On the north wall, the single symposiast prepares to try his luck at the kottabos game. He is sighting over his kylix, in which there are wine lees ready to be projected toward the target (not shown), as is being done by the nearer symposiast reclining on the central couch. The older man of the pair on the central couch turns his attention to the couple on the farther kline. Here the youth grasps his lyre to his chest while discouraging the advances of the older man who caresses his head.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, March 12, 2021
Symposium
Symposium scene from the Tomb of the Diver, c. 470 BC (Museo archeologico nazionale di Paestum; click to enlarge):
R. Ross Holloway, "The Tomb of the Diver,"
American Journal of Archaeology 110.3 (July, 2006)
365-388 (at 367):
