Symposium Tableware with erotic motives from Greece, Southern Italy and Etruria. Clay, late 6th – late 5th century BC. Institution:Altes Museum Most of these vessels were produced in Athens, exported to Italy, and served as tableware during the symposium, the banquet. The pictures on the drinking cups, beakers and wine-mixing vessels show both mythological creatures from the circle around Dionysus – satyrs, maenads, nymphs – and the humans using these vessels during the symposium: Men of various age and heterae, professional “ladies of pleasure”. Homo- and heterosexual activities are to be seen in almost equal measure; both were, depicted particularly drastically around 500 BC. In reality, strict social norms applied.