Image Details

Scala/Art Resource, NY

The dinner entertainment at Greek and Roman banquets often included prostitutes and musicians, both shown in the banquet scene decorating a Greek red figure vase, probably made in southern Italy or Sicily in the fifth or fourth century B.C.E.

Among the Greeks, respectable women, if present at a banquet at all, sat rather than reclined. Among the Romans, however, respectable women often attended banquets and reclined along with the men.