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Oxford University Press, USA
The Symposion: Drinking Greek Style: Essays on Greek Pleasure 1983-2017
The Symposion: Drinking Greek Style: Essays on Greek Pleasure 1983-2017
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Symposion is the Greek word for 'drinking together'--the social institution of reclining on couches and enjoying the pleasures of wine, sex, and song. Although the Greeks learned the rituals of communal drinking from the Near East, they turned them into a way of life entirely their own, such
that for the male revellers they were elevated into a conception of euphrosyne (bliss), the highest form of pleasure. The symposion became a focal point of Greek aristocratic art and culture in the archaic age, proclaimed in poetry and the visual arts, while its structures affected the Greek
attitude to life in all its aspects, from the perception of politics, society, philosophy, and psychology, to attitudes towards sexuality, death, and religion. Even when the symposion began to lose its dominance in the classical democratic city state, it was never abandoned, but continued throughout
the Hellenistic age and was transmitted through trade and cultural contact to the Etruscans, the Romans, and throughout the Mediterranean. One of the longest surviving works from antiquity is an encyclopaedia of Greek drinking customs compiled in the third century AD, and we can still trace the
remnants of this sympotic culture today: the story of Greek pleasure thus lies both at the heart of antiquity and of the western history and conception of pleasure, and even now continues to resonate down the ages. Oswyn Murray's research on ancient Greek drinking customs, beginning in 1983, ignited a major new field of research in archaeology, art history, Greek literature, and Greek history and established him as an expert in the field. This volume consolidates his unrivalled contribution by gathering
together the numerous essays on sympotic subjects that he has written over a span of thirty years, and charting half a lifetime of thought on a theme on which he has had a shaping influence.
Author: Oswyn Murray
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 09/26/2018
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.80lbs
Size: 9.80h x 7.00w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780198814627
Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2019
at Balliol. He is the author of Early Greece (originally published by Fontana Press in 1980 and translated into numerous languages, including Chinese) and over a hundred articles, and has also edited, among other volumes, The Oxford History of the Classical World (OUP, 1986), The Greek City (OUP,
1990), Sympotica (OUP, 1990), and In Vino Veritas (The British School at Rome, 1995). His current interests include Herodotus' Histories (on which he is overseeing the publication of a major new commentary), the history of classical scholarship from 1700 to the present day, and the history of
pleasure. In his spare time he makes his own cider. Vanessa Cazzato trained in Milan, Dublin, and Oxford and currently holds a post-doctoral research position in the Netherlands, where she works on archaic and classical Greek poetry.
Michael Gabriel, painter, illustrator, and printmaker, has specialized in animation art direction and background painting, with work on films including The Snowman, Pink Floyd-The Wall, The Tailor of Gloucester, Pumpkin Moon, and We're Going On A Bear Hunt. He is an associate artist at Oxford
Playhouse where he draws from live theatre.
that for the male revellers they were elevated into a conception of euphrosyne (bliss), the highest form of pleasure. The symposion became a focal point of Greek aristocratic art and culture in the archaic age, proclaimed in poetry and the visual arts, while its structures affected the Greek
attitude to life in all its aspects, from the perception of politics, society, philosophy, and psychology, to attitudes towards sexuality, death, and religion. Even when the symposion began to lose its dominance in the classical democratic city state, it was never abandoned, but continued throughout
the Hellenistic age and was transmitted through trade and cultural contact to the Etruscans, the Romans, and throughout the Mediterranean. One of the longest surviving works from antiquity is an encyclopaedia of Greek drinking customs compiled in the third century AD, and we can still trace the
remnants of this sympotic culture today: the story of Greek pleasure thus lies both at the heart of antiquity and of the western history and conception of pleasure, and even now continues to resonate down the ages. Oswyn Murray's research on ancient Greek drinking customs, beginning in 1983, ignited a major new field of research in archaeology, art history, Greek literature, and Greek history and established him as an expert in the field. This volume consolidates his unrivalled contribution by gathering
together the numerous essays on sympotic subjects that he has written over a span of thirty years, and charting half a lifetime of thought on a theme on which he has had a shaping influence.
Author: Oswyn Murray
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 09/26/2018
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.80lbs
Size: 9.80h x 7.00w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780198814627
Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2019
About the Author
Oswyn Murray, Emeritus Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford
at Balliol. He is the author of Early Greece (originally published by Fontana Press in 1980 and translated into numerous languages, including Chinese) and over a hundred articles, and has also edited, among other volumes, The Oxford History of the Classical World (OUP, 1986), The Greek City (OUP,
1990), Sympotica (OUP, 1990), and In Vino Veritas (The British School at Rome, 1995). His current interests include Herodotus' Histories (on which he is overseeing the publication of a major new commentary), the history of classical scholarship from 1700 to the present day, and the history of
pleasure. In his spare time he makes his own cider. Vanessa Cazzato trained in Milan, Dublin, and Oxford and currently holds a post-doctoral research position in the Netherlands, where she works on archaic and classical Greek poetry.
Michael Gabriel, painter, illustrator, and printmaker, has specialized in animation art direction and background painting, with work on films including The Snowman, Pink Floyd-The Wall, The Tailor of Gloucester, Pumpkin Moon, and We're Going On A Bear Hunt. He is an associate artist at Oxford
Playhouse where he draws from live theatre.
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