I. The musical performance in Quaest. conv. 7.5

An articulation of these first two tastes – the hedonistic and the austere – comes in Quaest. conv. 7.5. This talk is unusually detailed about differences in taste among the symposium-attending elite, as different speakers debate the acceptability of a contemporary form of ‘lyric’ performance; here I am interested less in philosophical arguments than in the way that their justifications betray judgements of taste arising from features of their identities, including philosophical affiliations.Footnote ¹³

At the symposium, the host and epimelêtês (supervisor) of the Amphyictyonic council, Callistratus, has invited an unnamed aulôidos (flute-player) to perform, since that musician arrived too late to perform in the Pythian Games themselves. This aulôidos performs in costume and garlands and is accompanied by a choros ‘as though in an agôn’ (ὥσπερ ἐν ἀγῶνι; 7.5.704c). He is probably then a choraulês: an aulos-player accompanied by a chorus of singers, a type of performance added to the Pythian Games in the late first century ce.Footnote ¹⁴

Plutarch does not specify the type of music that this figure performs. Though the repertoire of such musicians is difficult to reconstruct, it is likely that they performed ‘lyric’ in the broadest possible sense: they certainly performed dithyramb, and at least one contemporary Egyptian choraulês performed extracts from Euripides.Footnote ¹⁵ If indeed these figures performed canonical lyric poetry, there is no trace of that in Plutarch's text, which emphasizes instead the non-verbal elements of the performance: this figure ‘hypnotizes with his piping’ (καταυλεῖν; 7.5.704d) and elicits dancing appropriate to its ‘rhythm and melody’ (τοῖς κρούμασιν ἐκείνοις καὶ τοῖς μέλεσιν; 7.5.704d).

Plutarch's staged debate around this figure functions as a contribution to a larger cultural debate about the appropriateness of this form of performance. Though it is difficult now to fully unpack the cultural ramifications around these figures, they were controversial as a new form of performance. While aulos-players were accompanied by choruses as early as at the court of Alexander,Footnote ¹⁶ it is only in the first century ce that such ensemble groups were awarded prizes at Italian contests, and the first evidence of such prizes at Delphi is a statue base for a Tiberius Skandilianos Zôsimos erected sometime before 120 ce.Footnote ¹⁷ If Strasser is right to conclude that the contests were introduced at Delphi only after they were included in the Capitolian Games, founded in 86 ce,Footnote ¹⁸ then the competition in choraulia is one of the controversial modern musical competitions debated and nearly eliminated in Quaest. conv. 5.2.Footnote ¹⁹ Likewise in this particular symposium, when Lamprias rejects this music he says that listeners should prefer ‘the Helicon of the ancients’, (τὸν Ἑλικῶνα τὸν τῶν παλαιῶν; 7.5.706d), implying by contrast that this genre of performance would not have been found in distant antiquity. The controversy in this talk therefore functions implicitly as a consideration of the validity of controversial newer forms of popular musical – lyric – performance.

The nature of this controversy is hard to determine, since our largely archaizing literary sources tend to ignore this performance.Footnote ²⁰ Roughly contemporary Latin sources provide some evidence. In Martial, boys can learn ‘profitable skills’ from a choraulês.Footnote ²¹ In Petronius, the boorish Trimalchio claims to be amused only by acrobats and trumpeters; evidently bored by a choraulês at his convivium, he orders the musician to sing in Latin.Footnote ²² Most significantly, Martial dismisses the ‘learned’ sympotic treatises of Priscus and offers the shortcut to the ideal convivium: one without a choraulês.Footnote ²³ Martial's punchline is too compressed to allow a full comprehension of why the symposium (and sympotic literature) is better off without the choraulês,Footnote ²⁴ but the impression received is of a long-standing concern for the appropriateness of the choraulês in (at least Latin) convivia and how to appreciate them.

Plutarch's introduction of a choraulês into a symposium hence contributes to a larger cultural debate about the appropriateness of such figures in symposia. In Plutarch's depiction, too, this musician becomes controversial. He stirs the symposium to such pleasure (ὑφ᾽ ἡδονῆς; 7.5.704d) that ‘the majority leapt up and joined in the dancing, with servile movements’ (ἀνεπήδων οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ συνεκινοῦντο κινήσεις ἀνελευθέρους; 7.5.704d). The performance's combination of song and dance provokes the audience itself to join in and dance together with the choraulês and chorus. The narrator characterizes this participation negatively and in status-based terms.

