Homer at the banquet: Xenophon’s Symposium and Plutarch’s Symposiaka

Homer’s close relationship with the symposium, understood in its broadest sense, is manifold and can be investigated from different perspectives. First of all, the Homeric poems represent a primary source for reconstructing some fundamental aspects of the archaic banquet, as the Iliad and the Odyssey depict several symposia of both gods and men. Secondly, Homer plays a crucial role both in the symposia/Symposia and in the συμποσιακά/Symposiaka, namely with regard to: (1) a specific literary genre (the Symposia); (2) the key social institution to which such works were devoted (συμπόσιον); and (3) the issues suitable for those conversations typically held at symposia (συμποσιακά), which were frequently discussed in Symposia and even became the subject of a specific work (Plutarch’s Symposiaka). The present study focuses precisely on Homer’s role in this field and aims to jointly investigate the three above-mentioned facets, through a close comparison between Xenophon’s Symposium and Plutarch’s Table Talk. This comparison allows us to tackle three ‘levels’ of reception: the reception of Homer in Xenophon, that of Xenophon in Plutarch, and that of Homer in Plutarch.