Symposium
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In Ancient Greece, the symposium was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems, such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara. Symposia are depicted in Greek and Etruscan art, that shows similar scenes.
A symposium scene on a fresco in the Tomb of the Diver from the Greek colony of Paestum, in Italy, 480–470 BC
A female aulos-player entertains men at a symposium on this Attic red-figure bell-krater, c. 420 BC.
Plato's Symposium, depiction by Anselm Feuerbach
Pietro Testa (1611–1650): the Drunken Alcibiades Interrupting the symposium (1648)
Symposium (Plato)
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The Symposium is a Socratic dialogue by Plato, dated c. 385 – 370 BC. It depicts a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable Athenian men attending a banquet. The men include the philosopher Socrates, the general and statesman Alcibiades, and the comic playwright Aristophanes. The panegyrics are to be given in praise of Eros, the god of love and sex.
The front page of the 1513 editio princeps of the Symposium
A fresco taken from the north wall of the Tomb of the Diver (from Paestum, Italy, c. 475 BC): a symposium scene
A terracotta figurine of Aphrodite Urania, c. 3rd Century BC. Aphrodite Urania symbolized an elevated, more spiritual love, as opposed to the more earthly and lustful Aphrodite Pandemos
Aristophanes, who notoriously parodied Socrates in his comedy The Clouds, gives a possibly satirical speech on Eros at the symposium