The banquet and the symposium became basic means of social distinction, serving to display wealth and acquire status. For this reason, anellenic burial places between the 7th and the 4th century B.C. are rich in tableware, either pottery or bronze, associated with implements for mixing and pouring wine and cooking meat, objects belonging to the elite who emulated Hellenic life styles. The Etruscan bronze-workers' shops specialized in producing implements for the symposium.

Already in the 2nd millennium B.C., very close relations between Greece and southern Italy had been established. Significantly, the classical sources place the transmigration of the Oenotrians across the Adriatic Sea around the middle of the 2nd millennium. The name of this people is usually linked to oinotron, "vineyard pole". In central Italy, wine production developed through various stages, starting from the places where Aegean-Mycenaean merchants and voyagers arrived along the southern coast.