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I have here for sale a huge seventeenth century vellum-bound book containing two works. First one is entitled ATHENAEI DEIPNOSOPHISTARUM LIBRI QUINDECIM CUM JACOBI DALECHAMPII CADOMENSIS. Editio Postrema iuxta Isaaci Casauboni (The Deipnosophistarum of Athenaeus of Naucratis in 15 books - edited and commentary by Casaubon). Published by John Antonius Huguetan and Marcus Antonius Ravaud in Lyon in 1657. Rubricated title page with a b/w vignette. Illustrated chapter headers and capital letters. Printed in 2 column format with Latin on the left and Greek on the right. Index at the rear. one of our sources for ancient daily life. Greek and Roman cookery, as well as wines are described in detail, and probably also the earliest known text on cookery

Pages 1-704 are the fifteen books of the Deipnosophistarum.

Pages 705-812 are the Commentary by Jacob Dalechamp

Then there is an unpaginated Index in Athenaeum

Followed by the second book

ANIMADVERSIONUM IN ATHEN DIPNOSOPHISTIAS - this was published in 1621 by Harsy and Ravaud in Lugdunum in vico Mercuriali ad insigne S Petri. This is numbered by column, two columns to a page, and 980 columns in total. Ending with an Index.

Full vellum hardboards with part of a brown title label to the spine. Some darkening to the vellum but the boards are firm. Small tear to the spine. Half title and title page are detached. Some staining and foxing here and there throughout. Binding firm. 998 pages, 36 x 23 cm.

I have taken this very good summary of the work off Wikipedia:

The Deipnosophistae is an early 3rd-century AD Greek work (Ancient Greek: Δειπνοσοφισταί, Deipnosophistaí, lit. "The Dinner Sophists/Philosophers/Experts") by the Greek author Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of literary, historical, and antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist Publius Livius Larensis for an assembly of grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on.

Title

The Greek title Deipnosophistaí (Δειπνοσοφισταί) derives from the combination of deipno- (δειπνο-, "dinner") and sophistḗs (σοφιστής, "expert, one knowledgeable in the arts of ~"). It and its English derivative deipnosophists thus describe people who are skilled at dining, particularly the refined conversation expected to accompany Greek symposia. However, the term is shaded by the harsh treatment accorded to professional teachers in Plato's Socratic dialogues, which made the English term sophist into a pejorative.

In English, Athenaeus's work usually known by its Latin form Deipnosophistae but is also variously translated as The Deipnosophists, Sophists at Dinner, The Learned Banqueters, The Banquet of the Learned, Philosophers at Dinner, or The Gastronomers.

The Deipnosophistae professes to be an account, given by Athenaeus to his friend Timocrates, of a series of banquets held at the house of Larensius, a scholar and wealthy patron of the arts. It is thus a dialogue within a dialogue, after the manner of Plato, although each conversation is so long that, realistically, it would occupy several days. Among the numerous guests, Masurius, Zoilus, Democritus, Galen, Ulpian and Plutarch are named, but most are probably to be taken as fictitious personages, and the majority take little or no part in the conversation. If Ulpian is identical with the famous jurist, the Deipnosophistae must have been written after his death in 223; but the jurist was murdered by the Praetorian 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; the Ulpian in the dialog has also been linked to the renowned jurist's father.

The work is invaluable for providing fictionalized information about the Hellenistic literary world of the leisured class during the Roman Empire.^{[citation needed]} To the majority of modern readers, even more useful is the wealth of information provided in the Deipnosophistae about earlier Greek literature. 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 the swallow song of Rhodes). Food and wine, luxury, music, sexual mores, literary gossip and philology are among the major topics of discussion, and the stories behind many artworks such as the Venus Kallipygos are also transmitted in its pages.

Food and cookery

The Deipnosophistae is an important source of recipes in classical Greek. It quotes the original text of one recipe from the lost cookbook by Mithaecus, the oldest in Greek and the oldest recipe by a named author in any language. Other authors quoted for their recipes include Glaucus of Locri, Dionysius, Epaenetus, Hegesippus of Tarentum, Erasistratus, Diocles of Carystus, Timachidas of Rhodes, Philistion of Locri, Euthydemus of Athens, Chrysippus of Tyana, Paxamus and Harpocration of Mende. It also describes in detail the meal and festivities at the wedding feast of Caranos.^[12]

Drink

In expounding on earlier works, Athenaeus wrote that Aeschylus "very improperly" introduces the Greeks to be "so drunk as to break their vessels about one another's heads":

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 besides macassar.

Homosexuality

In addition to its main focuses, the text offers an unusually clear portrait of homosexuality in late Hellenism. Books XII-XIII holds a wealth of information for studies of homosexuality in Roman Greece. It is subject to a broader discussion that includes Alcibiades, Charmides, Autolycus, Pausanias and Sophocles. Furthermore, numerous books and now lost plays on the subject are mentioned, including the dramatists Diphilus, Cratinus, Aeschylus, and Sophocles and the philosopher Heraclides of Pontus.^{[citation needed]}

First patents

Athenaeus described what may be considered the first patents (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 of Sybaris (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.

Survival and reception

The Deipnosophistae was originally in fifteen books.The work survives in one manuscript from which the whole of books 1 and 2, and some other pages too, disappeared long ago. An Epitome 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 polymath Sir Thomas Browne noted in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica:

Athenæus, a delectable Author, very various, and justly stiled by Casaubon, Græcorum Plinius. There is extant of his, a famous Piece, under the name of Deipnosophista, or Coena Sapientum, containing the Discourse of many learned men, at a Feast provided by Laurentius. It is a laborious Collection out of many Authors, and some whereof are mentioned no where else. It containeth strange and singular relations, not without some spice or sprinkling of all Learning. The Author was probably a better Grammarian then Philosopher, dealing but hardly with Aristotle and Plato, and betrayeth himself much in his Chapter De Curiositate Aristotelis. In brief, he is an Author of excellent use, and may with discretion be read unto great advantage: and hath therefore well deserved the Comments of Casaubon and Dalecampius.

Browne's interest in Athenaeus reflects a revived interest in the Banquet of the Learned amongst scholars following the publication of the Deipnosophistae in 1612 by the Classical scholar Isaac Casaubon.

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