Symposia and drunken women

The Greek symposium was a key Hellenic social institution. It was a forum for men of respected families to debate, plot, boast, or simply to revel with others. They were frequently held to celebrate the introduction of young men into aristocratic society. Symposia were also held by aristocrats to celebrate other special occasions, such as victories in athletic and poetic contests.

Symposia were usually held in the andrōn - the men's quarters of the household. The participants, or "symposiasts", would recline on pillowed couches arrayed against the three walls of the room away from the door. Due to space limitations, the couches would number between seven and nine, limiting the total number of participants to somewhere between fourteen and twenty seven.  If any young men took part, they did not recline but sat up. However, in Macedonian symposia, the focus was not only on drinking but hunting, and young men were allowed to recline only after they had killed their first wild boar.

A symposium would be overseen by a "symposiarch" who would decide how strong the wine for the evening would be, depending on whether serious discussions or sensual indulgence were in the offing. In his play "Dionysus," Eubulus  has the god of wine Dionysus describe proper and improper drinking:

"For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more – it belongs to bad behaviour. The fifth is for shouting. The sixth is for rudeness and insults. The seventh is for fights. The eighth is for breaking the furniture. The ninth is for depression. The tenth is for madness and unconsciousness."

The Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans all held such gatherings but there were major differences between the Etruscan, Roman and Greek symposia. Both Etruscans and Romans  served wine before, with and after food, and women were allowed to join in. In a Greek symposium, wine was only drunk after dinner, and women were not allowed to attend.  Some Etruscan women were even considered "expert drinkers" and drinking and feasting paraphernalia have been found in the tombs of Etruscan women, suggesting that they partook in these activities. 

Although Roman symposia included women, scholars seem to disagree on whether  women attending such a drinking party could drink wine. Classicist Brigette Ford Russell, in her paper "Wine, Women, and the Polis : Gender and the Formation of the City-State in Archaic Rome" states early Roman Republican women were legally prohibited from drinking wine as a matter of public morality.  Apparently, they were perceived as too weak to control their impulses toward inappropriate behavior. 

She cites passages from Aulus Gellius writing in the 2nd century CE referring to statements by the 2nd century BCE moralist Cato the Elder. 

"Marcus Cato reports that women were not only judged but also punished by a judge no less severely if they had been guilty of drinking wine than if they had been guilt of unchastity and adultery." (NA 10.23.3)

The punishment according to Cato could be as severe as death.  So apparently, in addition to exhorting his fellow Romans to destroy Carthage, Cato the Elder railed against the dangers of drunken women.

This taboo was also recognized during the ritual of the Bona Dea.  Although the ceremony included a libation of wine to the goddess and, in all likelihood its consumption by the women present, Macrobius tells us that the wine was carried in a vessel called a honeypot and the forbidden wine itself was referred to as milk.

According to Plutarch, Bona Dea herself was the wife of the god Faunus, who caught her drinking wine and beat her to death for her transgression.

"Of significance also is the instrument of the interperate woman's punishment," observes Russell, "a branch of myrtle, the tree sacred to Venus, thus suggesting a connection between the woman's drinking and sexual impropriety."

Although society was content to let men use their own judgment to moderate their consumption of wine, women were thought, both in Greece and later Rome, to be less able to control their own unruly desires than were men.  Another classicist, Sandra Joshel, viewed this social control of women by men as an attempt at safeguarding the purity of the Roman state itself.

However, the archaeological record appears to contradict the enforcement of this restriction.  Like the Etruscan burials of elite females, burials excavated in Latium of the seventh century BCE contained such grave goods as wine mixing bowls on folding bronze stands and Punic amphorae containing imported Sardinian wine. These may symbolize the female's role as simply a hostess at sumptuous banquets but cast doubt on their own abstemiousness.

Even the legendary tale of the chaste example of a Roman matron, Lucretia, includes a description of the other women socializing at sumptuous banquets with their friends, sharing food, wine, and conversation. 

Another interesting aspect of this prohibition was the sanction to allow male relatives to kiss a woman on the lips to see if she was in compliance with the wine restriction. This "right to kiss" was known as the ius osculi. This custom (doubted by some scholars) allowed not only the husband, but the father, brothers and cousins (to the sixth degree) ​​of an “honest” woman to kiss her on the mouth upon greeting her to ensure that her breath did not smell of wine. By the late Republic, though, such hard-nosed conservatives  as Cato the Younger, in his "De Agri Cultura," began recommending wine consumption for both sexes as a health measure, even for slaves.

