Athenaeus of Attaleia (fl. mid-first century BC) offers a fascinating example of the interest among Graeco-Roman physicians in marking out the boundaries between medicine and philosophy. As founder of the so-called Pneumatist medical sect, he was deeply influenced by contemporary Stoicism. A number of surviving ancient testimonia tell us that he held a distinctive view on the question of how far medicine should analyse the composition of the human body. Rather than having recourse to the Stoic cosmic elements fire, (...) air, earth and water, he maintained that in the context of the medical art, the relevant elements were the elemental qualities hot, cold, wet and dry. This paper is an attempt to pin down Athenaeus’ position on these issues, and his motivations for holding it, despite a number of conflicting and problematic claims in the surviving evidence. (shrink)

Athenaeus of Attalia distinguishes two types of exercise or training (γυμνασία) that are required at each stage of life: training of the body and training of the soul. He says that training of the body includes activities like physical exercises, eating, drinking, bathing and sleep. Training of the soul, on the other hand, consists of thinking, education, and emotional regulation (in other words, 'philosophy'). The notion of 'training of the soul' and the contrast between 'bodily' and 'psychic' exercise is (...) common in the Academic and Stoic traditions Athenaeus is drawing from; however, he is the earliest extant medical author to distinguish these kinds of training and to treat them as equally important aspects of regimen. In this paper, I propose some reasons why he found this distinction useful, and I examine how he justified incorporating it into his writings on regimen, namely by attributing Plato's beliefs about regimen to Hippocrates, a strategy Galen would adopt well over a century later. (shrink)

Very early experiments described in ancient literature usually have no detailed explanation of the methods used let alone the explicit Control expected by modern scientists for comparison with Treatments. Athenaeus describes a rarely recorded exception in The Deipnosophistae which has been briefly noted in scientific literature but not sufficiently contextualized. The experiment described has one treatment, a control and Athenaeus cites the desirability of replication, making this passage read like a modern text rather than an ancient one. Because (...) technical processes were invented in ancient times I assume that experiments were also practiced, even though they are not described in ancient literature. This passage in Athenaeus exemplifies, by rare contrast, the general lack of description for ancient scientific methods. This lack may be because the ancient practitioners of technical processes did not have the reason modern scientists use for disclosure of all methods and results. Moderns achieve monetization that is protected by Intellectual Property Law or by acquisition of authority followed by salaried teaching in the academy. Ancient experimenters protected their discoveries by secrecy and maintained monopolies by concealment, an inconvenience for modern scholars. The form of ancient literature is important for this subject: it is not like modern scientific literature. When the ancients mention scientific subjects in writing it is in the form of literary discourse and debate where the aim is cerebral. There is no description of technical details where the aim is to allow replication of the experiment. Comfortable logic not experiment is described and intellectual improvement was usually the aim of ancient literature, rather than practical outcomes. The only reason we have knowledge of ancient practitioners of something similar to modern scientific methods from literature is that their kind of technical antics were briefly mentioned by ancient authors, because of their surprising and amusing nature. (shrink)

Scholarship on the late fifth-century BC New Music Revolution has mostly relied on the evidence provided by Athenaeus, the pseudo-Plutarch De musica and a few other late sources. To this date, however, very little has been done to understand Athenaeus' own rale in shaping our understanding of the musical culture of that period. This article argues that the historical context provided by Athenaeus in the section of the Deipnosophistae that cites passages of Melanippides, Telestes and Pratinas on (...) the mythology of the aulos (14.616e-617f) is not a credible reflection of the contemporary aestheties and strategies of the authors and their works. Athenaeus is both following the structure of Aristotle's discussion of the topic of the aulos in Politics 8. 1341a-1342b and accepting the elite ideological position given there. Athenaeus' text thus does not provide evidence for the historical context in which late fifth-century authors were composing, but rather constitutes an attempt to illustrate Aristotle's argument with poetic examples from late fifth-century poets. (shrink)

The study analyses the critique of the Socratic philosophers in Athenaeus’ The Deipnosophists. The main goal of the study is to assess its overall quality, argumentative structure, historical relevance and interpretative plausibility. The first part of the study briefly outlines the main characteristics and features of the anti-philosophical literature in antiquity. The second part examines Athenaeus' argumentative methods and techniques of textual criticism. In the following parts of the study, we scrutinise Athenaeus‘s overall critical assessment of Socratic (...) literature and compare it with extant philosophical, biographical and doxographical evidence. In conclusion, we answer the question of to what extent is Athenaeus' critique relevant and substantiated by available textual evidence. (shrink)

