Transcriber's Notes: Greek words in this text have been transliterated and placed between =equal signs=. Words in italics in the original are surrounded by underscores. A row of asterisks represents either an ellipsis in a poetry quotation or a place where the original Greek text was too corrupt to be read by the translator. Other ellipses match the original.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original.
There are numerous long quotations in the original, many missing the closing quotation mark. Since it is often difficult to determine where a quotation begins or ends, the transcriber has left quotation marks as they appear in the original.
A few typographical errors have been corrected. A complete list follows the text. Other notes also follow the text.
THE
DEIPNOSOPHISTS
OR
BANQUET OF THE LEARNED
OF
ATHENÆUS.
LITERALLY TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE, B.A.
WITH AN APPENDIX OF POETICAL FRAGMENTS, RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY VARIOUS AUTHORS, AND A GENERAL INDEX.
IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I.
LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCLIV.
LONDON: R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
PREFACE.
The author of the DEIPNOSOPHISTS was an Egyptian, born in Naucratis, a town on the left side of the Canopic Mouth of the Nile. The age in which he lived is somewhat uncertain, but his work, at least the latter portion of it, must have been written after the death of Ulpian the lawyer, which happened A.D. 228.
Athenæus appears to have been imbued with a great love of learning, in the pursuit of which he indulged in the most extensive and multifarious reading; and the principal value of his work is, that by its copious quotations it preserves to us large fragments from the ancient poets, which would otherwise have perished. There are also one or two curious and interesting extracts in prose; such, for instance, as the account of the gigantic ship built by Ptolemæus Philopator, extracted from a lost work of Callixenus of Rhodes.
The work commences, in imitation of Plato's Phædo, with a dialogue, in which Athenæus and Timocrates supply the place of Phædo and Echecrates. The former relates to his friend the conversation which passed at a banquet given at the house of Laurentius, a noble Roman, between some of the guests, the best known of whom are Galen and Ulpian.
The first two books, and portions of the third, eleventh, and fifteenth, exist only in an Epitome, of which both the date and author are unknown. It soon, however, became more common than the original work, and eventually in a great degree superseded it. Indeed Bentley has proved that the only knowledge which, in the time of Eustathius, existed of Athenæus, was through its medium.
Athenæus was also the author of a book entitled, "On the Kings of Syria," of which no portion has come down to us.
The text which has been adopted in the present translation is that of Schweighäuser.
C. D. Y.
CONTENTS.