Drinking like a Greek

Drinking like a Greek

Much is made of the "modern" culture of drinking to excess. This is not the case, it seems ever since the invention of alcohol (an Arabic word- a little ironically) it seems humans have enjoyed consuming too much and regretting it very much the following morning.

An example of this excess comes from about 2,500 years ago in Hellenic Greece with a drinking game called "kottabos". I seems that at Greek symposia, elite men, young and old, reclined on cushioned couches that lined the walls of the men's quarters of a household. Here they would have lively conversations and recited poetry, they may even have discussed the thorny mathematical or philosophical issue of the day. They were entertained by dancers, flute girls and courtesans. 

So far this all sounds very “Ancient Greek” but then it gets a bit less classy. The men proceeded to get drunk on wine, and in the name of competition, they hurled their dregs at a target in the center of the room to win prizes like eggs, pastries and sexual favours (remember this was an all-male party). After the game of kottabos was finished it was the slaves of course cleaned up the mess.

What's particularly brilliant is a professor and students from West Chester University of Pennsylvania have had a go at kottabos (presumably without the sexual favours).

And in the words of Heather Sharpe, an associate professor of art history from the university-

"Trying to describe this ancient Greek drinking game, kottabos, to my students was always a little bit difficult because we do have these illustrations of it, but they only show one part of the game - where individuals are about to flick some dregs at a target, I thought it would be really great if we could actually try to do it ourselves. It took a fair amount of control to actually direct the wine dregs, and interestingly enough, some of the women were the first to get it,In some respects, they relied a little bit more on finesse, whereas some of the guys were trying to throw it too hard."

To all those who say "history is dull" I say, beat this with an afternoon of your dull lectures.