Literally the drinking-together – and the philosophy happened after the food, on couches, with a master of ceremonies
Symposium holds a 4.7 from four hundred and twelve reviews, charges twenty to fifty pounds, and the word in the name means drinking together.
Which is what a modern academic symposium has completely forgotten.
Sym-posium
Syn – together. Posis – drinking.
That is the entire word. The drinking-together.
And it was a real institution
With rules, and a structure, and it was taken seriously.
The meal came first – and it was separate. You ate, and the tables were cleared, and then the drinking began.
The guests reclined on couches, around the walls, propped on the left elbow.
And there was a symposiarch – a master of ceremonies, elected – whose job was to decide how strong the wine would be.
Because they watered it
Which is the fact that reorganises the whole thing.
Greeks did not drink wine neat. To do so was regarded as barbaric, and dangerous, and a mark of somebody who could not handle himself.
The wine was mixed with water in a krater – a great bowl in the middle of the room – and the ratio was decided by the symposiarch, and it might be one part wine to three of water.
So the strength of the evening was a collective decision, made in advance, by somebody appointed to make it.
The Prat’s editorial desk regards this as the single most civilised drinking arrangement in this survey and would like to see it reintroduced immediately.
And the philosophy happened there
Because Plato’s Symposium is exactly this – a drinking party, at which a group of men take it in turns to make speeches about love.
And it is funny. People arrive drunk. Somebody has a hangover. Aristophanes gets hiccups and has to be dealt with.
It is one of the great works of philosophy, and it is set at a party, and everybody in it is drinking.
Which is the finding
Eight postcodes and twelve hundred and sixty-three articles.
Every community that has had something to work out has done it in a room where drink is served.
The friendly societies. The unions, which were illegal. The coffee houses, which produced Lloyd’s and the Stock Exchange. The Corresponding Societies, tried for treason.
And Athenian philosophy, on a couch, with the wine watered by committee.
Verdict
And the couch is the whole design
Which is worth noticing, because it is item one on our specification.
A chair you can sit in for two hours.
And the Greeks did not use a chair. They used a couch, and you reclined on it, and you stayed.
Which is a room designed on the explicit assumption that nobody is leaving for a very long time – and that the conversation is the point, and the drink is the means.
And a modern bar puts in hard stools, because a customer who cannot get comfortable leaves sooner and the table is resold.
The chair tells you what the venue wants from you. And a couch tells you it wants you to argue about love until dawn.
Verdict
Excellent, strong number, and elect a symposiarch.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Someone’s going to send this to their MP and the MP’s going to recognize themselves and immediately claim plausible deniability.