In the symposium, by then merged into the banquet, Plutarch practises, in accordance with the
rules of his “ethical anthropology”, the collective reading of poetry and prose writers not only
for mere entertainment but as a stimulus for a debate of high cultural dignity, always directed to
improve man. Refusing many authors of popular convivial praxis, e. g. Aristophanes, he prefers
Plato among the prose writers and Homer and Menander among the poets.