The Wedding Feast is a lost comedy by the Athenian playwright Euangelus, who was active during the period of Middle Comedy in the fourth century BCE. The work survives only in six brief fragments preserved by the grammarian Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistae. The extant passages, which focus on elaborate descriptions of food and dining preparations, suggest the play comically treated themes of domestic and social life, with specific references to culinary items such as a type of bread and a fish sauce. Transmitted exclusively through quotation in Athenaeus’s work, the fragments are collected in modern editions. As a representative fragment of Middle Comedy, the play provides evidence for the genre’s shift away from direct political satire toward domestic and social themes, and its remains serve as primary sources for the study of ancient Athenian material culture and comic conventions.
ΑΝΑΚΑΛΥΠΤΟΜΕΝΗ.
Τέτταρας … τραπέζας τῶν γυναικῶν εἶπά σοι
ἓξ δὲ τῶν ἀνδρῶν, τὸ δεῖπνον δʼ ἐντελὲς καὶ μηδενί
ἐλλιπές. λαμπροὺς γενέσθαι βουλόμεσθα τοὺς γάμους.
Β. οὐ παρʼ ἑτέρου δεῖ πυθέσθαι, πάντα δʼ αὐτόπτης ἐρῶ.
τῶν μὲν ἐλαῶν ἄφελε πάνθʼ ὅσʼ ἂν βούλῃ γένη.
εἰς δὲ τὰ κρέα μόσχον ἔλαβες, δέλφακας, χοίρους, λαγώς·
Α. ὡς ἀλαζὼν ὁ κατάρατος. Β. θρῖα, τυρόν, ἐγχύτους.
Α. παῖ Δρόμων. Β. κάνδυλον, ᾠά τʼ, ἀμύλιον …
τὸ πέρας, ὕψος τῆς τραπέζης πήχεών ἐστιν τριῶν,
ὥστε τὸν δειπνοῦντʼ ἐπαίρειν, ἄν τι βούληται λαβεῖν.