Two banqueters and an hetaera sitting on a klinê, detail. Terracotta from Myrina, Mysia, ca. 25 BCE now in the collections of The Louvre in Paris, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Terracotta group of Hetaera and young man with a naked slave boy as cupbearer at a symposium 4th century BCE now in the collections of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich, courtesy Wikimedia Commons contributor Matthias Kabel.

A drunk man vomiting, while a young slave is holding his forehead. Brygos Painter, 500-470 BCE National Museum of Denmark. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Stefano Bolognini.

Sculpture of funerary banquet found in a the chamber tomb known as the "Banquet" in 1978 in Egnazia, Italy, 4th-2nd centuries BCE now in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Egnazia, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Xinstalker. 

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Greek-Punic frescoed funeral shrine, with scene of a banquet. Roman imperial period, from Marsala. On the jambs, the symbol of the Phoenician goddess of fertility Tanit. The writing, which defines the deceased as "agathòs" (of good memory), is in Greek. Palermo Regional Archaeological Museum, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Giovanni Dall'Orto. (removed color cast)

A female aulos-player entertains men at a symposium on this Attic red-figure bell-krater, c. 420 BCE courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Banqueting scene in a burial chamber of the Tomb of the Leopards at the Etruscan necropolis of Tarquinia in Lazio, Italy courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor, AlMare.

Another Roman fresco with banquet scene from the Casa dei Casti Amanti (House of the Chaste Lovers) (IX 12, 6-8) in Pompeii (PD

Roman fresco with banquet scene from the Casa dei Casti Amanti (House of the Chaste Lovers) (IX 12, 6-8) in Pompeii. A man drinks from a rhyton. His female companion wears a sheer garment and a golden net over her hair. A female servant attends to the couple, proffering a small box. The table in front holds a set of silver vessels for mixing wine. The whole scene represents an idealized Greek drinking party, a pleasurable sight for the guests of this first century CE Roman household (PD)

Gravestone depicting a symposium. Sicily. Archaeological Museum of Syracuse, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Zde.

Statuette of a Banqueter (one of three) bronze, from northern Greece, 550-525 BCE, now in the collections of the Getty Villa, image courtesy of the museum.

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On Scipio's Villa

Image courtesy of  Wikipedia

Scipio Africanus the Elder

Today I was listening to one of Professor Steven Tuck's lectures in his series "Pompeii: Daily Life in an Ancient Roman City" and  I was intrigued to learn that Dr. Tuck ascribes the introduction of Roman villa architecture to none other than Scipio Africanus.  Not only did Scipio come back from conquering Carthage with a boatload
of money, but he subsequently ran afoul of other members of the senate, particularly Cato the Elder, so eventually chose self exile to free himself of the political bickering.

According to Seneca he cried “It is my wish,” said he, “not to infringe in the least upon our laws, or upon our customs, let all Roman citizens have equal rights. O my country, make the most of the good that I have done, but without me. I have been the cause of your freedom, and I shall also be its proof; I go into exile, if it is true that I have grown beyond what is to your advantage!”

So, Scipio took his hard earned wealth and moved to the seaside town of  Liternum.  There, he constructed a personal residence of significant proportions that would be emulated and embellished by Rome's later elite.


Two hundred years after Scipio's death, Seneca visited the villa and we are fortunate to have an extant copy of his observations.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca in Cordoba Spain.  Image courtesy of  Wikipedia

"I have inspected the house, which is constructed of hewn stone; the wall which encloses a forest; the towers also, buttressed out on both sides for the purpose of defending the house; the well, concealed among buildings and shrubbery, large enough to keep a whole army supplied; and the small bath, buried in darkness according to the old style, for our ancestors did not think that one could have a hot bath except in darkness. It was therefore a great pleasure to me to contrast Scipio’s ways with our own. Think, in this tiny recess the “terror of Carthage,” to whom Rome should offer thanks because she was not captured more than once, used to bathe a body wearied with work in the fields! For he was accustomed to keep himself busy and to cultivate the soil with his own hands, as the good old Romans were wont to do. Beneath this dingy roof he stood; and this floor, mean as it is, bore his weight." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On Scipio's Villa

I assume the forest (sometimes translated as "park") enclosed by the villa's walls represents the first vestiges of what would later become the peristyle garden.  Although the structure was probably palatial for the time period, Seneca, tutor to the emperor Nero in the 1st century CE and well acquainted with the lavish accommodations of the imperial court, is obviously appalled by the modest nature of Scipio's bathing facility.

