Verify Citation - 6. The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets
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Query: 6. The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets
Verify Citation
Quoted text:
Plutarch (Table Talk 643f.) contrasted these “portion banquets” of Homer and the early democracies with the dinners of his own imperial Roman period in which each guest helped himself from the group pot. The democratic spokesman defended egalitarian meals by pointing out that the equal division of servings and their distribution by lot minimized the resentment individuals were liable to feel when others took more than their fair share. “Those who eat from the dishes that belong to all antagonize those who are slow and are left behind, as it were, in the wake of the swift-sailing ship. For suspicion, grabbing, snatching, and elbowing among the guests do not, I think, make a friendly and convivial prelude to a banquet; such behavior is boorish and crude and often ends in insults and angry outbursts aimed not only at fellow guests, but at waiters and at hosts.” Quoting a pre-Socratic fragment—“Where each guest has his own private portion, companionship perishes”—Plutarch concluded: “This is true where there is not an equitable distribution; for… the taking of another’s portion, and greed for what is common to all, began injustice and strife. The laws hold this in check by limiting and moderating private rights, and their very name [nomoi] they owe to their office and power of equitable distribution [viz. Nemesis] in regard to what is common to all.”
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