Pauly'sReal-Encyclopädieknows of two women named after the attractive looking,but allegedly unappetising fish,c⋯λπη. The first is mentioned several times in theelder Pliny, who on one occasion refers to her as anobstetrix, while the second features in theDeipnosophistaeof Athenaeus as a writer of πα⋯γνια. In a recent issue of this journal J. N. Davidson has made the suggestion that they were one and the same person. Salpe's πα⋯γνια, Davidson argues, would not have consisted of light or frivolous verse, but of a (...) compilation of prose recipes of a kind that is to be found in a section of a London magical papyrus which is headed πα⋯γνια Δημοκρ⋯του. Such recipes might well have cohabited with the kind of practicalmedical advice reportedly given by the Salpe referred to in Pliny. His case is superficially attractive since, as will be seen, such a collocation of practical help and frivolity is easy to parallel in magical and other subliterary texts. It needs to be scrutinized, however, in the light of a fuller presentation and consideration of the evidence than is to be found in his note. First, it is worth describing at greater length the phenomena in question, which are much more common than one would gather from a reading of Davidson and which are, I suspect, not as yet as familiar to the scholarly world as they should be. (shrink)

Pauly's Real-Encyclopädie knows of two women named after the attractive looking,but allegedly unappetising fish, cλπη. The first is mentioned several times in theelder Pliny, who on one occasion refers to her as an obstetrix, while the second features in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus as a writer of παγνια. In a recent issue of this journal J. N. Davidson has made the suggestion that they were one and the same person. Salpe's παγνια, Davidson argues, would not have consisted of light (...) or frivolous verse, but of a compilation of prose recipes of a kind that is to be found in a section of a London magical papyrus which is headed παγνια Δημοκρτου. Such recipes might well have cohabited with the kind of practicalmedical advice reportedly given by the Salpe referred to in Pliny. His case is superficially attractive since, as will be seen, such a collocation of practical help and frivolity is easy to parallel in magical and other subliterary texts. It needs to be scrutinized, however, in the light of a fuller presentation and consideration of the evidence than is to be found in his note. First, it is worth describing at greater length the phenomena in question, which are much more common than one would gather from a reading of Davidson and which are, I suspect, not as yet as familiar to the scholarly world as they should be. (shrink)

Pauly'sReal-Encyclopädieknows of two women named after the attractive looking,but allegedly unappetising fish,c⋯λπη. The first is mentioned several times in theelder Pliny, who on one occasion refers to her as anobstetrix, while the second features in theDeipnosophistaeof Athenaeus as a writer of πα⋯γνια. In a recent issue of this journal J. N. Davidson has made the suggestion that they were one and the same person. Salpe's πα⋯γνια, Davidson argues, would not have consisted of light or frivolous verse, but of a (...) compilation of prose recipes of a kind that is to be found in a section of a London magical papyrus which is headed πα⋯γνια Δημοκρ⋯του. Such recipes might well have cohabited with the kind of practicalmedical advice reportedly given by the Salpe referred to in Pliny. His case is superficially attractive since, as will be seen, such a collocation of practical help and frivolity is easy to parallel in magical and other subliterary texts. It needs to be scrutinized, however, in the light of a fuller presentation and consideration of the evidence than is to be found in his note. First, it is worth describing at greater length the phenomena in question, which are much more common than one would gather from a reading of Davidson and which are, I suspect, not as yet as familiar to the scholarly world as they should be. (shrink)

Athenaeus preserves an intriguing description by the otherwise unknown writerMoschion of a giant grain-ship, the Syracusia, built by Hiero II of Syracuse in thelater third century B.C.1 The account is extremely circumstantial. Besides a fulldescription of the ship's layout, Moschion gives such details as the name of thearchitect, the size of the construction-force, the construction time, details of the launching arrangements devised byArchimedes, and even the procedure for judging crimes committed on board.

