Symposia were eating and dining occasions with a strong ritual element; their existence is reflected in the marked emphasis, in the Homeric poems, on ostentatious feasting and formal banqueting as assertions of status (what have been called "feasts of merit").
This helps to explain the strong ritual elements in a hoplite battle, which typically began with a sacrifice and taking of omens and ended with victory dedications, often of bronze suits of armour, in some appropriate sanctuary.
And indeed there is a strong sense of ritual in the unfolding of this time-burnished text.
The common one is that they have to drink a lot of strong alcohol during ritual processes which agrees with reality in order to "stimulate" the knowledge they ate.
Vick and Kidd are strong on the rituals that stem from civic pride, and on the rather philistine bourgeois stuffiness that the Mastersingers embody.
"Without strong leadership," he said, "ritual systems take on a huge burden of integrating people".
That word, strong, has become a ritual element of the annual address to Congress, intoned by Mr. Obama and his predecessors over the last 30 years even when things were not going that well.
Then in a finer concord than any ritual, a strong, serviceable marriage emerges: As green shoots through hardened soil where nothing seemed to be, so tenderness, caresses, jokes grew out of her and me.
The local Kodava people, believed to be descendants of Alexander the Great's Indo-Greek soldiers who mingled with the natives, have a distinct warrior-like upbringing: instead of praying with the fires and chants common among Hindus, Kodava rituals have strong war-like elements, including the symbolic use of a sword to chop banana stems during weddings.
Rather, ceremonial monuments were built to create a strong and permanent allure of ritual spaces and ceremonies associated with mortuary practice, inheritance rights, and emergent leaders.
It's striking to hear, in this package, the way "The State Of The Union is strong," has basically become a ritual incantation at the State of the Union address.
