Question: What is the Athenian Symposium?

The greek word for a drinking party is symposium.These get togethers were "dedicated to a varying blend of eating, drinking, games of all sorts, philosophical discourse and public sex with prostitutes, concubines and other men, but never with wives."

The prostitutes or as they were called in greek, hetaeri,were the more refined of their profession and by participating in the symposiums (symposia?) it allowed them access to an element of male society not available to most women. Even with this privilege it did not seem to advance their status in society nor gain the respect from their symposium colleagues.

Sexual power and domination over the prostitutes was used to demean the older ones and confer favour on the younger women. A young man would be introduced to the symposium and the hetaeri in order to "liberate him from the awe of his mother and any other female authority figures." It seems that teaching them to humiliate and dominate a woman is what they thought it took to cut the apron strings.

These symposia took place in the men's quarters of private homes. This area would be the largest and most luxurious in the home and accessible directly from the outside so as not to disturb the wives and children. A typical symposium evening would unfold something like this.
Dinner (peppered with philosophical discourse), washing of hands, a toast of libations to the gods, female musicians perform, inebriation, female flute and harp playing, sex (rough, anal and oral) with whomever.
It seems the women did everything: music, dance, conversation, song and sex. I'm not sure who did the cooking, maybe it was the wife?

Question: Would it be good to revive?
Answer: Did they ever go away? Now we have strip clubs and sex slaves and not much conversation.

The preceeding is my summary of a chapter from The Reign Of The Phallus-Sexual Politics In Ancient Athens by Eva C. Keuls, University of California Press, 1985

Ger