Athenaeus preserves an intriguing description by the otherwise unknown writerMoschion of a giant grain-ship, the Syracusia, built by Hiero II of Syracuse in thelater third century B.C.1 The account is extremely circumstantial. Besides a fulldescription of the ship's layout, Moschion gives such details as the name of thearchitect , the size of the construction-force , the construction time , details of the launching arrangements devised byArchimedes, and even the procedure for judging crimes committed on board.

Athenaeus records these lines from the dithyramb Hymenaios, along with a number of other snippets of poetry, in the course of an inconclusive discussion about the characteristics of the instrument called the magadis. Athenaeus had good reasons for being puzzled; the word first appeared in Greek, so far as we know, in the seventh century b.c., and its sense was already a matter of some doubt in the fourth. As to this particular fragment, even Telestes' original audience might (...) be forgiven some bafflement in the face of the third line, on which I shall initially focus here. What can be meant by ‘the five-rodded joining of the strings’? (shrink)

Athenaeus, xii. 526 a, quotes three elegiac couplets of Xenophanes on the luxurious ways which the men of Colophon learned from the Lydians. Since the lines lack theological or metaphysical interest, they have not received so much attention as other fragments of Xenophanes, and few attempts have been made to unravel their exact meaning. But it is rash to hurry over anything written by Xenophanes, and these lines are in their way as interesting as anything else that he wrote. (...) For they show what he, a penetrating and serious critic, thought about one aspect of the impact of East on West, of barbarian on Greek, and they contain his only known judgement on historical events. On examination they raise more questions than are usually found in them. They may be quoted as Diels printed them: βρоσνας δ μαθντες νωφελας παρ Λνδν, φρα τνραννης σαν νεν στνγερς, ϊσαν ες γоρν παναλоνργα φρε' χоντες, о μεоνς σπερ χλιоι ες ππαν, αχαλоι, χατσιν γαλλμεν' επρεπεσσιν, σκητоσ' δμν χρμασι δενμενоι. (shrink)

The epitome of Athenaeus does not retain all the details of how these comic fragments were embedded in the conversation which Athenaeus originally presented, though the extract's first sentence shows that one purpose was to exemplify the application of βρέχω to drinking. Editors of both Athenaeus and Eubulus have left the connection of the latter's fragment to its conversational context at that. I submit that what follows in the epitome, as well as what precedes, casts light both (...) on that connection and on how we should restore the text. (shrink)

From these words of Athenaeus, the majority of scholars have come to the Dnclusion that the Asotodidaskalos was not, despite what Sotion says, composed by Alexis, but is a forgery; and some even go so far as to attribute the forgery to Sotion himself. Yet nowhere do they support their views with sufficient rguments; nowhere has the question, in the light of all the evidence, both sternal and internal, been fully considered. Meineke has indeed given clear reasons for his (...) belief that the play as not written by Alexis, in objecting to three usages in the cited fragment as unattic ; but these objections are not all justifiable, as Kock has lown in the case of , or together inclusive enough to make us reject the fragment out of hand. (shrink)

Current scholarship on Clearchus’ Lives emphasizes a moralizing historiographical schema of pernicious luxury, in which truphē leads to koros, then to hybris, and finally to destruction. Yet all the fragments used to construct this theory are preserved in one late source, the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. A study of the diction and immediate context of these so-called fragments demonstrates that the moral themes are presented in language that is far more likely to originate in the cover text rather than in (...) the Lives. Furthermore, this moralizing schema that binds together acts both effeminate and hybristic – as if the one followed naturally from the other – cannot be found securely attested elsewhere in Greek thought before the Roman Era. Thus we argue that, based on the evidence that survives, it is anachronistic to suggest that Clearchus espoused this principle. In addition, those who study Hellenistic fragments need to scrutinize more carefully the exact phrasing and framework of the Deipnosophistae, and be more wary about Athenaeus’ attribution of contemporary values to his sources. (shrink)

Like most other fragments of Nicander's Georgica, fr. 74 is preserved by Athenaeus, who presents it as a catalogue of flowers used for making wreaths. Transmitted in the only independent manuscript of the fuller text of Athenaeus, the fragment's text is extremely corrupt, which, coupled with its technical subject matter and intricate style, renders its restoration an arduous and uncertain job. In what follows I challenge the established reconstruction and interpretation of the section dealing with the ivy, and (...) propose my own instead. (shrink)

Tsc question of the date of Ctesibius has been much obscured of late years by those German scholars1 who assert that Ctesibius the pneumatic and hydraulic engineer mentioned by Vitruvius IX. 8. 2 is distinct and separate from Κτησίβιος Κτησίβιος μηΧανικός who is mentioned by Athenaeus Mechanicus , Philo of Byzantium , and Hedylus ap. Athenaeum Naucratitam Deipn. XI., p. 497, d-e = Anthologia Graeca ed. Cougny, Paris , 1890, Vol. III., p. 298, n. 67.

