The Deipnosophists, or Learned Banqueters, is a work in Greek prose by Athenaeus of Naucratis, written at the end of the second century CE or early in the third. Athenaeus tells his friend Timocrates of the talk at the dinners given in Rome by Larensius, whose guests include the grammarians Ulpian and Plutarch, the jurist Masurius, the Cynic Cynulcus and the physician Galen. Each dish and custom of the meal draws quotations from earlier writers, many of whose works are otherwise lost, among them a great number of comic poets.
The fifteen books follow the courses of the meal: wines and what is served before it, breads and shellfish, royal and national banquets, fish in an alphabetical catalogue, birds and meats, gluttons and drinking customs, drinking cups in another alphabetical list, luxury, love and courtesans, after-dinner entertainments and music, dessert, and at the end kottabos, garlands, perfumes and drinking songs. Ulpian's questions on whether a word is attested in older writers recur throughout.
The text survives in fifteen books but not entire: Books I and II and the opening of Book III are known only from an abridgement made in the Byzantine period, and the full text has gaps elsewhere.
Athenaeus of Naucratis Deipnosophists: summary and contents (PDF)
Athenaeus of Naucratis Deipnosophists: summary and contents (Markdown)
Contents
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Αʹ Book I
Athenaeus introduces his learned dinner here, in a book that survives only in an abridgement: the host Larensius, his guests, among them Masurius, Ulpian and the physician Galen, and the plan of a book that imitates a feast. The talk turns to dining in Homer, where heroes serve themselves, to famous gluttons, and to a long catalogue of wines, ending with comic poets on cabbage as a cure for drunkenness.
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Βʹ Book II
Wine leads the talk in this book, which also survives in abridgement: the name of wine, traced to Oeneus, Hecataeus' story of the first vine in Aetolia, the follies of drunkenness, and the waters of different places. The guests then turn to what is served before dinner, fruits, nuts and vegetables, with the physician Diocles on almonds and other nuts, and the book ends with comic lines on family dinners and kitchen vessels.
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Γʹ Book III
From the Egyptian bean and the colocasia the guests pass to shellfish, snails, offal, salt fish, and the kinds of bread and cakes. Ulpian presses them on whether each word is attested in older writers, which prompts talk of coined words in Plato and Herodes Atticus. The book closes on gruel and fine flour, as Timocrates asks to hear of the Macedonian banquet next.
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Δʹ Book IV
A Macedonian wedding feast, that of Caranus, is described in a letter of Hippolochus, with gifts of gold and silver at every course. Accounts of royal and national dinners follow: Spartan messes, Celts, Romans, Etruscans and Indians, drawn from historians such as Posidonius, Timaeus and Megasthenes. The talk turns to Cynic fare and lentil soup, and ends with music and its instruments, the pipes above all.
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Εʹ Book V
Homer's feasts are set against the symposia of the philosophers by Masurius, who faults Plato and Epicurus. Long extracts describe royal display: the grand procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Alexandria from Callixeinus, the great ships of Ptolemy Philopator and Hieron of Syracuse, Antiochus Epiphanes' games at Daphne, and the rise of the tyrant Athenion in Athens. The company breaks up after an epigram mocking the followers of Aristarchus.
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Ϛʹ Book VI
Lines of Antiphanes on why tragedy has an easier task than comedy lead into the tricks of fishmongers and the use of gold and silver in Greece. Flatterers and parasites are treated at length, with stories of Democles at the court of Dionysius and of Hieron's dinner companions. Slaves and slavery follow, and the book ends with Posidonius on the frugal Italians of old and Theopompus on the costly tables of his own day.
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Ζʹ Book VII
Fish are the main matter here. After Cynulcus puzzles Ulpian over a festival of gluttony and Plutarch recalls Alexandrian feasts, the guests work through an alphabetical catalogue of fish, the tunny among them, quoting comic poets, Archestratus and Aristotle on each kind. A comic poet's list of meats to follow the fish rounds it off.
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Ηʹ Book VIII
Polybius on the cheap abundance of Lusitania, with its prices for wheat, wine and meat, starts a further round of talk on fish. Fish that fall from the sky or live in rivers, the habits of fish-lovers, and attacks on Aristotle's natural history occupy the guests, along with the witticisms of the citharode Stratonicus. It ends on meals paid for by shared contributions.
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Θʹ Book IX
Ulpian challenges the names of the dishes as they come round, among them ham, mustard and seasoned salt. The talk moves to vegetables, then to birds, partridges, quails, peafowl, geese and others, with lore on their breeding from Aristotle and Clearchus, then to pork and hare. Hand-washing water ends the book, with the names given to the boy Heracles killed while he poured it.
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Ιʹ Book X
Heracles' appetite heads a gallery of gluttons and heavy drinkers, among them Dionysius the Younger, Timolaus of Thebes and Charidemus of Oreus as Theopompus describes them. The guests discuss how wine was mixed and served, drinking customs among different peoples, and water-drinkers. Riddles fill the end, and the talk of drinking cups is deferred to the next day.
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ΙΑʹ Book XI
Plutarch of Alexandria gives an alphabetical catalogue of drinking cups, each vessel with its name, shape and quotations from poets, among them the kōthōn. The talk begins with Ulpian on whether Homer's heroes sat or reclined at table, then turns to Plato's dialogues, with complaints against him and his school, and ends with a comic poet's sketch of a young Academic.
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ΙΒʹ Book XII
Luxury and its famous devotees: whole peoples, among them Persians, Lydians, Sybarites and Tarentines, and individuals such as Sardanapalus, Alcibiades and Demetrius of Phalerum. Between them come Cimon's open-handed generosity and the reigns of tyrants. The book ends with Heraclides of Pontus on Thrasyllus, who in his madness believed every ship in the Piraeus was his.
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ΙΓʹ Book XIII
An appeal to Erato opens the talk of love, and Larensius praises wives. Myrtilus then speaks at length on courtesans: Lais, Phryne, Glycera and Gnathaena with her sharp sayings, and the poets and statesmen who loved them. The guests also treat the love of boys and the philosophers on love, and the book ends with a speech of Lysias against a sophist turned on Cynulcus.
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ΙΔʹ Book XIV
After dinner come the entertainments: drunkenness and its madness, mimes and jugglers, kinds of song, instruments and the musical modes, and poets of light verse such as Gnesippus. The talk then turns to the second tables of dessert, cakes, cheeses and fruits, and ends with the after-dinner dish called mattyē and the names other Greeks gave it, as the guests part for the evening.
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ΙΕʹ Book XV
Kottabos, garlands and perfumes close the symposium and the work: the game and its rules, the flowers garlands are made from, with a long passage of Nicander, and the kinds of perfume. The guests recite Attic drinking songs and other hymns, among them Ariphron's paean to Health, and Athenaeus takes leave of Timocrates with a line of Dionysius Chalcus.