Much of our evidence for sexuality in ancient Greece stems from one particular setting: the sumposion-the Greek banquet. The sumposion arose in the archaic period (750-480 BCE), along with the polis, and it is crucial to ask what relationship it had to the city. Eva Stehle has emphasized the way in which the sumposion likewise constructed its convivial society in systematic contradistinction to the world of kinship, marriage, and the household. Pederasty substituted male homosocial love for the procreative bonds of domestic sexuality. This chapter provides an account of the normative order of symposiastic conviviality; but of course reality rarely conforms to the ideal. The sources admit no doubt that the rule of moderation, whether in eating, drinking, sex, or speech, was by no means always observed. It should not be imagined that pederastic relationships could not be exploitative, or that pederastic propriety was always scrupulously adhered to.