II. Taste and identity in Quaest. conv. 7.5

What follows are two reactions to the music: Callistratus’ defence of the performance, and a bitter attack by Plutarch's brother Lamprias, largely matching the narrator's own views but perhaps even more condemnatory. These two characters argue whether pleasures seen and heard can be harmful: Callistratus claims that these pleasures cannot lead to a loss of self-control and should not be condemned, while Lamprias claims that through one's misapprehension and oversight they can corrupt the faculty of judgement and prudence; one should reject this music in favour of ‘Euripides and Pindar and Menander’. Their positions and details in their arguments function as indications of social distinction. Specifically, Callistratus serves as a spokesperson for an aesthetic taste that favours his particularly large amount of economic capital, while Lamprias speaks on behalf of a taste that favours a large amount of cultural capital with more middling financial resources. It is particularly important that both characters situate aesthetic taste in a broader cultural matrix: both argue that preferences in art align with preferences in food and other cultural choices.

Callistratus’ and Lamprias’ different relationships to performances in the Pythian Games motivate their different tastes. The narrator presents Callistratus as unusually wealthy, as well as intellectually significant: in Callistratus’ earlier appearance in the QC, the narrator describes him as a sophist who displays enormous generosity and wealth in hosting many huge parties at the Greek resort town of Aedepsus.Footnote ²⁵ In this talk, the narrator emphasizes the connection between Callistratus and his peers and the Games: the defenders of this mode of performance are Callistratus, the epimelêtês of the Amphiktyons, and possibly also the agônothetês (master of ceremonies), and other chorêgoi (producers) of such entertainments.Footnote ²⁶ These figures stand to gain personally from the success of the performances, including with honours bestowed by Delphi and imperial recognition.Footnote ²⁷ Callistratus’ status as a sophist makes it especially appropriate for him to support the performances: not only do sophists through Plutarch's works and more generally in the Second Sophistic competitively strive for similar successes, but there is furthermore a structural similarity between the competitive world of the sophists and the competitive venues of the mousikoi agônes (musical competitions).Footnote ²⁸ It is no surprise that Callistratus’ taste has been moulded by his sophistic identity and position at Delphi such that he articulates an aesthetic that embraces and justifies such performances. Simultaneously, however, he continues to appreciate at least some canonical poetry, a part of the paideia so important for sophistic culture: in the course of his argument he quotes Pindar once.Footnote ²⁹

Callistratus articulates a hedonistic aesthetic, stating that the pleasure arising from such performances is appropriate for as many people as possible. His argument is hedonistic in the sense that he does not distinguish the pleasures of sight and vision from other senses: they are all ‘aesthetic’, insofar as the pleasures (ἡδοναὶ) of foods and perfumes can also be labelled ‘beautiful’ (καλά).Footnote ³⁰ In Callistratus’ previous appearance in the QC his resort was praised for its outstanding meat and fish, and his tables were ‘incredibly varied’ (ποικιλώταται; 4.4.667c–d);Footnote ³¹ his argument here suggests a continuity between the two talks in that he is consistently characterized as preferring expensive pleasures, including both diverse foods at the table and the ability to commission a private performance from a choraulês.Footnote ³² He not only demonstrates but also articulates a preference for these pleasures, admitting that they are ‘pleasant’ (ἡδέως; 7.5.704e) and ‘expensive’ (πολυτελῶς; 7.5.704e) but denying that they are examples of ‘incontinence’ (ἀκρασίας; 7.5.705b) or ‘luxury’ (ἡδυπαθείας; 7.5.705b).

