“Really Paetus, I implore you to spend time in honest, pleasant and friendly company. … I am not thinking of the physical pleasure, but of community life and habit, and of mental recreation, of which familiar conversation is the most effective agent; and conversation is at its most agreeable at dinner parties. In this respect we Romans are wiser than Greeks. They use words meaning literally ‘co-drinkings’ (symposia) or ‘co-dinings’ (syndeipna), but we say ‘co-livings’ (convivia), because at dinner parties, more than anywhere else, life is lived in company.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)