Verify Citation - 6. The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets

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The Creation of Order »  Query: 6. The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets

Verify Citation

Quoted text:

Plutarch (Table Talk at 657) explained this as follows. Just as the musical ratio of 3:2 “gives a concord to the fifth, 2:1 the concord of the octave, and the concord of the fourth (which is weakest) consists in the ratio 4:3, so the musicologists of Dionysus observed three concords of wine and water, fifth, third and fourth. … ‘Five,’ indeed, is in the ratio 3:2, three parts of water being mixed with two of wine. … The mixture with a ratio of 2:3 is most harmonious, a complete inducer of sleep and relaxer of care, a ‘protecting and soothing governess,’ in Hesiod’s phrase [Works and Days 464], because it creates a profound calm and quiet among our lordly and disordered passions.” (The ratio “three” signifies “two parts of water being mixed with one of wine; and ‘four,’ three parts water per unit of wine,”

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