Among book-length studies of diverse aspects of ancient Greek symposia published in the 2010s, this thoughtful book is arguably the most ambitious synthesis focusing on symposia as they are represented in ancient Greek literature. In her discussion, H. also takes into account specific visual representations of symposia (mainly sympotic vase-paintings), despite the fact that this is not a book investigating in detail iconographical and other archaeological material. Compared with other books on symposia that have appeared recently (e.g. M. Węcowski's The Origins of the Greek Aristocratic Symposium [2014]), H.'s approach does not attempt to provide hypothetical reconstructions of the possible historical origins, development and realities of what has (schematically) been defined as ‘the ancient Greek aristocratic symposium’. Instead, H. examines a wide range of literary sympotic discourses as representations, or as ‘re-imaginings of the event staged in metred verse and prose’ (p. 2). Along with J. König's broad-ranging Saints and Symposiasts: the Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture (2012), this book is a most welcome contribution to the study of sympotic discourses in early and later Greek literature.

In the introduction, H. sets out to approach the symposion as a central component of the ancient Greek ‘thought world’ – as ‘the discursive space where individuals as part of a shared community conceptualized, debated, understood and attempted to find a place for themselves within the world around them’ (pp. 5–6). Identity construction in the context of sympotic discourse is a major topic in this book. ‘Talking about’ the symposion was conducive to the formulation of ideologically charged discourses about ethnic, ethical, philosophical and, especially, socio-political identities.

In the first chapter, poetic texts that ‘talk about’ the symposion, texts defined by H. as ‘metasympotic’, are examined from the perspective of their rhetorical strategies, that is, of how they shape authority and self-positioning. This is an especially well-written chapter, full of perceptive observations about authorial self-positioning and identity construction in a number of poetic (mainly fragmentary) texts. Topics discussed here range from sympotic representation and gnomic wisdom in Xenophanes and Ion of Chios, to ‘symposiasts as spectacles’ in Anacreon and Theognis, to competition, mistrust and conflict as expressed in diverse sympotic texts. The ‘fusion of word and action to construct identities and positions for the symposiast’ (p. 65) contributes to intricate ‘spectacles of symposiality’ and to the games of authority pursued at gatherings of drinking companions through gnomic and first-person pronouncements. The second chapter focuses on what H. calls ‘ethnographic’ sympotic discourses: more specifically, on the ways in which discourses at symposia about foreigners (e.g. Scythians) construct peoples' ethics and contribute, more broadly, to multilayered and self-reflexive contestations of ancient Greek sympotic ethics. In this chapter, among other cases, H. discusses the figure of the Scythian sage Anacharsis in the context of wider connections between sympotics, on the one hand, and ethnicity and ethics (what H. defines as ‘ethnopoieia’ and ‘êthopoieia’), on the other. The third chapter analyses major political aspects in the ‘sympotic’ (broadly defined) performance of historical characters (Empedocles, Sophocles and Cimon, and Aeschines), as well as further cases of imagined or historical sympotic/political misdemeanour in fifth-century Athens. This chapter considers different genres and – in a perhaps generalising manner – suggests that ‘the political attitudes revealed in performance can all be defined as detrimental to an existing political form or citizens or allies' (p. 154). It further shows how different writers (including historians, polymaths, orators and playwrights) employed sympotic discourse to articulate and define specific political anxieties and disruptive/oppositional politics. Taking for granted that in the ancient Greek imagination ‘the symposion was deeply political’, the fourth chapter expands the discussion of sympotics and politics by exploring drinking occasions as spaces for power struggles, unrelenting antagonism and violence, as these are represented in Aeschylus, Euripides, Xenophon, Ctesias and other later writers. This chapter also studies the theme of ‘deception and murder of potential opponents to the reigning monarch whilst drinking’ (p. 182). Sympotics and politics are intensively interrelated in the ancient Greek ‘thought world’, and their aim is to expose, contest, or dispense with a potential foe.

There is little doubt that the fifth chapter is the most thought-provoking one in the book: the symposion, both as a vehicle for testing ethical and political ideologies and as a ‘structuring device’ for understanding the world in ancient Greek societies, is here viewed from the perspective of philosophical discourses, especially Plato's. The first part of this chapter shows how the represented sympotic discourse in Plato's Symposion facilitated and defined the doing of philosophy. Disputational conversation ‘harnesses broader features of the symposion to construct a consciously combative, corrective and self-promotional series of encomia that “test the truth and ourselves”’ (p. 201). Furthermore, this chapter extensively discusses Xenophon's Symposion, Plutarch's Sympotic Questions, Parmeniscus' Cynics' Symposion as narrated in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistai, and Lucian's Symposion, or the Lapiths, among other closely related texts. This part of the chapter centres on intricate aspects of philosophical self-positioning and diverse approaches to or critiques of ‘how to do a Symposium’. H. shows how ‘writing a Symposium involves the adaptation and capping of previous [philosophical and literary prose] contributions in a bid for authority’ (p. 246). In the conclusion H. again places emphasis on her (and other scholars') argument that ‘investigating the rhetorical dynamics of sympotic representation obviates the assumption that such depictions of drinking parties in ancient Greek literature and art reflected some unmediated historical reality, and indeed the stylization and workings of the representation identified by this approach demonstrate how problematic that assumption might be’ (p. 249).

This is a wide-ranging and, at the same time, perceptive and well-written book, which will interest all scholars working on the cultural complexities of symposia and on sympotic identity construction.