Intervisuality in the Greek Symposium

The aim of this paper is to extend the research about intervisuality to the relationships between the images painted on the sympotic vases and the sympotic poetry. Aristocrats had vessels in their hands and vessels under their eyes while performing songs. How could the presence of a certain subject in the paintings of the vessels stimulate the choice of a related subject in the poetic message? How could images cooperate in expressing of this message? The study of the erotic activities during the symposium, where images integrate a surprising silence of poetry, appears particularly rewarding. Scholars have observed that lyric poems never describe sexual intercourse, unless a similar description had an iambic function. The large number of vessels which display sexual activities in all their details can help to understand the silence of poetry. Images can explain the right schemata and the correct way to court and love a boy or a girl. Images can also cooperate to express warnings against bad behaviour not only regarding sex but also in connection to wine drinking. The Gorgoneion so frequently painted inside the cup and the eyes-cups are interpreted in this paper in relation to the social control exerted by the hetairia toward its members. Poetry and images worked together to express the ideal of equilibrium and moderation which true aristocrats must achieve even under the effects of wine.