Plato´s idea to have a dialogue on serious philosophy taking place at a drinking-party is actually
astonishing, considering the traditionally rather “unphilosophic” entourage of these feasts. His
Symposion covers a vast scope extending from the most subtle philosophic reasoning of Socrates
to the final deranged, unrestrained drinking-bout. In spite of this vulgar ending, however, the
work is basically a philosophic dialogue. That this work happened to form the starting-point
of a new literary genre, the symposion, may have been largely due to Xenophon. Many more
contemporary and somewhat later writers produced works of the kind, but all are lost. Since
the third century B.C. the Cynic Menippean sympotic genre became prevalent instead of the
philosophic Socratic one, which, as far as we know, is totally absent until Plutarch revived it with
his Sept. sap. conv. In addition he created a new subgenre of sympotic writing, the Quaestiones
convivales. He probably wrote his convivial works in opposition to the Menippean kind. His
evident ethical and educational purpose is singular in the genre of symposion; he received no
followers.