Athenaeus

This paper aims to critically analyse the testimonies concerning Athenian impiety trials of the classical period. First, it reaffirms the arguments that some of them must have been an invention of Hellenistic and later authors. Second, it presents a likely political background behind the historical cases. Third, it discusses a number of legal issues, along with new arguments concerning the procedures employed. Finally, it examines some less well-known material from the fourth century BCE. Overall, it seeks to provide a possibly coherent and comprehensive framework of Athenian impiety trials based on their shared characteristics.

In my paper, I reconsider the syngramma of Moschio reported by Athenaeus (Moschio ap. Ath. 5, 206d-209e). This text contained a large description of the Syrakosia, the great ship of king Hiero II of Syracuse. In the first part of my paper, I shall review the main readings and interpretations of Moschion’s text. In the second part, I shall argue
that the syngramma of Moschio does not describe a real ship but the polis of Syracuse in an allegorical form. I shall discuss the historical context in which this allegorical representation was formulated, and I shall argue that it is Syracuse at the time of Hiero. In conclusion, I shall argue that this allegorical representation is an example of ‘thought city’, a way to imagine and represent the cityscape very different of our geometrical and cartographic representations.

Intellectual puzzles have a tendency to intermix and accumulate in miscellaneous collections, as happens in present-day puzzle magazines. This phenomenon may already be observed in old compilations (cf. Palatine Anthology, book 14, which draws on earlier sources) and theoretical treatises of antiquity (Clearchus’ "On riddles", Athenaeus’ "Deipnosophistae" book 10). Long before such works, fictional and legendary narratives provided a framework for stringing together multifarious types of mental games. The Near-Eastern "Story of Ahiqar" and the Greek "Contest of Homer and Hesiod" use the old theme of the competition between two great sages as a plot structure to accommodate a veritable anthology of genres of riddles. The Greek legend of Homer and Hesiod may have influenced Aristophanic comedies such as the "Frogs" and the "Wasps". But while in the East the narrative form of the miscellaneous riddle contest was a fantastic outgrowth of the mixed compilations of wisdom literature, the corresponding Greek narratives were fictionalizations of the multifaceted entertainments of the symposion.

The narrative form of the miscellaneous riddle contest –that is, the earliest antecedent of the "puzzle magazine model" with its mixture of various puzzles– was invented in ancient Greece and West Asia more or less simultaneously and independently, on the basis of different local traditions. In the Near East the narrative anthology of Ahiqar’s griphoi was a fantastic offshoot of the miscellaneous collections of didactic literature; the bookish medley of wisdom genres was transplanted to the old legend of the confrontation between two masters of wisdom. The Greek stories, on the other hand, were fictionalizations of the multifaceted entertainments of the symposion. The Mesopotamian narrator pored over his learned written scrolls; the Greek one recounted, in the guise of a parable, the live delights of the convivial feast. The two cultures arrived at the same literary creation from different ways; but both of them are connected by the pure pleasure of intellectual play.

It is the same pleasure that also connects us with those remote ancestors, every time we pick up a rivista di enigmistica in order to fill in a crossword, answer a quiz, disentangle a labyrinth, or solve another one of its multifarious mental puzzles.

Strategos 104A Die Reise nach Ägypten, Teil 1.
A reconstruction of the Memories of Aratos of Sikyon by Peter Weber.
Chapter 4 (Part 1): Aratos travels to Egypt, seeking assistance from king Ptolemy to overcome the domestic troubles in Sicyon. This chapter reconstructs the voyage as well as the visit to the king and the outcome.
Most of the chapter is a vivid description of Ptolemaic Egypt at the eyes of a young traveler from Greece, that is, a cultural history of Hellenism offering a close view at Ptolemaic administration and their ambitions abroad. Part two is following.
For researchers the most interesting insights will probably regard the chronology of events.

The Aesopic fable and the riddle are primarily folk genres and have a close affinity with each other. Both of them are based on ambiguity and employ metaphor and analogy in order to refer to a deeper layer of meaning under their superficial imagery. This generic kinship was already noted and discussed in antiquity. The oldest specialized name for “fable” in the ancient Greek language, ainos, is etymologically connected to the term ainigma, “riddle”. Greek scholars, rhetoricians, and scholiasts, from the Peripatetic Clearchus to the Byzantine Eustathius, comment on the kinship between the two genres and their nomenclature. Plutarch even dramatized this literary relationship in his Banquet of the Seven Sages, by presenting Aesop and Cleobulina (the emblematic figures personifying fable and riddle respectively) as close friends who mutually appropriate each other’s genre. Above all, consciousness of the affinity between riddle and fable took concrete form in the field of popular poetic creation, through the category of narrative enigmas — that is, riddles which assume the form of a brief tale, instead of offering a static, accumulative description of their object. The constituents of the object are symbolically represented as human or animal characters and involved in a rudimentary scenario of action, narrated in the third person. Thus, the riddle becomes similar to the conventional form of the Aesopic fable. In the present article the term “mythogriph” is introduced for this type of narrative riddle, and a series of examples are discussed, drawn from the literatures of various ancient peoples. Many of the oldest and most pristine riddles of the ancient Greeks belong to this type, which is already attested in the proverb collections of the Sumerians, the earliest wisdom literature of the world.

