Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

DaNcES, GAMES, MEALS

for the blooming age of humanity—he will, as Goethe says, “seek the land of the Greeks with his soul.”

It may be briefly mentioned that wine in ancient Greece was so cheap, that even slaves and labourers could obtain their daily full measure; that too much wine was often taken ; that the female sex especially did homage to wine, that in many places, such as Massalia and Miletus, women were forbidden to drink wine, and were directed to be satisfied with sober water.t

The drinking all round, consequently the Symposion proper, did not begin till eating was finished. Generally, a president was chosen by throwing the dice, the so-called Sympostarchos or Basileus, to whose arrangements the carousers had to submit. He decided the proportion of wine and water to be mixed. Of course the arrangements were made according to the intellectual level of those who took part in the company. Among men who were intellectually stimulated it was customary to season and ennoble the joys of wine with excited conversation, of which Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch and others give us wonderful specimens in the writings mentioned above. But also full scope was allowed to jest and joke, and the more so, naturally, as the gift of Bacchus exercised its stimulating effect, or more correctly, eliminated all obstacles.

We should not look at such jests through critical spectacles. Plutarch indeed quotes many which can certainly be called stupid, but which no doubt afforded much amusement to the guests in their jolly, merry mood caused by intoxication (Plutarch, Sympos., i, 4, 3). ‘The symposiarch ordered a stammerer to sing, a bald man to comb his hair,

1 Cheapness of wine: Béckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, i, 87, 137 (there is an Eng. trans.). Public economy of Athens ; slaves and labourers, Demosth., Lacritus, 32; Plutarch., Comparison of Cato and Aristeides, 4. Women’s fondness for wine : Ath., x, 440 ; Anth. Pal., ix, 298; Aristoph., Eccles., 227, etc. Women forbidden to drink wine: Zlian, Var. hist., ii, 38; on the different kinds of wine see Becker’s

Charicles. 168