The bulk of Callistratus’ argument centres around naturalizing the pleasures of sight and hearing – not just (all) humans but also animals are affected by music and dance – and hence ‘we’ should receive as many people as possible as spectators of this pastime.Footnote ³³ The first-person ‘we’ positions the symposiasts as distinct from the crowds at Delphi and constructs the relationship between the chorêgoi and the crowds as akin to that of a sympotic host and his guests: ‘we’ are the ones ‘receiving’ the crowds. Yet both groups appreciate these performances. Callistratus hence argues for a continuity between the taste of the wealthy like himself and more popular taste (insofar as the 4,500 or so accommodated by the theatre at Delphi can be considered ‘popular’),Footnote ³⁴ using labels granting this performance a certain social status: this act of spectatorship is ‘liberal’ (ἐλευθέριος) and ‘urbane’ (ἀστεῖος). Likewise, the narrator's characterization of the relationship between Callistratus and the performer omits the likely financial connection; instead, the narrator presents them as social equals, labelling the performer as Callistratus’ ‘fellow citizen and friend’ (αὐλῳδόν τινα πολίτην καὶ φίλον; 7.5.704c).

Lamprias, in contrast, denies these pleasures such a label – for him these ‘crazes’ for the aulos are merely ‘so-called liberal’ (ἐλευθερίαις λεγομέναις) – as he prefers a kind of austerity. Like Callistratus he sees a kinship between the pleasures of certain kinds of musical performance and the pleasures of expensive food and the body; and he similarly sees the desire for the ‘expensive courtesan’ (πολυτελὴς ἑταίρα) and that of the ‘gourmet’ (ὀψόφαγος) as similar to the fierce desire for music (7.5.706a–b). All these pleasures possess the possibility of ‘ruining’ (διαφθείρειν) the recipient and must be guarded against (7.5.705e–f).

Lamprias identifies two key differences between these types of pleasure. First, these pleasures affect different features of the soul.Footnote ³⁵ Second, unlike other luxuries music is often available at no cost to the hearer, ‘with others serving as the chorêgoi’,Footnote ³⁶ whereas the cost of the other luxuries can prove an impediment to their enjoyment.Footnote ³⁷ Unlike Callistratus, who consistently ignores the financial realities of performance, Lamprias makes subtext explicit and dwells on the relationship between financial ability and taste. He therefore agrees with Callistratus in seeing a similarity in the tastes between those elements of the dominant class with the resources to pay for these shows and those without those resources. For Lamprias – as cross-culturally is true for many members of the dominant classes who have less financial capital than some of their peers – his taste is shaped so that he rejects hedonistic pleasure in favour of austerity.Footnote ³⁸ His austere taste then achieves distinction over two other possible preferences: he rejects both the popular taste for these performances, which can be seen for free, and the wealthy's taste for the same performances, for those with the resources to commission them.

What does Lamprias prefer? In place of ‘pantomimes, melê, and ôdai of poor craft and taste (κακοτέχνοις καὶ κακοζήλοις)’, he suggests that a person should be led back to the most canonical of poetry, namely ‘Euripides, Pindar, and Menander’. He therefore includes Pindar with Euripides and Menander in a catalogue of poets who are preferable to the contemporary music exemplified by the choraulês. Unlike Callistratus – who himself quotes Pindar and articulates no preference between Pindar and the choraulês – Lamprias articulates a taste that pointedly rejects the contemporary choraulês for canonical poetry.Footnote ³⁹ This particular collocation of poets is an expression of Lamprias’ idiosyncratic taste both within the QC and more generally in Greek literature.Footnote ⁴⁰ He perhaps names these three poets as preferable alternatives to the genres he rejects: that is, he prefers Euripides to pantomime, Pindar to contemporary melê, and Menander to ôdai. Footnote ⁴¹

Lamprias is not explicit on what makes these poets in particular superior to the music of the choraulês, but he structures his language around this preference along the lines of the austerity we have already seen. Quoting Plato, he claims that these poets ‘wash away the briny sound with fresh reason’,Footnote ⁴² echoing Bourdieu's claims that with asceticism is found support for art ‘conducted in the name of purity and purification’.Footnote ⁴³ Vital here, too, is the intellectual contribution asked of the audience: Lamprias associates his preferred poets with ‘reason’ (λόγος), which Plutarch, speaking in his own voice, associates with poetry with words in Quaest. conv. 7.8. Likewise, for Lamprias, listening to these poets is not easy: in contrast to the hedonistic taste for ‘ease and facility’,Footnote ⁴⁴ recalling this poetry will prevent one from ‘float[ing] reclining on the gentle stream of the music’ (7.5.706e).Footnote ⁴⁵ The mastery of such poetry, through its perceived cleanliness and difficulty, allows Lamprias and others with his austere taste to achieve maximum distinction for minimum financial outlay.