Agonistic Apples at Delphi : Reflexions about Apollo''s Sacred Quince Tree According to texts and iconography a new award was created during Roman times for Pythian winners : mh''la, «apples ». It seems possible to identify more precisely the variety, thanks to ancient texts about botany, especially one from Athenaeus who speaks about mh''la Delf ikav. These one were maybe obtained by grafting an apple tree on a quince tree. This graft was particularly liked in the Greco-Roman world. For (...) a Greek mind the quince was born in Creta ; it could have come to Delphi in archaic times. Considering mythology and cult music, we may understand that Cretan people were in Delphi at the time. Then an apple tree was grafted and the new apples were so beautiful that they were considered as a wonderful award. We may assume that a Roman emperor made that decision, probably Hadrian, whose action for the sanctuary of Delphi is well known. (shrink)

The following emendations are a selection from adversaria made during repeated readings of Athenaeus. The material to hand during the several perusals has consisted chiefly of Kaibel's recension , the variorum edition of Schweighhauser, and Meineke's Comic Fragments. The editor of the Classical Quarterly has been kind enough to check my suggestions by reference to other material, and I have to thank him for the excision of sundry emendations for which I cannot claim priority. As the full discussion of (...) the several passages here touched upon would require considerable space, I have contented myself with a brevity which is not intended to be in any way dogmatic; but which aims simply at economy of paper and type. I hope at an early date to enter more fully and systematically into the emendation and interpretation of this interesting and instructive writer. (shrink)

Aeschylus, according to a famous report, described his tragedies as ‘cuts from Homer's great banquets’. The anecdote has the ring of truth, particularly as ‘Homer’ here must include the Epic Cycle, which would hardly have been possible after the fifth century; and there is an obvious source from which Athenaeus might have taken the story, the ’Eπιδημαι of Ion of Chios, which he cites in three other places. This work had the character of a personal memoir describing notable Athenian (...) statesmen, poets, and philosophers whom Ion had known. The emphasis was on their personalities as revealed in their public speeches and private conversation. One of Athenaeus’ quotations from it is about Sophocles, and we know from other evidence that as a young man Ion had met Aeschylus too. The anecdote would have been perfectly in place in such a book. (shrink)

"The day would fail me," Pontianus observes in Athenaeus' Deinosophistae, "if I were to proceed enumerating all those men who were abused by the philosopher [scil., Plato]...." For "Plato was in fact hostile towards everyone," and displayed "malice towards all"; he had "the reputation of being jealous and of having by no means a good name so far as his character was concerned"; and "besides of being malicious,... [he] also was eager for fame"--characteristics which, if true, certainly would not (...) endear him to others. Aristoxenus, for instance, maintains that perhaps from sheer envy or malice Plato "wanted to burn all of the writings of Democritus." When he failed in this, Aristoxenus continues, Plato, "who mentions almost all the early philosophers, never once alluded to Democritus, not even where it would be appropriate to take issue with him, obviously because he knew that he would have to compete against the greatest of all philosophers." Plato was also accused of being jealous of Xenophon, refusing to mention him in his Phaedo, and of making it a deliberate issue to contradict Xenophon's statement that from his earliest childhood King Cyrus had been thoroughly educated in all the traditional branches of learning. As a matter of fact, Plato insisted that Cyrus "had never given much thought to education." Plato, according to these reports, also denied in a spirit of resentment the truth of Xenophon's description of Menon's foul treachery, calling the whole account an outright fabrication deliberately invented to discredit Menon--in Plato's opinion an upright and praiseworthy person. It might be contended, therefore, that in the final analysis the reasons for the many ancient "anti-platonica" may be looked for in Plato himself, especially in the many violent and often unrestrained polemics which he hurled, often indiscriminately, against practically every author. "He [scil., Plato] was the first philosopher... to attack the views of almost all of his predecessors.". (shrink)

Duris of Samos is significant enough, among lost Hellenistic historians, for a paragraph or two to be devoted to him in most works on the history or literature of the period. For the last two centuries such paragraphs have been saying among other things that Duris went to Athens and studied under Theophrastus. But Athenaeus 128a, the source cited for this statement, does not support it unless a doubtful conjecture is admitted to the text.

