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Theme for this month: A hodgepodge portrait of TJ

symposium, symposii n.

Definition: drinking party

Sententiae: Claudius, e nostro tempore, explicandum scientiam in symposio priscam Romam a machina temporis se vexit, sed modo nimium vini bibit.

Claudius, from our time, conveys himself by means of a time machine to ancient Rome for the purpose of explicating science/knowledge in a symposium, but he only drank too much wine.

This word doesn't occur at all in the collective AP syllabi, nor often at all in Latin literature as a whole, primarily because "symposium" is a Greek word borrowed into Latin. The more common Latin word is "commisatio--" remember the drinking party in Ecce Romani 2? At TJ, there will be tjSTAR (Thomas Jefferson Symposium to Advance Research) next week. If you go by the original Greek and Latin roots of the word, there will be quite a bit of illegal underage drinking at TJ next Thursday! But joking aside, the word "symposium" takes its current meaning because at some of these "symposia," the participants not only drank but also discussed ideas in a forum style setting. Etymologically, as I said before, it is derived from the Greek word "συμποσιον" (symposion), meaning drinking party.