The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3) — Text and Context

Quotation as Argument

The Deipnosophists rarely advances a thesis of its own. Instead, it proceeds by stringing together excerpts from earlier writers. In Book XII, the topic of luxury is introduced with a quotation from Alexis’s Tyndareus, comparing the speaker’s friend Timocrates to a man from Cyrene who attracts eighteen guests to a banquet. The point is made through allusion, not direct statement. This reliance on quoted authority means the reader must infer the speakers’ positions from the selection and arrangement of sources.

The catalog subject “Homosexuality – Greece” appears in the table of contents for Book XIII, but the excerpts provided do not include that discussion. The evidence is limited to the heading “Love—Beauty of Women—Praise of Modesty,” which suggests a broader treatment of eros than the catalog implies. The text’s structure—a series of headings followed by quotations—makes it difficult to extract a unified argument on any single subject.

Philological Digressions

A striking feature of the volume is its attention to linguistic detail. In the cheesecake passage, the speaker notes that the word πλακοῦς should have a circumflex accent because it is contracted from πλακόεις, and that τυροῦς and σησαμούς follow the same pattern. This kind of grammatical observation is typical: the Deipnosophists often pauses to discuss word forms, dialectal variations, or the correct reading of a line.

These digressions serve a dual purpose. They demonstrate the learning of the speakers, and they preserve information about ancient Greek that might otherwise be lost. For the modern reader, they also signal that the text is as much about language as about the customs it describes. The catalog subject “Civilization, Greco-Roman” is thus realized not only through descriptions of behavior but through the very medium of the language used to record them.

The Texture of Everyday Life

Despite its learned frame, the volume offers glimpses of material culture. The discussion of cheesecakes mentions specific varieties: ἄμης, διακόνιον, ἀμφιφῶν. The last, an amphiphon, is described as a cheesecake consecrated to Diana, with figures of lighted torches around it. Such details connect the text to ritual practice and domestic life.

Similarly, the excerpt from Menander’s False Hercules lists ingredients—eggs, honey, similago (fine flour)—and cooking methods: baked cheesecakes in a mould, boiled groats, forcemeat wrapped in fig leaves. These passages are not systematic descriptions of ancient cuisine; they are fragments embedded in comic dialogue. Yet they accumulate into a textured record of what was eaten, how it was prepared, and what words were used to name it. The catalog subject “Dinners and dining – Greece” is thus richly supported, but only through the lens of literary quotation.

Readers approaching this volume should expect a work that is encyclopedic in ambition but fragmentary in execution. The catalog subjects provide a useful starting point, but the text’s value lies in the density of its quotations and the philological care of its translation. It is best read as a reference work—a collection of voices from classical Greece—rather than as a continuous narrative. The index and appendix of poetical fragments, included in this edition, are essential tools for navigating its contents.

The rain against the window made Athenaeus feel like a secret, comfortable room. The chatter about desserts and courtesans hummed the same old, constant tune. Yet, a quiet question kept surfacing from the dinner-table noise, lingering long after I closed the book. That afternoon, my mind drifted to another volume about heresy. Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A Justification — Reading Companion asks what any system quietly excludes. An afternoon of crumbs and questions, it turns out, can lead somewhere stranger. It simply happened, and I felt grateful.