Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Private Life 153
One of the earliest laws regulating hours of labor in the Greek
world refers to the hire of flute girls according to three shifts: from
dawn until noon, from noon until nightfall, and from nightfall until
dawn. This law, passed in Kolophon (western Turkey), was intended
to protect professional entertainers against the excessively lengthy
symposia to which the inhabitants of that city were addicted. Flute
girls were also subject to price control. The Aristotelian Constitution
of Athens informs us that, in fourth-century b.c.e. Athens, they
were forbidden by law to charge more than two drachmas for their
services (50.2).
The Political Dimension
The fact that a number of drinking songs were politically inspired
suggests that many symposia were convened by those of the same
political leanings. The most famous of these songs celebrated the
murder of Hipparchos, the brother of the Athenian tyrant Hippias, in
514 b.c.e. The perpetrators of this deed were two young men named
Harmodios and Aristogeiton (see p. 20), and a song in their honor by
an anonymous author became a kind of Athenian national anthem.
I shall carry my sword hidden in a branch of myrtle like Harmodios and
Aristogeiton when they slew the tyrants and established Athenian democracy.
Dearest Harmodios, you are not dead, but they say you live in the
Isles of the Blest, where swift-footed Achilles lives and godlike Diomedes,
the son of Tydeus.
I shall carry my sword hidden in a branch of myrtle like Harmodios
and Aristogeiton, when they slew the tyrant Hipparchos at the festival
of Athene. Your fame shall live on the earth for ever, dearest Harmodios
and Aristogeiton, since you slew the tyrant and established Athenian
democracy.
Drunken and Rowdy Behavior
At the conclusion of a symposium, or when moving from one
symposium to another, it was customary for drinkers to kômazein,
or to roam about the streets in a gang. It was just such a gang of
kômastai, headed by Alkibiades, that crashed Agathon’s party. “No
sooner had they sat down than the whole place was in an uproar,”
Plato writes in the Symposium. “Order went out of the window
and they compelled everyone to drink huge quantities of wine.”
Assaults by drunken kômastai were not uncommon. The myth of