We drink, eat and converse… just like the Ancient Greeks
And now, my friends, how can we drink with least injury to ourselves?
“…Socrates took his place on the couch, and supped with the rest; and then libations were offered, and after a hymn had been sung to the god, and there had been the usual ceremonies, they were about to commence drinking, when Pausanias said, And now, my friends, how can we drink with least injury to ourselves?
I can assure you that I feel severely the effect of yesterday’s potations, and must have time to recover; and I suspect that most of you are in the same predicament, for you were of the party yesterday. Consider then: How can the drinking be made easiest? …” Plato, The Symposium
Ancient Greek Symposium
Ancient Greek Symposium was a convivial meeting for drinking, music, poetry and intellectual discussion. Though in the beginning the symposium must have been a drinking party – the Greeks loved to party, the drinking and the entertainment – in fact it had a serious purpose.
During these gatherings and in the midst of all drinking, philosophical questions were thoroughly examined. “Where do we come from?”, “What is the nature of a human being?”, ”What is truth, what is justice?”
More Infromation
“…For it seems to me that arguing about poetry is comparable to the wine-parties of common market-folk. These people, owing to their inability to carry on a familiar conversation over their wine by means of their own voices and discussions— such is their lack of education—put a premium on flute-girls by hiring the extraneous voice of the flute at a high price, and carry on their intercourse by means of its utterance.
But where the party consists of thorough gentlemen who have had a proper education, you will see neither flute-girls nor dancing-girls nor harp-girls, but only the company contenting themselves with their own conversation, and none of these fooleries and frolics—each speaking and listening decently in his turn,…” Plato, Protagoras
“The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.” Plato
Join us to reach the thoughts, visions and directives that some of the wisest minds of humanity left behind thousands of years ago, so we can use it today and discover the way to deal with everything found on our way into the present and the future.
We aim to do just that in an entertaining and enjoyable way; to draw on the expertise of authorities in the fields of Classical Greek philosophy, literature, and science, presented in settings that only Greece can offer, not to mention food and wine!
Think all this in terms of
- The anger of Achilles (Homer’s Iliad)
- When a hero dies in defense of the others: Patroclus’ death (Homer’s Iliad)
- Encountering dangerous females: Calypso, Circe and the Sirens (Homer’s Odyssey)
- How to kill a husband (Aeschylus’ Oresteia)
- Marrying your mother (Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex)
- Fighting with the God (Euripides’ Bacchae)
- Explaining the world (Hesiod’s Theogony)
- The first Physicists (The Presocratic Philosophers)
- And so science was born (Mathematics, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, Medicine, Urbanism)
- What about human beings? (Politics, Ethics – Plato, Aristotle)
- We are born, live and then die (rituals accompanying the major stages of human life)