Terpsicles is neglected in all current Histories of Greek Literature and Dictionaries of Antiquity, except for a five-lines-long entry by E. Bux in Real-Encyclopädie V.A. 790. He is the author of a treatise Περί ἀΦροδισίων, which is only known from two references in Athenaeus—7.325d and 9.391e—and seems to have been a collection of sex-related marvels. In the first passage he provides a piece of information on the red mullet.

Pindar’s skolion for the Olympic victor Xenophon of Corinth has received considerable attention for its subject rather than its poetic quality. For it celebrates a dedication of prostitutes to Aphrodite which scholars have considered a subject inappropriate for a choral ode. So they detected traces of a tension between the poet and Xenophon within the text. In this article it is argued that, quite the reverse, Pindar is drawing a parallel between himself and the victor and his family. If we (...) reconsider the pragmatic aspects of the skolion, its relation to Olympian 13 and the context Athenaeus provides for the fragment, we are able to see that Pindar links sport, ritual and politics, thereby serving Xenophon’s ambitions as well as his own. By practising conspicuous consumption Xenophon aims at detaching himself from Corinth’s egalitarian aristocracy, and at the same time the poet promotes himself in the literary field as a poetic innovator and authority. So, both transgress expectations and boundaries. (shrink)

The paper deals with the question of the attribution to Epicurus of the classification of pleasures into 'kinetic' and 'static'. This classification, usually regarded as authentic, confronts us with a number of problems and contradictions. Besides, it is only mentioned in a few sources that are not the most reliable. Following Gosling and Taylor, I believe that the authenticity of the classification may be called in question. The analysis of the ancient evidence concerning Epicurus' concept of pleasure is made according (...) to the following principle: first, I consider the sources that do not mention the distinction between 'kinetic' and 'static' pleasures, and only then do I compare them with the other group of texts which comprises reports by Cicero, Diogenes Laertius and Athenaeus. From the former group of texts there emerges a concept of pleasure as a single and not twofold notion, while such terms as 'motion' and 'state' describe not two different phenomena but only two characteristics of the same phenomenon. On the other hand, the reports comprising the latter group appear to derive from one and the same doxographical tradition, and to be connected with the classification of ethical docrines put forward by the Middle Academy and known as the divisio Carneadea. In conclusion, I argue that the idea of Epicurus' classification of pleasures is based on a misinterpretation of Epicurus' concept in Academic doxography, which tended to contrapose it to doctrines of other schools, above all to the Cyrenaics' views. (shrink)

Euboulos' 'αγκελων is represented by only four fragments , all culled from Athenaeus, which tell us nothing about the plot of the play or about the identity of its titular character. R. L. Hunter, in his recent commentary on Euboulos, discusses at length the name 'αγκελων and concludes that it could belong to either a humble and poor man; ‘a character from folklore notorious for sexual relations with his mother’ ; or ’ a wily slave such as those foreshadowed (...) in Aristophanes and familiar from New Comedy'. In view of our ignorance of the play's plot, each of these possibilities has an equal claim to our consideration. I believe, however, that the context in which the fragments are embedded in Athenaeus allows us to refine our understanding of the name even further. (shrink)

This is the text of II. 18.603–6, the final scene on the Shield of Achilles, as presented unanimously by our manuscript tradition, five Vulgate papyri from the first to the sixth century A.D., our scholia, and in a quotation in Dionysius of Halicarnassus.1 As is well-known, a much discussed and contentious textual problem raised by Wolf2 is lurking behind it. It is prompted by a passage in Athenaeus providing an additional line after which mentions an and his Discussions of (...) the controversial Iliad passage have concentrated on the authenticity of the information given by Athenaeus.3 This focus, I suggest, has been unduly narrow, and has led either to a neglect of other pieces of evidence or to a wrong assessment of their importance. I therefore propose to tackle the problem with a different strategy. Let us erase from our memories the very existence of Athenaeus' information for a while, and reconsider the passage in question accordingly. (shrink)