Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

62 FATHER, SON, AND COURT
wine (the only time when the Greeks did not mix their wine with
water), accompanied by a hymn to the gods. One participant was
selected to lead the proceedings (the symposiarch) and he determined
the ratio of water to wine (usually between three and four
parts of wine to one part water), the size of cups to be used, and the
number of draughts. The entertainment then commenced, and consisted
of conversation (facilitated by the square arrangement of
couches in the andrōn), the singing of poetry (to the accompaniment
of pipes-playing girls), the playing of drinking games, and the performance
(sometimes overtly erotic) of dancing girls. The symposium
concluded when the allotted number of draughts had been consumed.
Greek symposia were intended to be comparatively restrained
affairs, at least by Macedonian standards, and exceptions serve to
prove the rule—one has only to think of the proverbially shocking
behavior of Hippocleides with his indecorous and perhaps even
lewd dance in Herodotus (6.129), or Alcibiades’ drunken entrance
into Plato’s Symposium (212c6–213b3).
In a series of infl uential articles, Oswyn Murray has identifi ed the
function of the Greek symposium as an aristocratic male bonding
ritual, designed to maintain the loyalty and cohesion of the group. 37
During the Archaic Period, the symposium served as an important
nexus for the transmission of aristocratic values, through both the
performance of poetry (the poetry of Theognis is particularly illustrative
of this aspect) and male bonding. The homoerotic element of the
symposium is intertwined with its initiatory function during this
period, for young aristocrats served as wine-pourers and sometimes
lovers to their older mentors. 38 By the Classical Period in Athens and
many other cities, aristocracies had lost their dominant role in politics
and society to democracies, and the symposium became marginalized,
offering a private (elite) alternative to the public fora of the
democracy, sometimes with a subversive political focus, 39 although
this view has recently been challenged. 40 Accordingly, the earlier initiatory
function was no longer relevant and the participants were now
all adult male citizens.
I contend that both Philip and Alexander also conceived of the
symposium as an aristocratic male bonding ritual, but in a particularly
Macedonian context as a mechanism to secure the loyalty of the elite
to the Argead monarchy. Eugene Borza has observed that Alexander
employed the symposium as a means of reinforcing his relationship
with his closest associates while on the march. 41 I suggest that the
symposium served a particularly important role also for Philip in his
military reorganization and consolidation of the Macedonian elite, 42
in that it served to bind them both to himself and the Argead royal