III. Music, the body, and audience participation in Quaest. conv. 7.5

For Callistratus and Lamprias some of the vital disagreements are the linked questions of the proper relationship between music and the body and the appropriate mode of audience participation, where Callistratus, expressing a hedonistic taste, embraces a link between music and the body, while Lamprias’ austere approach rejects it.

The talk thematizes these two concerns at its outset with its negative depiction of the audience joining in the performance:

The narrator divides the audience into two groups: the repeated term polloi, with that word's connotations of lower status,Footnote ⁴⁷ who jump off their couches and join in the performance's dance; and implicitly those like Lamprias who do not do so. The prefix sun- in the verb sunekinounto is vital here, emphasizing that the former group is participating with the musical performance: in the small space of the symposium, it would be difficult to maintain the distinction between performers and audience, as that audience imitates the performers’ motions and in effect joins the performance.Footnote ⁴⁸ The narrator explicitly disapproves of this mode of audience participation, and indeed disapproves of any kind of bodily audience response to the performance: even shouting and clapping from one's seats is attributed to the polloi after they have ‘given in’ to the music. Hence the talk considers the question of appropriate audience response.

What makes this response so unsatisfactory from the narrator's perspective is, in part, that the participants lose control of themselves and their bodies: in the ‘pleasure’ (ἡδονῆς) of the music they ‘give in’ and ‘allow’ themselves to be used by the musician as he wills, culminating in their bodily response to the performance. The comparisons to ‘madness’ (mania) and drunkenness from wine are significant: the audience voluntarily allows itself to be won over by the music (as in ritual or inebriation), but once its members enter that state they can no longer exert self-control over themselves and particularly their bodies. Crucial here is the phrase ‘to use however he wishes’ (ὅ τι βούλοιτο χρῆσθαι), a phrase commonly associated with the availability of the slave's body for the master's sexual pleasure that characterizes the state of slavery.Footnote ⁴⁹ Further links of the loss of bodily control to questions of status abound: the narrator emphasizes the distinction between the initial music, which is ‘refined’ (kompsos) and provokes no bodily audience response, in contrast to the later ‘unfree motions’ (κινήσεις ἀνελευθέρους). What we see sketched out here, then, is a hostile vision (from an apparently austere perspective) of an approach to musical performance variously characterized as servile or popular that is marked by a loss of control and a bodily response to the performance, including a blurring of the distinction between performer and audience.

Callistratus and Lamprias’ different responses to the problems of this audience response shed crucial light on their different tastes. Both agree on a continuity between the pleasures of sight and sound and the pleasures of the other senses, but do so on different grounds. For Callistratus the fundamental distinction between these pleasures lies in what they affect:

The pleasures relating to the senses of smell and taste are purely bodily; but musical performance appeals not to the body (which it passes through) but to a portion of the soul. Hence the pleasure that musical performance creates in its audience is acceptable because it does not arise from bodily pleasure, and does not result in a loss of control.

This distinction, while justifying the pleasure arising from musical performance, does not erase the fundamental similarity between these pleasures and the others. The other pleasures ‘stop at the body’, but musical performance affects the body too. Callistratus provides examples from animal behaviour to show that humans are not unique in responding in this way:

Callistratus’ examples show how mousikê (including both song and dance) creates a bodily response in animals: auloi (ambiguously referring to either the instrument or the sound produced by blowholes) produce dancing in dolphins,Footnote ⁵² and owls move their shoulders in response to dancing (motion). The fundamental equivalence of song and dance for Callistratus is expressed in his characterization of Pindar, who is ‘moved’ (κεκινῆσθαι) to song: the metaphor of motion to describe the beginning of song captures how, for Callistratus, they are one and the same. Callistratus hence presents a Pindar whose response to music mirrors his own preference.