The present chapter demonstrates how Greek Middle Comedy practises burlesque of contemporary history – with ensuing political ramifications – through the means of mythological parody. The argument is substantiated through the analysis of two exemplary cases from the fragmentarily surviving corpus of the fourth-century BC comic poet Ephippus, where contemporary historical figures are presented in mythical, albeit recognizable, disguise. It is argued that (i) in the play "Busiris" Ephippus uses the mythical persona of the title-figure as a disguise for the Egyptian pharaoh Nectanebo II, and (ii) in his "Geryon" the Macedonian king Philip II can be identified as the historical equivalent of the mythical title-figure.

Athenaei Deipnosophistarum textus codice Marciano traditus lemmatibus instructus est, quae quanti essent momenti primus omnium G. Cobet sagaciter perspexit. Exarata litteris maiusculis, in marginibus scripta vel inter binas textus columnas, plerumque summaria exhibent eorum quae textu continentur vel nomina scriptorum ab Athenaeo laudatorum; ab ipso Marciani exemplari originem repetere creduntur, ut docent frequentissima menda litterarum maiuscularum orta confusione. Videntur esse tribuenda grammatico Byzantino saec. VI-VII p.Chr., unde sequitur Athenaei textum, quem ille prae oculis habuisset, his satis fideliter repraesentari. Testimonium ergo habemus sui iuris idemque antiquissimum, quod ad textum codicis supplendum vel emendandum haud parvo sit adiumento. Saepe enim lemmata cum textu in erroribus conspirant, quorum originem ostendunt esse antiquam; at nonnumquam potiores vel utique varias lectiones servant, vel saltem committunt ut quaedam virorum doctorum coniecturae in dubium vocentur. Praeterea id ipsum potissimum habent commodi, cuius gratia olim scripta sunt, videlicet ut lectori tam Daedalea arte ac ratione dispositum librum, ut sunt Deipnosophistae, evolventi subsidio sint, quo citius faciliusque reperiat quidquid requirit. Afferre solet ea Kaibel in editionis suae apparatu ibi tantum, ubi de textu quaestio est; sed, si contigerit ut quis novam Athenaei editionem parandam suscipiat, lemmata integra una cum textu ei transcribenda esse censeo. Donec id fiat, hoc libello principem lemmatum editionem integram dedimus, maiorem in Athenaeo laborem, si tempus ac vires sufficiant, alias sumpturi. Insunt etiam marginalia ab aliis manibus adscripta, quae plerumque in duo genera dividi possunt: altera enim sunt antiquiora atque, ut cum Cobeto loquar, haud indocta, ad verborum usum ac significatum pertinentia et nonnumquam cum Etymologicis, lexicis grammaticorumve scriptis congruentia; altera probabiliter a monacho scripta sunt, qui, cum toto corde stomachari soleret quotiens lasciviores de scortis luxuriosisve hominibus narrationes apud Athenaeum legebat, suam bilem versibus iambicis infusam passim marginibus adspersit.

This article aims to examine both the mimic specialisation of kinaidoi and the correlated literary productions of the kinaidologoi and ionikologoi. Within this framework, relative sub-genres, such as hilarodia, magodia, simodia and lysiodia are discussed. In the present second part, the literary sources for all the aforementioned sub-genres are examined, as the archaeological evidence has already been dealt with in the first part. The general conclusion is that not only lyric mime (in the framework of which the solo performance was significant) existed in Antiquity,
but also that, from the fourth century BC onwards, a large variety of entertainment genres developed, similar to those encountered in the modern music hall and cabaret performance.

The tonnage of the Syracusia, the biggest ship built in the ancient Mediterranean, has been much discussed by scholars. Indeed, the various merchandise the ship carried are detailed by Athenaeus, who relies on a text previously written by Moschion. However, the value of the units of measurements used in Athenaeus’ account are not well known. So far, scholars have suggested only either Athenian or Roman units of measurement. The present report aims at exploring the possibility of local metrological systems, such as Ptolemaic or Sicilian ones, as Moschion and Athenaeus respectively lived in Sicily and in Alexandria.

