The place of Plutarch in the literary genre of Symposium

Abstract

Plato´s idea to have a dialogue on serious philosophy taking place at a drinking-party is actually astonishing, considering the traditionally rather “unphilosophic” entourage of these feasts. His Symposion covers a vast scope extending from the most subtle philosophic reasoning of Socrates to the final deranged, unrestrained drinking-bout. In spite of this vulgar ending, however, the work is basically a philosophic dialogue. That this work happened to form the starting-point of a new literary genre, the symposion, may have been largely due to Xenophon. Many more contemporary and somewhat later writers produced works of the kind, but all are lost. Since the third century B.C. the Cynic Menippean sympotic genre became prevalent instead of the philosophic Socratic one, which, as far as we know, is totally absent until Plutarch revived it with his Sept. sap. conv. In addition he created a new subgenre of sympotic writing, the Quaestiones convivales. He probably wrote his convivial works in opposition to the Menippean kind. His evident ethical and educational purpose is singular in the genre of symposion; he received no followers.