Women and Symposia in Macedonia

Elizabeth D. Carney (Clemson University)

Many people believe that, generally speaking, in the Greek world respectable women did not attend symposia.  In terms of Macedonia, Herodotus' story (5.17-21) about the Macedonian court at the time of Amyntas I certainly asserts that elite women did not ordinarily attend symposia at the Macedonian court.  While the historicity of this Herodotean tale is, at best, dubious since it seems intended to demonstrate the Hellenic nature of the Argeads and their court, accounts of the Macedonian court dealing with later periods in history, most notably the reigns of Philip II and Alexander, never refer to the presence of women other than hetairai at Macedonian symposia.  As a consequence, it has generally been assumed that women like Olympias or Philip's last bride, Cloepatra, did not attend such affairs, even when their occasion was the celebration of a wedding.

Some scholars working primarily with achaeological rather than literary material have suggested a different picture.  Rhomiopoulou (1973: 90) wondered if the "Palmette Tomb" at Lefkadia may signify that elite Macedonian women sometimes banqueted with men.  More recently, Hoepfner (1996: 13-15) suggested that the double andron pattern found in the palace at Vergina/Aegae, private houses at Pella, and else where may have been intended for separate but parallel male and female symposia.  (This is a particularly interesting suggestion granted the increasingly popul.ar view that the Vergina palace is primarily a creation of thereign of Philip II.)  Kottaridi (2004a: 140 and 200b: 69) and Lilibaki-Akamati (2004: 91) believe, based on an elaborate late Archaic female burial at Aegae and other such burials of the period at Aegae (they presume is that these are the graves of ryal women), that these women were priestesses who, among other things, participated in public banquets and symposia.  Indeed they assume that these practices continued and included women like Olympias.  Clearly, one should recognized that other conclusions are possible about the evidence discusssed and that not all archaeological evidence supports these less conventional views.  For instance, female burials do not generally include the elaborate collections of drinking vessels typicasly found in burials of elite male Macedonians.

These contradictory views about women and Macedonian symposia are of interest because they raise a number of issues.  Obviously, one must reflect on the general problem of apparent contradictions between literary and archaeological evidence (as in recent scholarship about the existence of women's quarters in Greek domestic space), but one should also worry about the problem of making distinctions between normative and prescriptive statements.  Moreover, we must deal with possible change over time: are Archaic burials good evidence for practice in the second half of the fourth century, particularly for a court and elite culture rapidly growing more and more main-stream Hellenic? Are Kottaridi and Lilibaki-Akamati's royal priestesses exceptions or models for the female elite?  To what degree are conventional generalizations about women and Greek symposia valid anyway?  If royal women were present at court symposia, how does this change our understanding of the dynamics of the court?

This paper will not attempt to resolve all these issues, but rather to open them up for reconsideration and to suggest some tentative cnclusions, about some of them.

This paper will utilize slides and will, therefore, require twenty minutes for presentation.