Although the Greeks learned the rituals of communal drinking from the Near East, they turned them into a way of life entirely their own: as a social institution the Greek symposion exerted a powerful influence on archaic, classical, and later Greek culture, from perceptions of politics, society, philosophy, and psychology, to attitudes towards sexuality, death, and religion. This volume collects together papers exploring the symposion by Oswyn Murray, whose research on ancient Greek drinking customs, beginning in 1983, ignited and defined the field.