The word symposium It comes from the Greek and refers to a festive meeting or banquet where good eating, but mainly good drinking are the protagonists. Symposium has its origin in Ancient Greece. The first records can be located in 385 and 370 BC, with the publication of "The Banquet" by Plato.
Although we will delve into the history of this term later, it went from having an elitist or aristocratic character to covering all strata of society. It was only necessary to have a reason to celebrate.
This tradition transcended the borders of Greece, and was adopted by Phoenician and Semitic peoples who called it “marzeah”. To this day, the Royal Spanish Academy recognizes the word symposium, from which it clarifies that it comes from the Greek symposium, which meant banquet..
Strictly speaking, a symposium is for the RAE a meeting or conference where a certain topic is discussed and evaluated. Before moving on to examples, synonyms and antonyms, let's look at a bit of history to understand how it changed from a celebration to a pure wine to a formal and didactic meeting..
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There are different testimonies that make it easier to get an idea of what a symposium was like in Ancient Greece, although there are some differences according to historians.
In general terms, we can say that a symposium was a party or a banquet that all Greeks held to celebrate the arrival of a friend, the birth of a baby, a wedding or any other reason generating excitement..
Each of the meetings consisted of two stages. In the first, the guests satisfied their hunger with different dishes and sandwiches. In the second, they mostly drank wine and chatted, listened to stories, or watched dances and all kinds of distractions that varied according to the place and time..
There are authors who point out that the symposiums were rather a way of life of the aristocracy and not so close to the people. Of course, everyone agrees that wine always occupied the center of the scene.
At the highest levels, the organizer was the owner of the place and was in charge of providing food and drink. In those cases, in addition to being the host, he became a true master of ceremonies who had a key role during the meeting: he was in charge of indicating the precise amount of wine to consume, while he walked between conversation and conversation..
In the symposiums, the role of women was practically nil: almost all of them were forbidden access, except for the so-called "heteras", generally foreigners who had musical gifts and a lax love in correspondence of the entertained.
The funny thing is that most of the most important poetic or philosophical texts of the time, as well as pieces of art, had banquets as their main destination or inspiring muse..
Thus, the "symposia" gave birth to a literary genre like the aforementioned book by Plato, Xenophron's Banquet, and then the Plutarch's Symposium, also known as "Table talks".
Another case is from Symposium of Plato. This is one of his dialogues in which a discussion between Socrates and his disciples takes place that took place during a banquet..
In addition, vessels, goblets and goblets were made punctually for these ceremonies from where large liters of wine would be drunk, while the texts were recited during the same..
For the British writer Oswyn Murray, the symposium was like a social place that guaranteed the control of the Greek aristocratic elites. For the author, the host's generosity was aimed at the ladder in society through discussions about politics..
Despite belonging to a high nucleus of society, this type of celebration later branched out to other sectors of it, thus having religious symposiums for example.
Over the years, oriental customs were added to the symposiums, such as the fact of reclining and not sitting at the table to eat, as well as increasing refinement in used crockery or furniture..
Today a symposium, symposium or symposium is understood to be a public activity through which a group of experts develops a topic, from different points of view, successively and in front of a group.
There are symposia of all kinds: medical, law, philosophical (like the originals), political analysis, language, religious, etc..
Perhaps it can be confused between symposium and congress, since both professionals of a subject meet. However, in the first, there are experts who present on a specific topic, with a high level of detail and where the audience that attends is allowed to intervene, which can be varied..
Meanwhile, a congress is also made up of professionals who speak, but the topics may be different, and those who attend them are usually professionals from the same field. Here the round trip is not as direct as in a symposium, in addition to the fact that congresses tend to take place more regularly.
Synonyms
Words with meaning similar to Spanish are "banquet", "meeting", "symposium", "convite", "party", "entertainment", "party", "festines", "celebration" or "spree". Meanwhile, synonyms for "symposium" are "conference" or "convention".
Ricardo Alfaro points out in his Dictionary of Anglicanisms that “there is no Spanish diction that is equivalent to a symposium in the precise tropological sense that it has in the English language. Therefore, "miscellany" could be the antonym ".
Miscellany is a literary genre where unconnected and mixed themes and subjects are dealt with. So, at least from the point of view of the literary genre we find a word that means the opposite of symposium.
It can be said that "I will attend the symposium where they will speak on nuclear medicine", or the word can also give the title to a book that was born as a result of a symposium, such as "Proceedings of the VI Symposium of Societies before the Digital Challenge".
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