The movement of the owls in particular comes closest to that of the symposiasts: like them, the owls take pleasure in the performance and respond by making motions ‘together with’ (sun hama) it ‘imitatively’ (mimêtikôs). Callistratus’ use of mimêsis here indicates that the owls’ (and presumably the symposiasts’) response is in itself a kind of artistic act and one voluntarily chosen. The analogy suggests that the humans, too, who are so profoundly moved are in a metaphorical sense ‘captured’ by it, as the distinction between performer and audience is blurred. For Callistratus then, musical performance by nature creates a mimetic response in its audience, but one that is acceptable because it primarily affects the soul. As we would expect from his largely hedonistic position, he therefore ultimately endorses this kind of pleasure and bodily response that arises from the musical performance.Footnote ⁵³ Callistratus’ hedonistic approach to performance leads him to embrace a model that allows the audience to literally lose themselves in the performance and move their bodies to it.

Lamprias’ austere approach agrees that musical performance affects the soul; for him, though, all pleasures affect the soul, and have a similar potential for corruption. What is distinct about the pleasures of musical performance is that they affect not the irrational part of the soul but the part that thinks and ‘judges’, and hence is especially dangerous (7.5.706a–b).Footnote ⁵⁴ As one should expect from his austere approach, one should be ‘wary’ of such pleasures and have the ‘calculation’ (logismos) to withstand them. If one does not, all pleasures can lead one to ‘give way and surrender his mind to the pleasures to lead away and despoil’, echoing the language of the narrator (7.5.705e).Footnote ⁵⁵ By contrast, Lamprias countenances the limited enjoyment of the lesser pleasures of food and drink, since the soul is able to maintain its judgement in the face of these other kinds of pleasures.Footnote ⁵⁶

For Lamprias, though the dangers of these pleasures lie in how they affect the soul, they are still deeply implicated in the body and bodily response.Footnote ⁵⁷ The pleasures of musical performance still enter through the body like other pleasures (‘circumventing the defences and without being noticed laying low and ambushing through the eyes and ears’; 7.5.705dFootnote ⁵⁸); and, even more than those pleasures, musical performance can yield a bodily audience response that Lamprias disapproves of.Footnote ⁵⁹ For him the symposiasts’ dancing is too far beyond the pale to even mention; even the clapping and shouting in response are unacceptable:

Lamprias ignores or erases the way in which the symposiasts mirror and participate in the musical performance; for him, their response is characterized by excessive volumeFootnote ⁶¹ and sounds that lack semantic meaning. This latter point is highlighted by Lamprias’ unusual use of alalagmoi: most commonly in Plutarch used for the war cry of an army in combat, elsewhere in his writing they are examples of the ‘meaningless sounds’ (phônas…asêmous) arising from strong emotion such as lamentation and terror.Footnote ⁶²

For Lamprias, the correct response is not to ignore the music or to leave the symposium, but to remember ‘those holy and august writings’ of Euripides, Menander, and Pindar and to offer them to the symposium for comparison (paraballontes; 7.5.706d). What he seems to have in mind here is the recitation or singing of selections from these poets as a counterpoint to the performance of the choraulês, instead of the other symposiasts’ noise and dancing.Footnote ⁶³ Senecio draws a similar contrast at 1.5.623b–c: the soul's pleasures stir the bodies (sôma) of ‘men of light character’ (elaphroteron) to ‘rhythmic motion’ (enrythmon kinêsin), namely jumping up, clapping, and, if they are able, dancing.Footnote ⁶⁴ In contrast, men of taste (charientes) ‘put forward their voice alone to the singing and recitation of verses and lyrics’.Footnote ⁶⁵ In both Senecio's and Lamprias’ view, individuals establish their distinction through how they respond to the pleasures of the soul: while in the popular case men respond bodily, with applause and dancing, more elite taste prefers a non-bodily response, namely one restricted to the voice (conceptualized as not part of the soma) and to the content of metra and melê.Footnote ⁶⁶

Callistratus and Lamprias hence largely agree on how the pleasures pass through the body to affect the soul, and in turn move the body to respond to the performance. They disagree, however, on whether these actions are acceptable. Callistratus’ hedonistic perspective, supporting the behaviour of the polloi, embraces this mode of pleasure and denies that it involves a damaging loss of control. Lamprias, on the other hand, from a more austere perspective, views the response to the performance as a corruption of the rational part of the soul, eliciting an unfavourable audience response; for him, the proper mode of interacting with performance is one of restraint, exemplified through the singing and recitation of canonical poetry.

