Dangerous conviviality. The banquet as death trap in the ancient and late antique Western world.

Abstract

Sympόsium or convivium, terms belonging to two different cultures, Greek and Latin, are two kinds of activities that can be interpreted as a codified system of signs, thus lending themselves to multiple readings. If sympόsion conveys the meaning of “drinking together”, convivium refers instead to “living together”. The marked existential component of the second term may immediately lead to a question: were these often occasions for pacification or enjoyment among friends, as Cicero already hinted at (fam. IX, 24), or did the desire to seize the moment to resolve delicate political or family issues prevail, at the expense of one or more guests? The banquet in Roman imperial times, but still in late antiquity and beyond, concealed many pitfalls, the most obvious of all: poisoning (Montanari 1989; Cilliers, Retief 2000). The crime of poisoning was much more frequent in antiquity, as was the knowledge of drugs, poisons, and poisoners (Nutton 1985).