- published: 14 Feb 2016
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In ancient Greece, the symposium (Greek συμπόσιον symposion, from συμπίνειν sympinein, "to drink together") was a drinking party. 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.
The equivalent in Roman society is the Latin convivium.
The Greek symposium was a key Hellenic social institution. It was a forum for men of good family to debate, plot, boast, or simply to revel with others. They were frequently held to celebrate the introduction of young men into aristocratic society. Symposia were also held by aristocrats to celebrate other special occasions, such as victories in athletic and poetic contests.
Symposia were usually held in the andrōn (ἀνδρών), the men's quarters of the household. The participants, or "symposiasts", would recline on pillowed couches arrayed against the three walls of the room away from the door. Due to space limitations the couches would number between seven and nine, limiting the total number of participants to somewhere between fourteen and twenty seven (Oswyn Murray gives a figure of between seven and fifteen couches and reckons fourteen to thirty participants a "standard size for a drinking group"). If any young men took part they did not recline but sat up.
Chains Of Despair
Cloaked By Darkness
The Thundering Echoes Of Great Destruction To Come
Mankind's Mysteries
The Dying World
(Chorus:)
Madness In It's Sweetest Form
What Shrivels And Dies Must Face The Tempest
The Angelic Heaven Bows To The Ultimate Truth
And Melancholy Grew
Anticipation Mender Through Madness
Condemned To The Same Horrid Fate
Insanity Applauds
How Sharp The Awakening
Pale As Disease
Mocking…Maddening…
Give Up The Ghost
Cease The Gloomy Awakening
History Foretold
The Hidden Stigmata
Totally Annihilating The Ecstasies Innumerable
Materialize The Vision
Give Up The Ghost
Cease The Gloomy Awakening
(Music: Mustis, Shagrath And Silenoz)