the dynamics of modern engagements with the classical world. At the time of broadcast, I was ensconced in my Liverpool office, writing the final lecture of a new undergraduate module devoted to Roman society. The topic was ‘Receptions of Roman Life’. My plan was to contrast depictions of Roman life in different media from distinct periods to encourage our students to recognize how modern reconstructions of Roman society are variously informed by questions of authority, genre, and cultural contexts. Serendipitously, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ provided an engaging contemporary reception of the Roman world on television.
The symposion was a key cultural phenomenon in ancient Greece. This book investigates its place in ancient Greek society and thought by exploring the rhetorical dynamics of its representations in literature and art. Across genres, individual Greeks constructed visions of the party and its performances that offered persuasive understandings of the event and its participants. Sympotic representations thus communicated ideas which, set within broader cultural conversations, could possess a discursive edge. Hence, at the symposion, sympotic styles and identities might be promoted, critiqued and challenged. In the public imagination, the ethics of Greeks and foreigners might be interrogated and political attitudes intimated. Symposia might be suborned into historical narratives about struggles for power. And for philosophers, writing a Symposium was itself a rhetorical act. Investigating the symposion's discursive potential enhances understanding of how the Greeks experienced and conceptualized the symposion and demonstrates its contribution to the Greek thought world.
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