Banquet Ceremonies Involving Wine in the Greco-Roman World and Early Christianity

In fifth-century (B.C.E.) Athens the aristocratic class observed banquet protocols that separated the supper from the drinking party, with a group libation and paean to close the meal, followed by a wine-mixing ritual and more group libations to begin the symposium. It has been proposed in recent decades that this format was also typical of banqueting in the Greco-Roman world. Yet an examination of a wide range of evidence suggests that observance of Attic protocols at home banquets in the Roman era may have been more the preference of elites associated with the Second Sophistic than a custom of the wider public. Wine service in particular seems to have varied in actual practice, and group libations and the group paean appear to have been far less common than has been supposed. Revealingly, although Christian teachers expressed positions on consumption of meat offered to idols, no early Christian writer instructs believers about what to do when confronted with a ceremonial libation or paean at a dinner party.