This conversation hence establishes two kinds of elite aesthetic taste and approaches to ‘lyric’ poetry and performance: one taste that embraces a contemporary mode of ‘lyric’ performance, belonging to those with large amounts of financial resources; and an elite, austere taste for those with fewer financial resources that rejects such performance in favour of Pindar, Euripides, and Menander. Neither would be likely to accept the other's representation of himself: as we have seen, Callistratus quotes Pindar as evidence for his position, and would probably reject Lamprias’ account that canonical poetry and the choraulês are mutually exclusive. Conversely, it is difficult to assess how Lamprias came to prefer Pindar, Euripides, and Menander in particular as canonical poetry appropriate to his austere taste, especially since his choice of these three authors appears to be idiosyncratic to him.

IV. Intellectual taste in Quaest. conv. 9.5

The distinction between an austere and a hedonistic taste, however, fails to fully capture aesthetic preference as represented in the QC; it omits the taste of the figures primarily distinguished by their intellectual capital, most prominently the Platonic philosopher and Plutarch's teacher, Ammonius. He, and other characters who possess the highest possible cultural capital without the same degree of wealth and power held by characters like Callistratus or even Plutarch and Lamprias, are distinguished in their poetic taste through their preference for relatively obscure lyric poetry, including Simonides, Ibycus, and Xenophanes.

I would therefore compare such figures to Bourdieu's artistic producers and higher education teachers. These figures distinguish their taste in two ways: by most strongly professing an aesthetic universalism, wherein beauty is constructed not through the inherent beauty of what is depicted but through the aesthetic gaze; and by preferring those objects that are rejected by the aestheticism of their cultural inferiors through the ‘rehabilitation’ of ‘vulgar’ objects’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Such figures hence sometimes prefer objects rejected by the ‘lower-degree aestheticism’ of teachers, public-sector executives, and professionals. They demonstrate their taste through the manner of appreciation – ‘parody or sublimation’ – and through a difference in the precise objects approved of.

This kind of taste is most clearly articulated in the final talk of the QC, 9.15, where Ammonius provides as entertainment a unique example of dancing in the symposium (re-enacting Xenophon's Symposium) and offers a long discussion of the philosophy of dance and its relationship to poetry, drawing upon Plato's theory of language as gesture in the Cratylus.Footnote ⁶⁸ Most of this well-studied discussion is irrelevant for our purposes (except insofar as any philosophical discussion is indicative of Ammonius’ cultural capital and identity as a philosopher), but he closes his discussion with explicit comments on his taste. In many ways it aligns with that of Lamprias. Like Lamprias, Ammonius dismisses contemporary dance performance (including pantomime) and nearly all contemporary mousikê as kakomousia popular with the masses (pandêmon) but rejected by ‘men who have intelligence and may properly be called holy’.Footnote ⁶⁹ Again, language of status is invoked to justify a rejection of contemporary performance.Footnote ⁷⁰

What is distinctive is what Ammonius puts in its place. Lamprias sets the most canonical and austere of poets in place of contemporary performance, especially Pindar. Ammonius, on the other hand, closes his discussion (up to this point using only quotations from more common authors like Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar) with extended quotations from a possibly Pindaric hyporchêma and from Ibycus: that is to say, he implicitly situates canonical lyric in all its breadth, including more recherché authors and genres, as his preference over contemporary performance.

Ibycus is a poet occasionally deemed inappropriate owing to his scandalous embrace of erotic love, most prominently by Cicero.Footnote ⁷¹ Ammonius, however, ignores this aspect of the reception of Ibycus, and uses a quotation from him to signal the distinction between past and present performance:

Partly through this choice of quotation, Ammonius signals his allegiance to the Platonic tradition: a smaller portion of it is quoted by Socrates at Phdr. 242c–d. More importantly, though, Ammonius transfers Ibycus’ and the other lyric poets’ transgressive reputation to contemporary lyric. He sees a fundamental continuity between past and present mousikê, but one constructed as a decline from Ibycus’ ideal mousikê to a corrupted mousikê popular with the masses but somehow opposed to the gods. Hence, for Ammonius, Ibycus is not transgressive himself (unlike in Cicero's reading).

