Chapter 4 - Poets and Musicians at Upper-Class Greek Banquets

Summary

This chapter traces the history of professional poets and musicians at ancient Greek banquets from the archaic period through the Hellenistic age, including pipers, citharists, citharodes, harpists, and others. It also discusses various ways in which banquet music served self-promotion, personal and political. Elite symposia were venues for reperformances of victory odes, republishing a man’s fame with members of his class, sometimes beyond his own city and even his own generation. Philip II and Alexander used mocking poets at drinking parties to undercut and intimidate powerful members of the inner circle at a court where royal symposia had a quasi-constitutional function. They and other fourth-century rulers used professional musicians for display at banquets to enhance the royal vanity and promote their image. The chapter also discusses the extent to which social dining was a setting for professional poets and their poetry in the Hellenistic age and whether the works of academic poets such as Callimachus and Theocritus were sung.