This is an invited, fairly informal talk given at the Feasting and Foraging Event hosted by the Culinary Institute of America. In it, through alternation presentation and discussion, I cover the following topics:
What Ancient Greek drinking parties (Symposia) were like, and how they differ from what we call "symposia" today.
The available Literary monuments that tell us about symposia (including Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, to a lesser extent Athanaeus), and ones which we know about but don't possess (e.g. Aristotle, Epicurus)
The theme of "moderation in enjoyment" identifiable in the the literary monuments, bearing on the elements of drinking, joking, speech, and entertainment
We conclude with some discussion about how symposia have come to be the rather stolid, drinkless, academic occasions we know them as today.
An excellent hard apple-maple cider was supplied for the event and to its participants by the CIA. There's some noise from trains passing along the Hudson River, unfortunately, but that obscures only a bit of the talk
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