Contrasting Banquets: A Literary Commonplace in Philo’s On the Contemplative Life and Other Greek and Roman Symposia

Abstract

When Philo says in On the Contemplative Life what I cite herein, he locates his work securely in the literary tradition of Greek and Roman symposia. For as Athenaeus’s similar type of remark in the second quotation suggests, it became a commonplace in Greek and Roman literary symposia to contrast one’s own symposium or favored banquet practices with those of Others. In this paper I show first that “contrasting banquets” is a commonplace of the Greek and Roman literary tradition to which Philo’s description of the meals of the Therapeutae belongs. Then I show how Philo chooses not to use perhaps the defining characteristic of the Greek and Roman literary symposia per se, the dramatic dialogue format, which represents characters conversing over a meal. Finally, I show why Philo eschews the sympotic dialogue format in his account of the Therapeutae’symposia in On the Contemplative Life. He wishes to play down the conflicts, especially over competing ideas, for which the sympotic dialogue form is especially well suited. Instead, Philo idealizes the harmoniousness and unity of the Therapeutae community at their meals, in contrast to the discord and drunkenness characteristic of Others’ banquets.