Presentamos en este trabajo las ictiofaunas arqueológicas procedentes de una actividad arqueológica reciente acometida en el Parador de Turismo/ Puerta Califal de la ciudad romana de Septem Fratres (actual Ceuta). La importancia de los restos deriva, en primer lugar, en la escasez de contextos ícticos publicados en la Mauretania Tingitana, completados ahora con
estos hallazgos inéditos, que superan el millar de restos, fechados en momentos avanzados del siglo I d.C.; se presentan dos depósitos cerrados (colmatación de horno alfarero y fosa-pudridero), relacionados respectivamente con un vertido de al menos 10 bacoretas (Euthynnus alleteratus) y 18 grandes
atunes (posiblemente Thunnus thynnus), que permiten avanzar sobre los sistemas de despiece del pescado y sobre la problemática de las técnicas de pesca en estas factorías salazoneras que caracterizaron a las riberas del Fretum Gaditanum en la Antigüedad.

Callias’ Letter Comedy, fragments of which are handed down by Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistae, appears like a philological ‘riddle’, which still lacks a definitive solution. Among the questions raised by the digression of the author from Naucratis, one that has perplexed scholars very much derives from the assertion that Callias’ play influenced the composition of Euripides’ Medea, and it was taken as a model by Sophocles at line 332 of Oedipus Rex.
In my paper I aim to show a possible reconstruction of the ‘paratragic’ reworking of Sophocles’ famous tragedy in Letter Comedy.

Le volume comporte 18 contributions qui visent à apprécier les Deipnosophistes d’Athénée comme source de connaissance des historiens grecs disparus, connus par des “fragments” qui tiennent plus souvent de l’adaptation que de la simple citation. Outre des synthèses sur la culture et les méthodes d’Athénée, des analyses de cas contribuent à éclairer dans le détail le travail du lettré et ses pratiques de citation, mais aussi à affiner l’interprétation des fragments d’historiens qu’il nous livre.

It is widely acknowledged that continuity through change and coherence through experimentation constitute the defining attributes of Athenian Comedy. A number of major trends and patterns (e.g. politics, obscenity, personal satire) sustain this continuity throughout. At the same time there are certain minor trends, which further corroborate this continuity. Within particularly Middle Comedy we can often detect early traces of distinctive features that reappear in Menander and whose antecedents reach as far back as Old Comedy; e.g. the structure and content of argumentation bordering with fake philosophy, the speech patterns of parasites, as well as a number of other topoi. These characteristics complement our perception of comic continuity by drawing attention to the details. The present paper analyses these details, or “sub-trends”, in an attempt to increase our awareness of the internal mechanisms of the comic genre.

This article expands on observations made by Dominique Lenfant regarding Athenaeus' citations of Herodotus, arguing that Xenophon and Plato, and thus presumably all prose authors, are cited in a similar fashion. This means that we can generally tell the difference between Athenaeus' quotations (which appear to be more or less reliable) and his paraphrases (which are not). I maintain that the situation is more problematic than Lenfant suggests, for again and again what seem to be minor edits of source-texts by Athenaeus himself or perhaps mere slips of an anonymous scribe's pen substantially affect the apparent meaning of the prose fragments preserved in the Deipnosophists. I also show that a number of passages in Herodotus, Xenophon and Plato that on Lenfant's criteria would have to be regarded as quotations, and thus as largely faithful renderings of the original, are badly damaged or have been subject to ideologically driven distortion of a sort that would be undetectable in the case of genuinely fragmentary texts.

Fr. 3 Gow of Theocritus has never been properly considered by scholars, who barely went beyond a hypothetical identification of the titular Berenice with Berenice I, Ptolemy I's wife (so Wilamowitz and Gow). I argue that this identification can be considered not only very reasonable but almost certain if we also accept the identification of the mysterious leukos fish with the gilt-head sea bream, a fish which seems to have been associated to Aphrodite, the patron goddess of Berenice I. I also include some remarks on the context of the fragment in Athenaeus's text, on Athenaeus's way of quoting Hellenistic poets and on the textual facies of the fragment.

"Strategos" is a historic novel in German language trying to reconstruct the Memories of the Hellenistic statesman Aratos of Sikyon (272-213 BC).
Chapter 4, Die Reise nach Ägypten, part 2 deals with Aratos' travels in Egypt, his attendance at the Dionysiac festival in Alexandria as described by Kallixenos of Rhodes and his return to the Peloponnese.
There is also a discussion on technological progress in Alexandria and the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, with a presentation of the leading engineers of the period and ancient historiographers like Hecataeus, Herodotus, Ktesias, Manetho and others.
In the notes a famous saying often attributed to Thucydides is shown to be a modern hoax.

