TheDeipnosophistae (Ancient Greek:Δειπνοσοφισταί,Deipnosophistaí,lit. 'The Dinner Sophists', wheresophists may be translated more loosely as'sages, philosophers, experts') is a work writtenc. 200 AD inAncient Greek byAthenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work ofliterary,historical, andantiquarian references set inRome at a series of banquets held by the protagonistPublius Livius Larensis [de] for an assembly ofgrammarians,lexicographers,jurists, musicians, and hangers-on.
TheGreek titleDeipnosophistaí (Δειπνοσοφισταί) is acompound ofdeîpnon (δεῖπνον'dinner') andsophistḗs (σοφιστής'expert'). It and itsEnglish derivativedeipnosophists[1] thus describe people who are skilled at dining, particularly the refined conversation expected to accompany Greeksymposia. However, the term is shaded by the harsh treatment accorded toprofessional teachers inPlato'sSocratic dialogues, which made the English termsophist into apejorative.
In English, Athenaeus's work usually known by itsLatin formDeipnosophistae but is also variously translated asThe Deipnosophists,[2]Sophists at Dinner,[3]The Learned Banqueters,[4]The Banquet of the Learned,[2]Philosophers at Dinner, orThe Gastronomers.
TheDeipnosophistae professes to be an account, given by Athenaeus to his friend Timocrates, of a series of banquets held at the house of Larensius, ascholar and wealthypatron of the arts. It is thus a dialogue within a dialogue, after the manner ofPlato,[5] although each conversation is so long that, realistically, it would occupy several days. Among the numerous guests,[6]Masurius,Zoilus,Democritus,Galen,Ulpian andPlutarch are named, but most are probably to be taken as fictitious personages,[7] and the majority take little or no part in the conversation. If Ulpian is identical with the famous jurist, theDeipnosophistae must have been written after his death in 223; but the jurist was murdered by thePraetorian Guard, whereas Ulpian in Athenaeus dies a natural death.Prosopographical investigation, however, has shown the possibility of identifying several guests with real persons from other sources;[8]the Ulpian in the dialog has also been linked to the renowned jurist's father.[9]
The work is invaluable for providing fictionalized information about the Hellenistic literary world of the leisured class during theRoman Empire.[citation needed] To the majority of modern readers, even more useful is the wealth of information provided in theDeipnosophistae about earlier Greek literature.[10] In the course of discussing classic authors, the participants make quotations, long and short, from the works of about 700 earlier Greek authors and 2,500 separate writings, many of them otherwise unrecorded (such as theswallow song of Rhodes). Food and wine, luxury, music, sexual mores, literary gossip andphilology are among the major topics of discussion, and the stories behind many artworks such as theVenus Kallipygos are also transmitted in its pages.
In addition to the narratorAthenaeus, theDeipnosophistae includes several characters. This includes Aemilian of Mauretania, Alcides of Alexandria, Amoebeus, Arrian, Cynulcus, Daphnus of Ephesus, Democritus of Nicomedia, Dionysocles,Galen of Pergamum, Larensius, Leonides of Elis, Magnus, Masurius, Myrtilus of Thessaly, Palamedes the Eleatic, Philadelphus of Ptolemais, Plutarch of Alexandria, Pontian of Nicomedia, Rufinus of Nicaea, Ulpian of Tyre, Varus, andZoilus.[11]
TheDeipnosophistae is an important source ofrecipes in classical Greek. It quotes the original text of one recipe from the lost cookbook byMithaecus, the oldest in Greek and the oldest recipe by a named author in any language. Other authors quoted for their recipes includeGlaucus of Locri,Dionysius, Epaenetus,Hegesippus of Tarentum,Erasistratus,Diocles of Carystus,Timachidas of Rhodes,Philistion of Locri,Euthydemus of Athens,Chrysippus of Tyana,Paxamus andHarpocration of Mende. It also describes in detail the meal and festivities at the wedding feast ofCaranos.[12]
In expounding on earlier works, Athenaeus wrote thatAeschylus "very improperly" introduces the Greeks to be "so drunk as to break their vessels about one another's heads":[13]
This is the man who threw so well
The vessel with an evil smell
And miss'd me not, but dash'd to shivers
The pot too full of steaming rivers
Against my head, which now, alas! sir,
Gives other smells besidesmacassar.
Athenaeus described what may be considered the firstpatents (i.e. exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to practice his/her invention in exchange for disclosure of the invention). He mentions that several centuries BC, in the Greek city ofSybaris (located in what is now southern Italy), there were annual culinary competitions. The victor was given the exclusive right to prepare his dish for one year. Such a thing would have been unusual at the time because Greek society at large did not recognize exclusivity in inventions or ideas.[14]
TheDeipnosophistae was originally in fifteen books.[15] The work survives in one manuscript from which the whole of books 1 and 2, and some other pages too, disappeared long ago. AnEpitome or abridgment (to about 60%) was made in medieval times, and survives complete: from this it is possible to read the missing sections, though in a disjointed form.
The English polymathSir Thomas Browne noted in his encyclopaediaPseudodoxia Epidemica:
Browne's interest in Athenaeus reflects a revived interest in theBanquet of the Learned amongst scholars following the publication of theDeipnosophistae in 1612 by the Classical scholarIsaac Casaubon. Browne was also the author ofa Latin essay on Athenaeus. By the nineteenth century however, the poetJames Russell Lowell in 1867 characterized theDeipnosophistae and its author thus:
Modern readers[who?] question whether theDeipnosophistae genuinely evokes a literary symposium of learned disquisitions on a range of subjects suitable for such an occasion, or whether it has a satirical edge, rehashing the cultural clichés of the urbane literati of its day.
The firstcritical edition in accordance to the principles ofclassical philology was published by German scholarGeorg Kaibel in 1887–1890 in theBibliotheca Teubneriana;[18] this three-volume set remained the authoritative text for about 120 years and the only complete critical text.[19]Charles Burton Gulick translated the entire text into English for theLoeb Classical Library.[20][21]
In 2001, a team of Italian classical scholars led byLuciano Canfora (then Professor of Classical Philology, now Emeritus,University of Bari) published the first complete Italian translation of theDeipnosophistae, in a luxury edition with extensive introduction and commentary.[22] A digital edition of Kaibel's text, with search tools and cross-references between Kaibel's and Casaubon's texts and digitalized indexes andDialogi Personae, was put online by Italian philologist Monica Berti and her team, currently working at theAlexander von Humboldt University.[23] In 2001, Eleonora Cavallini (Professor of Greek,University of Bologna) published a translation and commentary on Book 13.[24] In 2010, Gabriele Burzacchini (Professor of Greek,University of Parma) published a translation and commentary of Book 1 found among the unpublished studies of the late Enzo Degani (formerly Professor of Greek in the University of Bologna);[25] Burzacchini himself translated and commented Book 5 in more recent years.[26]
In 2006, American classical philologist S. D. Olson renewed Loeb text thanks to a new collation of the manuscripts and the progression of critical studies on Athenaeus and newly translated and commented the whole work;[27] in 2019, the same started a new critical edition for theBibliotheca Teubneriana[28] inclusive of theEpitome, also edited in parallel volumes.[29]
[Caranos] offered each guest a silver glass and a gold crown. Then arrived silver and bronze platters: Chickens, ducks and roasted geese, goats, hares, pigeons, turtles and partridges. There followed a break for the musicians and the trumpeters to play. The second course began with roast pork atop a silver plate. His belly was filled with roasted thrushes andortolan, oysters and scallops covered with egg yolks ....
Restorations and translations
