Sacrificial Meal and Symposion: Two Models of Civic Institutions in the Archaic City?

Abstract

Abstract In the course of a recent attempt to evaluate modern research on the banquet in Greek cities, one question seemed to me to arise from reading these very different studies, a question which I ask in the title of this article and which may be put in the following specific form: is it legitimate to separate, even to oppose, the symposion and the sacrificial banquet, to read into the two of them a relative hierarchy, to make of each of them, in turn, a key institution and even an explanatory model of civic life? And, as a corollary, does the Greek city permit the use of the play of oppositions between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’, and ‘public’ and ‘private’, employed by modern authors in talking of these two forms of commensality? An investigation of these points seems to me to be required for a better understanding of the system of meals in the city. In order to attempt this, I shall swiftly recall the conclusions of work on the sacrificial banquet and the symposion, and then take two well-defined instances from the Archaic city, from two types of source, pottery and poetry, in order to discuss the different forms of commensality; and finally, I shall draw from these a number of more general conclusions on the specific nature of collective practices in Archaic societies.

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