Ammonius’ taste therefore resembles that of Bourdieu's artistic producers. Unlike them he does not demonstrate an aesthetic universalism: he clearly disapproves of one type of performance. But it is easy to overstate that distinction: Ammonius does see a fundamental continuity (though one characterized as decline) between the mousikê of the past and present, which at least in part he approves of.Footnote ⁷³ Furthermore, like those artistic producers, Ammonius chooses to appreciate works which are rejected by individuals less strongly distinguished by their cultural capital, and does so through a kind of ‘sublimation’: the transgressive qualities inherent in Ibycus (the first-person pronouns in the Ibycus quotation implicate the poet himself) are transferred to his contemporary counterparts, while Ibycus emerges as apparently approvable as Pindar.Footnote ⁷⁴ Ammonius distinguishes his taste from figures such as Lamprias, who would reject provocative lyric like Ibycus, through his embrace of such poets.

Nowhere is the distinction between Lamprias and Ammonius clearer than in the relationship of poetry and dance. We have seen how one of the fundamental differences between Lamprias and Callistratus is their approach to dance and audience participation in movement: here again, Ammonius distinguishes his taste by rejecting the lower-order aestheticism of Lamprias (who rejects audience movement). A key difference is signalled at the very beginning of the talk: since the symposium of this talk and that of Callistratus’ in 7.5 are the only talks in the collection to feature any form of dancing, it is clear that Ammonius is doing something unusual in introducing dance to the symposium. The absence of dance from the rest of the collection is particularly surprising in light of metasympotic comments on the acceptability of dance at the symposium at 7.8.711e–f: there the ‘Bathyllic’ dance is deemed acceptable in part because of its relationship to the hyporchêma. Presumably, however, these dances are more in line with both the austere and the intellectual taste, to judge from Lamprias’ participation as both dancer and judge.

In this case, two boys dance what is likely to be the gymnopaidikê Footnote ⁷⁵ and are judged by a trainer and Lamprias (perhaps here still a child himself), who we learn has been chosen for the task for his own success with the pyrrichê (Quaest. conv. 9.15.747a–b). The choice of these dances is not accidental: according to Athenaeus (possibly reporting views of Aristoxenus), the three dances of the pyrrichê, gymnopaidikê, and hyporchêmatikê (which Ammonius will discuss at length in the talk) are those associated with lyric poetry.Footnote ⁷⁶ Ammonius hence chooses to have dances performed and judged at his symposia that are closely connected to lyric.

The core of Ammonius’ preference lies in his description of the relationship of poetry and dance, especially with his praise of the hyporchêma, whose author he tantalizingly refuses to name; often attributed to Pindar, it is sometimes now considered the work of Simonides, and would then provide a further example of Ammonius’ recherché taste.Footnote ⁷⁷ It is worth quoting at length:

Ammonius’ aesthetic position takes a different view of the relationship between dance and poetry: for him, unlike for Lamprias and Sossius, the two are inextricably interconnected and inseparable, in the case of the hyporchêma and beyond. Second, he endorses the participation of the body in musical performance – or almost does. More importantly, he sees the singing or even mere recitation of these lines as leading inevitably to movement: the body cannot keep still in the hearing of such music. Moreover, Ammonius does not object to this movement: he anticipates and cuts off the objection of aesthetes who expect ‘shame’ out of dancing by noting that this poet is not ‘ashamed’ of such bodily movement. And yet his recitation of these lines does not lead to movement in this symposium, and he couches all this praise as being purely hypothetical: the song almost (μόνον οὐ) elicits such movement, but ultimately does not.Footnote ⁷⁹ Ammonius therefore ultimately distinguishes his aesthetic taste by creating one that is close to Callistratus’, in seeing a vital connection between dance and poetry and praising the way in which poetry generates a bodily response, but proving his superiority to Callistratus by refusing bodily movement: a kind of sublimation, where he recognizes the appeal of such invitations to dance but possesses the control over his pleasures to say no to the request.Footnote ⁸⁰

For Ammonius, then, the hyporchêma tantalizingly flirts with the possibility of the same kind of audience participation as the music of 7.5 but denies its audience that pleasure. Figures most strongly characterized by their cultural capital distinguish their taste by preferring poetry that suggests but ultimately denies those pleasures favoured by wealthy figures like Callistratus.