A “barbarian” symposium and the absence of philanth ropia (Artaxerxes 15)

Abstract

This paper studies a unique symposium scene in the Artaxerxes and aims to understand its narratological significance in the biography. It is a “barbarian” banquet, which in many respects is the complete opposite of its Greek counterpart. Yet familiar features of the symposium are nevertheless discernible in it. During the feast, Mithridates, an inebriated Persian, is tricked into telling a certain truth, which contradicts the official royal version. As a result he is brutally punished by Artaxerxes, in a deed that essentially removes the trait of philanthropia from the monarch. The paper presents how, on the one hand, the wine imbibed at the party can be regarded as revealing the true character of the king, and how, on the other, the symposium is crucial in altering the ethos of Artaxerxes. Like Mithridates at the banquet, the reader is also baffled by the interplay of ethnic stereotypes, and by the thin line between the real and the apparent, artistically presented by Plutarch.