Contents:
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Bibliography Includes bibliographical references pages and index. Locating the symposium-- 2. Voice and community in sympotic literature-- 3.
Early Christian commensality and the literary symposium-- 6. Sympotic culture and sympotic literature in Late Antiquity-- 8. Philosophers and parasites-- Food and the symposium in the Greek and Latin novels-- Food and fasting in the Apocryphal Acts-- Food and fasting in early Christian hagiography-- Conclusion.
Nielsen Book Data Publisher's Summary Greek traditions of writing about food and the symposium had a long and rich afterlife in the first to fifth centuries CE, in both Greco-Roman and early Christian culture. Saints and symposiasts focuses on works involving dinner conversations symposium or table talk literature from the second to the fifth centuries A. Subsequent examples as by Aristotle and Epicurus survive only in fragmentary form, and it seems to have been Plutarch who revived or at least repopularized the genre in the early second century A.
Greek traditions of writing about food and the symposium had a long and rich afterlife in the first to fifth centuries CE, in both Greco-Roman and early Christian . Buy Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco -Roman and Early Christian Culture (Greek Culture in the Roman World) by Dr.
In fact the last major work to analyze the whole tradition of symposium literature was written over 80 years ago. The book is divided into two parts.
Some of the writers of symposium literature further had didactic and moralistic intentions in explaining to the reader proper behavior and etiquette, such as moderation in eating, drinking, and speaking as well as respect for fellow conversationalists. Roman era composers also combined the then popular tradition of miscellanistic compilation to the table talk book.
While Plato and Xenophon had their characters speak about philosophical topics, Plutarch and Athenaeus have theirs converse about a wide variety of different subjects literary, musical, historical, mythological, scientific, etc. Moreover, Plutarch was influenced by the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems , in centering each of his table talks on a question which could admit many different solutions, thereby fostering inquisitiveness, freedom of speech, and self-assertion, as well as skills in citing authorities and debating.
Athenaeus was less focused on particular questions and problem-solving than on scholarly inventorying, and he was further strongly influenced by gastronomic and culinary texts. The only complete surviving Christian sympotic dialogue was written by Methodius in the late third or early fourth century A.