"But who in these days could bear to bathe in such a fashion? We think ourselves poor and mean if our walls are not resplendent with large and costly mirrors; if our marbles from Alexandria are not set off by mosaics of Numidian stone, if their borders are not faced over on all sides with difficult patterns, arranged in many colors like paintings; if our vaulted ceilings are not buried in glass; if our swimming-pools are not lined with Thasian marble, once a rare and wonderful sight in any temple-pools into which we let down our bodies after they have been drained weak by abundant perspiration; and finally, if the water has not poured from silver spigots." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On Scipio's Villa

Seneca goes on to point out that Scipio probably only washed his soiled limbs on a daily basis and did not fully bathe but once a week since he toiled at honest work and had no need to rid himself of perfumed oils like later members of elite Roman society.  I found this interesting because I often think about how our own society has been influenced by the Romans and wonder if my parents view of weekly bathing back in the 1950s and 60s was ultimately a European adoption of a ritual handed down from conservative merchant-class Romans who also did not use perfumed oils excessively.


Seneca also makes much of the fact that Scipio bathed almost in the dark as his bathing chamber featured only "tiny chinks-you cannot call them windows-cut out of the stone wall in such a way as to admit light without weakening the fortifications..."  I think Seneca should have, instead, marveled at how much safer the Italian countryside was in his time as opposed to the early 2nd century CE.  After all, Scipio had just defeated Hannibal a few years before Scipio retired to Liternum and Hannibal had ravaged much of the surrounding Campanian countryside during the Second Punic War.  It's hardly surprising, then, that Scipio would have been careful to preserve the strength of his walls rather than carelessly focus on aesthetics.

Old fisherman or Dying Seneca 2nd century
CE Roman copy of Hellenistic original.
Photographed at The Louvre by Mary Harrsch

Seneca also should have pondered Scipio's reputed mystic nature.  Perhaps Scipio found that bathing in a relatively dark chamber encouraged the visitations of prophetic dreams.  Most of what I had read about Scipio up until now described his military strategies and his political activities so I was not aware that some ancient sources, including Livy, reported that Scipio was prescient.  Polybius, on the other hand, attributed Scipio's successes to good planning, rational thinking and intelligence, which he perceived as a better indication of divine favor than prophetic dreams.

"His [Livy's] account is more literary than historical, more dramatic and careless. He was not very critical of sources. In his effort to promote Roman patriotism he reduces Roman strength and increases that of the enemy. As for his attitude toward Scipio, he did not assume the mystical religion bit was purely 'a cloak and tool'..."
"The closest we can come to Scipio is the writing of Polybius, the eminent Greek general and historian, who composed his history of Rome some 60 years after Scipio's active career...He was, however, a Stoic. This philosophy insisted on the rationality of the universe and the existence of natural causes for historical events. This philosophy certainly helped him in comparison with the more mystic ideas held by others, but in Scipio's case it caused Polybius trouble."
"Polybius' sources besides the Scipio family and Laelius, were Greeks, on both the Roman and Carthaginian side. These Greeks followed the school of thought of Alexander the Great - that of a mystic leader. They were perhaps the original "image makers". They liked to surround the idea of the leader with a divine glow. If they could not explain something, they said it was due to divine intervention. Hence they developed the Legend of Scipio. Polybius was anxious to refute this legend. [However,] He admired Scipio as his Stoic HERO, so made him a supremely rational genius. The result was a kind of caricature, a cunning individual who purposely plays on the superstition of his followers and uses religion for his own ends. Polybius makes it seem Scipio spread these ideas of his divinity himself, while disbelieving them." - John Sloan, Scipio Africanus, Publius Cornelius, (The Elder) (237 - 183 BC), son of Publius Cornelius Scipio

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

A rather sour-faced Cato the Elder

Sloan also mentions that some scholars point to Scipio's Etruscan origins and the widespread acknowledgment of Etruscan mystical gifts as the source of belief in his prophecy.  Whatever the reason behind this legendary aspect of his nature, I find it quite intriguing.


I noticed another interesting tidbit about Scipio in my research, too.  He supposedly wore his toga in the Greek fashion, resembling the dress of Greek poets and artists.  He was well known to be an avid Graekophile but this overt demonstration of his embrace of Greek culture did not endear him to many of the staunch Roman traditionalists, particularly Cato the Elder.  Yet, Scipio also introduced the practice of being clean shaven, perhaps emulating images of Alexander the Great, but not typical of Greek philosophers and poets of the time.  Definitely, a man of unusual contradictions.  Perhaps what frustrated Cato the Elder so much was that he couldn't pigeon-hole Scipio into any particular category making it difficult for Cato to mount an all out political attack on the man.


