The Imagery of the Athenian Symposium

The late sixth and early fifth centuries BC were a dynamic time in the history of the symposium, and hundreds of vase paintings from this period show people engaged in sympotic activities. Most scholars have understood these images as illustrations of contemporary Athenian practices, but such an interpretation cannot account for the enormous variety of settings, costumes, and participants in the images, nor is it easily reconciled with recent methodological developments in the study of vase painting. Noting the close link between the symposium and the polis in ancient thought, this book approaches the images not as documents of contemporary sympotic practice but as vehicles for exploring what it meant to be a Greek community. It argues that many of the images depict imagined ancestral symposia and that they thus shed new light on how the Athenians envisioned the history of the symposium and its importance to their city.

Author: Kathryn Topper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/12/2012
Pages: 233
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 10.10h x 7.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781107011021

About the Author
Topper, Kathryn: - Kathryn Topper was educated at Bryn Mawr College and Harvard University. She is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. She has held fellowships from the Center for Hellenic Studies, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, the American Journal of Archaeology and Hesperia.