At the Greek Symposium: Food and Wine in Ancient Greece
In the ancient Greek world, few gatherings mattered more than the symposium — a word that literally means "drinking together." Far more than a dinner party, it was a cornerstone of male aristocratic life: a place for wine, conversation, music, poetry, politics, and philosophy, all bound by ritual and served with a very particular idea of how food and drink should be enjoyed. To understand the symposium is to understand how the Greeks ate, drank, and thought.
First the Food, Then the Wine
A Greek gathering came in two distinct parts. First was the deipnon, the meal itself, when the actual food was eaten. Only afterward came the symposion proper — the drinking, talking, and entertainment. This order tells us something important: for the Greeks, the wine and conversation were the main event, and the food was the prelude.
Guests reclined on couches around the edges of the room (the andron, the men's dining room), propped on one elbow — a posture of leisure and status borrowed from the East. Ordinary Greeks and women of the household ate more simply and often sitting; the reclining symposium was the preserve of citizen men and their invited companions.
Bread, Relish, and the Mediterranean Triad
Greek eating rested on the Mediterranean triad: grain, olives, and the vine. The staple was grain — barley, made into a paste or cake called maza, and wheat bread for those who could afford it. The Greeks even had a word for this structure: sitos, the grain staple, versus opson, the "relish" eaten with it — anything from olives and cheese to vegetables, fish, or a little meat. A person who ate too much opson relative to their bread was scolded as an opsophagos, a greedy gourmand.
Everyday fare was largely plant-based: bread and maza, olives and olive oil, cheese, onions, garlic, lentils and other pulses, figs, and seasonal vegetables and fruit, sweetened with honey. Fish was the prized opson, especially fresh fish, which the wealthy sought eagerly; the Greeks were famous fish-lovers. Meat, by contrast, was comparatively rare and often tied to religious sacrifice — the animal was offered to the gods and the meat then shared among the community, so a meat meal frequently carried sacred as well as culinary meaning.
The Ritual of Wine
Wine was the heart of the symposium, but the Greeks drank it in a very particular way. It was almost always mixed with water in a large communal bowl called a krater — to drink wine akratos (unmixed) was considered the mark of a barbarian, a drunkard, or a fool. The ratio of water to wine was chosen for the evening, and a symposiarch (the "master of the symposium") was appointed to set it and to govern the pace of the party, keeping the drinking convivial rather than chaotic.
The wine was ladled from the krater into individual cups, and the evening progressed through toasts, shared songs, and rounds of conversation. Moderation was, at least in principle, the ideal: the Greeks admired the man who could drink, talk, and remain in command of himself.
Entertainment, Games, and Ideas
The symposion was rich with entertainment. Music from the lyre and the aulos (a double-reed pipe), sung poetry, riddles, and recited verse filled the room. Guests played games, the most famous being kottabos, in which drinkers flicked the dregs of their wine at a target for luck or affection. Professional entertainers — musicians, dancers, and hetairai (educated female companions) — were sometimes hired, since respectable wives did not attend.
Above all, the symposium was a place for talk. It hosted political debate, the trading of poems, and philosophical argument — a setting immortalised by Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's dialogue of the same name, in which the conversation itself, on love and virtue, becomes the true feast. Sweet courses of fruit, nuts, honey cakes, and dried figs (the tragemata, or "things to nibble") accompanied this second stage, keeping the wine company.
Everyday Meals Beyond the Symposium
The symposium was a special occasion; daily eating was plainer and followed a simple rhythm. Most Greeks took a light breakfast (akratismos) of bread dipped in wine, a midday ariston, and the main evening deipnon. For ordinary households these meals meant barley maza or bread with olives, cheese, onions, pulses, and whatever relish was to hand — a frugal diet as much by choice as by necessity, since the Greeks prized moderation and were often suspicious of excess. Cooking was done over simple hearths and portable braziers, and for a grand occasion a household might hire a mageiros, a combined butcher, cook, and sacrificer who prepared the meat.
Luxury and Its Critics
Not everyone approved of fine dining. Greek writers drew a sharp moral line between healthy simplicity and decadent luxury, mocking the gluttony of the Sybarites of southern Italy — whose name gave us the word "sybaritic" — and the elaborate cookery of Sicily, whose rich sauces and celebrity chefs became a byword for excess. At the opposite extreme stood the Spartan common messes, with their infamous black broth, where austerity was a civic virtue. Between these poles, the ideal Athenian table aimed at enough, well prepared and well shared, rather than extravagance for its own sake. Food carried a moral weight for the Greeks: how a man ate was thought to reveal his character, and self-control at the table was admired as much as courage in the field.
Bread, the Baker, and Daily Grain
Beneath the wine and philosophy lay the humble reality of grain. For ordinary Greeks, the day's food was above all bread and barley cake — sitos, the staple that a meal was built around. Barley maza, quick to make and needing no oven, was the everyday food of the poor, while leavened wheat bread, baked by professional bakers in the towns, was finer fare. So central was grain that Athens fought and legislated to secure its imported supply, and a citizen's diet was reckoned first in measures of barley or wheat.
This grounding in grain is a useful corrective to the glamour of the symposium. The drinking parties of reclining aristocrats were the exception; the rule was a frugal daily plate of bread or maza with a little relish. Greek cuisine, for most people most of the time, was a cuisine of grain — and the elaborate world of wine, entertainment, and philosophy floated atop that broad, plain foundation of the loaf and the barley cake.
A Table That Shaped a Civilisation
The symposium was never only about eating and drinking. It was where friendships were forged, alliances made, poems born, and ideas tested — a social institution that helped shape Greek culture itself. Its values echo down to us: wine enjoyed with food and in moderation, the meal as an occasion for conversation, and the belief that how we gather at the table says something about who we are. The next time a shared meal turns into a long evening of talk, you are, in a sense, keeping the spirit of the symposium alive.
Source note
This article draws on the general understanding of ancient Greek dining assembled by historians from literary sources — Homer, the comic poets, Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae, and the philosophical Symposia of Plato and Xenophon — alongside painted pottery that depicts symposia in vivid detail. These sources reflect mainly the world of elite citizen men; the diets of women, the poor, and enslaved people are less well recorded, and customs varied across the Greek city-states and centuries.
Frequently asked questions
What was a Greek symposium?
The symposium (literally 'drinking together') was a male aristocratic drinking party central to ancient Greek life — a place for wine, conversation, music, poetry, games and philosophy, following the deipnon (the meal) and governed by ritual.
Why did the Greeks mix wine with water?
Drinking wine neat (akratos) was considered the mark of a barbarian or a fool. Greeks mixed it with water in a large communal bowl called a krater, and a 'symposiarch' set the ratio and governed the pace to keep the party convivial.
What did ancient Greeks eat?
Everyday eating rested on the 'Mediterranean triad' of grain, olives and the vine: barley cake (maza) and bread with olives, cheese, vegetables, pulses and figs. Fish was the prized relish (opson), while meat was comparatively rare and often tied to sacrifice.
What is Plato's Symposium?
It is a famous philosophical dialogue set at a symposium, in which the guests' conversation on the nature of love becomes the true feast — a vivid illustration of how the Greek drinking party was a place for ideas as much as wine.
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