Cato did ultimately succeed in driving him away, though.  Apparently, Scipio took his resulting bitterness to his grave, reportedly ordering a tomb inscription that read:  "Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis"—ungrateful fatherland, you will not even have my bones!" (although we don't really know where Scipio was ultimately buried and have never recovered any funerary monument with these words.)  


I was curious whether any effort had been made to find Scipio's villa and learned that an initial excavation of Liternum was begun in 1923 and continued until 1937 but apparently no evidence of the villa was unearthed.  A UNESCO volunteer excavation was launched in the 1970s but it, too, did not reveal the site of Scipio's last days. Then in 1988 a more extensive excavation was launched.

"The remains as they stand today date mostly from the the early imperial period. The standing monuments consist of a temple, a basilica and a small theatre, positioned on the west side of the forum with a large open area in front. These are contained within a surrounding wall onto which are abutted a number of small rectangular buildings that are thought to be shops.
"The temple is in a typical Roman style set on a high podium of locally quarried tufa, with the emphasis of approach from the front of the building, the facade of which would have dominated the space in front of the temple. One complete and one partial column are all that remain of the temple facade.." 
"To the left of the temple lie the scant remains of the basilica. The brickwork in opus reticulatum suggests a date for the building between the second half of the first century BC and the first century AD, although the existing structure would almost certainly have been built to replace an earlier building on the site. The remains of the basilica today are unimpressive, but the vestiges of the marble that originally decorated the building, visible in one or two places where modern 'quarriers' haven't yet found it, give some indication of a rather grander past for the building."
"The other main structure on the site, to the right of the temple, is a small theatre of the imperial period. The remains show that the theatre follows a typical Roman plan. After removal of dense vegetation the scaena or stage building, and the cavea or seating area where clearly visible. The upper part of the cavea had collapsed, creating the impression that the theatre was much smaller than it actually had been. Although very small, the theatre would have been quite adequate for a town of this size. It might be surmised that the population had grown from the three hundred families of the original foundation, but probably not by much." - Jim Devine, University of Glasgow, Liternum: A Campanian Coastal Town

So, it seems that Scipio remains as elusive as ever.  As for Scipio being credited with the development of one of the first villas, though, it seems the jury is still out on that one too.  Helsinki scholar Eeva Maria Viitanen points out that the "Auditorium Villa", excavated in the 1990s, indicates there was a luxurious residential complex constructed as early as the 6th century BCE.

The Villae Regina, a villae rusticae unearthed at Boscoreale near Naples, Italy

was one of 30 small holdings situated  on the lower slopes of Vesuvius and
 on the adjacent plain of Sarno.  These small- and medium-sized properties
 were family-run or employed a few slaves.  Photographed by Mary Harrsch.

"The building has a very long history, starting from the Archaic period, and its earlier phases are also fairly well perserved.  What is special about this site is the rebuilding of the early small farm as a large and luxurious complex with what are probably separate living quarter and productive parts towards the end of the 6th century BCE.  In comparison with other sites of the period, the built area is enormous and it remains very large among its peers until the 1st century BCE, when the villa becomes quite normal in size among the many other large country houses.  It has been suggested that the Auditorium Villa was in fact a country residence for the head of a Roman elite family, who thus asserted his right over the landscape inhabited by members of his clan.  Such residences would have been relatively rare which is why they probably have not been found before.  The other farms were small in size and there would not have been intermediary forms between the very large and the small.  The possible model for these large residences might have been the slightly earlier Etruscan elite palaces, such as Murlo.  It is also claimed that there were no Catonian small or medium-sized villae rusticae in the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE.  The development into the 1st century BCE villa would have been faster and the changes would have happened closer to this boom period than suggested before.  The economic explanation echoes the common model of war booty invested in land, as external funds were needed to establish the new large villas and that the owners would have represented a much more heterogeneous group of persons than before." - Eeva Maria Viitanen, Locus Bonus: The Relationship of the Roman Villa to its Environment in the Vicinity of Rome

But whether Scipio inspired the widespread development of Roman villa architecture or not, he certainly was a passionate and gifted individual that I plan to study further.  I hope that by giving up those "triumphs with their withering laurels" he found those "lasting rewards that keep forever fresh and green" Cicero described so eloquently in Scipio's Dream.

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