Wine in poetry

All information contained in this text has been drawn from the three-volume edition WINE IN POETRY, published by ICARUS Editions, on behalf of the FANNIE BOUTARI FOUNDATION.

In praise of wine

Wine and poetry in antiquity, Byzantium and Modern Greece

The 7th century B.C. custom of Asia Minor Greeks to throw banquets, a habit they had adopted from the Lydians, gradually spread to mainland Greece and evolved into a social institution with rules and determined etiquette. Its roots lie in the sacred repasts, but also in the simple joy of drinking and socializing. It was at banquets that lyric poetry, and most specifically the poetry of symposia, was born. In 5th century Athens the institution of "drinking in company" was characterized by particular spirituality and conviviality. It is no accident that Plato set his philosophical dialogues on Eros against the backdrop of a banquet, as he considered that those occasions – when held in the proper manner – were a school for the shaping of virtuous characters, in their capacity to teach a person his duties as an exemplary citizen: ..... they teach to freely and without coercion obey the laws and, at the same time, they serve as a trial in self-possession and an exercise in decency......

According to Aristotle, tragedy originated from the dithyramb, a song in honour of the god Dionysus. Its composition required certain preconditions:

I am the first to start the dithyramb,

King Dionysus’ delightful song,

When the lightning of wine strikes my brain…

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You shall plant no other tree before the grapevine...

 

advised Alkaios, and Cato the Elder holds the same view: "If I were asked which among earth’s goods is worth more, I would say: the grapevine ".

      

Drink with me, enjoy with me your youth, with me fall in love, put a wreath of me around your head; when I am in a frenzy, get into a frenzy yourself, when I calm down, be composed.

A collection of 25 short songs has come down to us by Athenaios; Athenians used to sing them at banquets and called them the scholia. The word comes from the adjective scholios (sidelong, crooked) and implies the fact that they were not sung in a given order. Those banqueters that possessed a beautiful voice would hold, each in his turn, a myrtle branch and sing a song. This particular scholio refers to wine-drinking and highlights the principle rules of sociability, according to 6th century B.C. mores: 1. participation in wine-drinking 2. enjoying one’s youth with friends (one of the four blessings in life, the other three being: health, good looks and decently acquired wealth) 3. camaraderie " uncouth for a sober man to be in the company of drunks, uncouth to remain sober among drunks" according to Theognis.

It’s a view commonly expressed in ancient literature that wine is the antidote to the sorrows and troubles of everyday life. In his tragedy The Bacchae (lines 274-285) Euripides speaks through the mouth of Teiresias, the blind seer who addresses the king of Thebes Pentheus reacting with fury to the establishment of the cult of Dionysus:

Two are, my young man, the primary goods for humans:

Goddess Demetra – the earth, that is - call it what you may.

She nourishes people with solid food.

Semeli’s(*) son came later, but his offer was of equal merit:

It’s he who invented the blessed juice οf the grape cluster

and introduced it to the society of men.

It drives sorrow away from poor mortals,

When their viscera flood with the flow of the vine,

It brings sleep, it throws to oblivion the bitterness of the day,

There is no other medicine for life’s unpleasantness.

Wine is god and to the gods it’s offered as libation;

’Tis wine therefore that ensures good things to men…

(*)Semeli: Dionysus’ mother

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