A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

400 ATHENAEUS.

ATHENAEUS.

she wears a cloak, the peplus, or, though rarely,
the chlamys. The general expression of her figure
is thoughtfulness and earnestness; her face is rather oval than round, the hair is rich and generally
combed backwards over the temples, and floats
freely down behind. The whole figure is majestic,
and rather strong built than slender: the hips are
small and the shoulders broad, so that the whole
somewhat resembles a male figure. (Hirt. Mytltol.
Bilderb. i. p. 46, &c.; Welcker, Zeitschriftfifr Gesch.
der alten Kunst, p. 256, &c.) [L. S.]
ATHENAEUS ('AO'vaios), historical. The
name differed in pronunciation from the Greek
adjective for Athenian, the former being accentuated 'A@i'vatos, and the latter 'AOqvacor. (Eustath.
ad II. f3. p. 237.) 1. Son of Pericleidas, a Lacedaemonian, was one of the commissioners, who, on
the part of the Lacedaemonians and their allies,
ratified the truce for one year which in B. c. 423
was made between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians and their allies; and afterwards with Aristonymus, an Athenian, went round to announce
the truce to Brasidas and other officers of the
belligerent parties. (Thuc. iv. 119, 122.) The
names Athenaeus and Pericleidas mark the friendly
relations which subsisted between this family and
the Athenians, and more especially the family of
Pericles.
2. A lieutenant of Antigonus, who was sent
against the Nabataeans, an Arabian people. (B. c.
312.) He surprised the stronghold of Petra, but
afterwards suffered himself to be surprised in the
night, and his army was almost entirely destroyed.
(Diod. xix. 94.)
3. A general in the service of Antiochus VII.
lie accompanied him on his expedition against the
Parthians, and was one of the first to fly in the
battle in which Antiochus lost his life, B. c. 128.
He, however, perished with hunger in his flight,
as in consequence of some previous excesses, none
of those to whom he fled would furnish him with
the necessaries of life. (Diod. Exc. de Virt. et
Vit. p. 603, ed. Wess.)
4. Son of Attalus I., king of Pergamus. [EuMENES; ATTALUS.] His name occurs not unfrequently in connexion with the events of his
time. He was on various occasions sent as ambassador to Rome by his brothers Eumenes and
Attalus. (Polyb. xxiv. 1, xxxi. 9, xxxii. 26,
xxxiii. 11; Liv. xxxviii. 12, 13, x1ii. 55, xlv. 27.)
5. A Cappadocian, who had been banished at
the instance of queen Athenais, but through the
influence of Cicero was restored, B. c. 51. (Cic.
ad Fam. xv. 4,) [C. P. M.]
ATHENAEUS ('AOSvatos), literary. 1. A
contemporary of Archimedes, the author of an extant work rlept M-qXavfihUcrcTv' (on warlike engines),
addressed to Marcellus (probably the conqueror of
Syracuse). He is perhaps the same with Athenaeus of Cyzicus, mentioned by Proclus (in
Euclid. p. 19) as a distinguished mathematician.
The above-mentioned work is printed in Thevenot's
Mathenmatici Veteres, Paris, 1693. (Fabric. Bibl.
Graec. iv. p. 222, &c.)
2. An EPIGRAMMATIC poet, mentioned by
Diogenes Laertius. (vi. 14, vii. 30.) He was the
author of two epigrams in the Greek Anthology.
(Brunck, Anal. ii. p. 257.)
3. ARHETORICIAN, the contemporary and oppo-,nent of Hermagoras. He defined rhetoric to be the
art of deceiving. (Quintil. iii. 1L ~ 16, ii. 15. ~ 23.)

4. Of SELEUCUS, a philosopher of the Peripatetic school, mentioned by Strabo (xiv. p. 670) as
a contemporary of his own. He was for some time
the leading demagogue in his native city, but
afterwards came to Rome and became acquainted
with L. Licinius Varro Muraena. On the discovery
of the plot which the latter, with Fannius Caepio,
had entered into against Augustus, Athenaeus accompanied him in his flight. He was retaken, but
pardoned by Augustus, as there was no evidence
of his having taken a more active part in the plot.
He is perhaps the same with the writer mentioned
by Diodorus. (ii. 20.)
5. A STOIC philosopher, mentioned by Porphyrius in his life of Plotinus. (c. 20.) There was
also an Epicurean philosopher of this name. (Diog.
Laeirt. x. 22. 12.) [C. P. M.]
ATHENAEUS ('A07ivatos), a native of Naucratis, a town on the left side of the Canopic
mouth of the Nile, is called by Suidas a ypavpaTriKS, a term which may be best rendered into
English, a literary man. Suidas places him in the
"'times of Marcus," but whether by this is meant
Marcus Aurelius is uncertain, as Caracalla was
also Marcus Antoninus. We know, however, that
Oppian, who wrote a work called Halieutica inscribed to Caracalla, was a little anterior to him
(Athen. i. p. 13), and that Commodus was dead
when he wrote (xii. p. 537), so that he may have
been born in the reign of Aurelius, but flourished
under his successors. Part of his work must have
been written after A. D. 228, the date given by
Dion Cassius for the death of Ulpian the lawyer,
which event he mentions. (xv. p. 686.)
His extant work is entitled the Deipnosophistae,
i.e. the Banquet of the Learned, or else, perhaps, as
has lately been suggested, The Contrivers of Feasts.
It may be considered one of the earliest collections
of what are called A na, being an immense mass of
anecdotes, extracts from the writings of poets, historians, dramatists, philosophers, orators, and physicians, of facts in natural history, criticisms, and
discussions on almost every conceivable subject,
especially on Gastronomy, upon which noble science
he mentions a work (now lost) of Archestratus
[ARCHESTRATUS], whose place his own 15 books
have probably supplied. It is in short a collection
of stories from the memory and common-place book
of a Greek gentleman of the third century of the
Christian era, of enormous reading, extreme love
of good eating, and respectable ability. Some notion of the materials which he had amassed for
the work, may be formed from the fact, which lie
tells us himself, that he had read and made extracts
from 800 plays of the middle comedy only. (viii.
p. 336.)
Athenaeus represents himself as describing to
his friend Timocrates, a banquet given at the house
of Laurentius (AapoiYaios), a noble Roman, to
several guests, of whom the best known are Galen,
a physician, and Ulpian, the lawyer. The work
is in the form of a dialogue, in which these guests
are the interlocutors, related to Timocrates: a
double machinery, which would have been inconvenient to an author who had a real talent for dramatic writing, but which in the hands of Athenaeus, who had none, is wholly unmanageable.
As a work of art the failure is complete. Unity
of time and dramatic probability are utterly violated
by the supposition that so immense a work is the
record of the conversation at a single banquet, and