Editing Symposium (section)

==Entertainments==
[[File:Cottabos player Louvre CA1585.jpg|thumb|''[[Kottabos (game)|Kottabos]]'' player flinging wine-dregs (Attic red-figure [[kylix (drinking cup)|kylix]], {{circa|510}} BC)]]
Poetry and music were central to the pleasures of the symposium. Although free women of status did not attend symposia, high-class female prostitutes ''([[hetaera|hetairai]])'' and entertainers were hired to perform, consort, and converse with the guests. Among the instruments women might play was the ''[[aulos]]'', a Greek woodwind instrument sometimes compared to an [[oboe]]. When string instruments were played, the [[barbiton]] was the traditional instrument.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2004/2004-09-16.html |title=Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.09.16 of Alessandro Iannucci, La Parola e l'Azione: I Frammenti Simposiali di Crizia. Bologna: Edizioni Nautilus, 2002 |journal=Bryn Mawr Classical Review |publisher=Ccat.sas.upenn.edu |access-date=2012-08-19}}</ref> Slaves and boys also provided service and entertainment.

The guests also participated actively in competitive entertainments. A game sometimes played at symposia was ''[[Kottabos (game)|kottabos]]'', in which players swirled the dregs of their wine in a [[Kylix (drinking cup)|kylix]], a platter-like stemmed drinking vessel, and flung them at a target. Another feature of the symposia were [[Skolion|skolia]], drinking songs of a patriotic or bawdy nature, performed competitively with one symposiast reciting the first part of a song and another expected to improvise the end of it. Symposiasts might also compete in rhetorical contests, for which reason the word "symposium" has come to refer in English to any event where multiple speeches are made.