Scholars have usually treated the skolia celebrating Harmodios and Aristogeiton as reflecting composition near Hipparchos' murder (514/3 B. C.), yet the songs betray traditions that developed significantly later. By the 420s, when Aristophanes indicates that the songs were popular, different versions of "the Harmodios" existed. One version, sung in the first person, likely reflects the views of those who saw certain democratic leaders as metaphorical "tyrants." Other versions praised the current Athenian regime or served simply as hymns honoring the "tyrannicides." The skolia reflect conditions of the later fifth century more than those around the time of the assassination.

Although Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists certainly conveys stereotyped images of Asian kings, it does not provide any overarching term for Eastern people that designates them as a unified whole opposite to the speakers’ own group. Analysis of this issue must distinguish the vocabulary of the quotations from that of Athenaeus himself. The latter does not imply any dichotomy between Western and Eastern people. He gives no structuring value to the appellation “Asians,” which is used in some of his sources, nor to that of “barbarians” either: compared to several of his contemporaries, he uses the word barbaros infrequently, and usually with a neutral meaning that has largely lost its political and even its moral content, and is not at all used to back up the idea of a general dichotomy between human beings.
Bien que les Deipnosophistes véhiculent des images stéréotypées de rois d’Asie, on n’y trouve pas de désignation générale des Orientaux en tant qu’ensemble uni et continu qui s’opposerait au groupe dont relèvent les locuteurs. L’analyse requiert de distinguer le vocabulaire des citations de celui d’Athénée lui-même. Ce dernier ne suppose aucune dichotomie entre Occidentaux et Orientaux, ne donne aucune valeur structurante à l’appellation d’Asiatiques employée par certaines de ses sources, ni même à celle de barbares : il se distingue de plusieurs de ses contemporains par ses emplois de barbaros, peu nombreux, plus neutres que péjoratifs, en grande partie vidés de contenu politique, voire moral, et nullement voués à conforter l’idée d’une dichotomie générale de l’humanité.

Fragmenta Comica 16.3 ("KomFrag" International Research project):
Ephippus is an outstanding playwright of Greek Middle Comedy. He won a single Lenaean victory ca. 378-376 BC and continued being productive until the late 340s. His twenty-eight surviving fragments reveal a wide thematic range: myth burlesque (with a special fondness for Heracles), political allegory, sympotic themes, personal mockery, satire of philosophy (Plato), hetairai. His corpus features seven hapax terms, as well as the highest percentage of anapaestic dimeter lines of all poets of Middle Comedy.

18:20- 18:40
Mετακινήσεις δημητριακών και ανθρώπινες μετακινήσεις.
"Η Εύβοια και ο Ευβοϊκός κόλπος ως θαλάσσια εμπορική οδός και η σημασία τους για την
παραγωγή και διακίνηση σιτηρών κατά τον 5ο και 4ο αιώνα π.Χ."
Aλέξανδρος-Νεκτάριος Ιω. Βασιλείου-Δαμβέργης, Dr. Κλασικής Αρχαιολογίας- Φιλόλογος,
καθηγητής Β/βάθμιας εκπαίδευσης.
Cereal motions and human movements.
"Evia and the Gulf of Evia as a maritime trade route and their importance for the production
and distribution of cereals in the 5th and 4th centuries BC"
Alexandros- Nektarios Vasileiou -Damvergis, Dr., Archaeologist. Philologist / Secondary education
teacher.

Ateneo, en el « Banquete de los eruditos », critica tanto la hipocresía y altanería de los filósofos, a través sobre todo de la figura de Teodoro Perrero tal como la ve Mírtilo, como el exceso de erudición vana de los gramáticos (como expertos en los textos literarios), a través sobre todo en este caso de la figura de Mírtilo tal como la ve Teodoro Perrero. Con ello, como Luciano, parece llamar la atención por igual de los filósofos y de los gramáticos de su época sobre las exigencias propias y los peligros de sus respectivos oficios y discursos.

Tras un estado de la cuestión sobre los estudios dedicados a las fuentes de la poesía satírica de Quevedo, que parte de los importantes «Preliminares» y anotaciones de González de Salas al Parnaso español (1648), se estudia la recepción en la época y la posible relación con la sátira de Quevedo de tres textos que no han recibido hasta ahora demasiada atención: Los Deipnosofistas de Ateneo de Náucratis (siglo III), la poesía burlesca de Francesco Berni y otros poetas «berneschi» del siglo XVI y los epigramas latinos de John Owen (h. 1564-h. 1628).

Il contributo verte sulla discussione degli unici due frammenti a contenuto paradossografico di ambientazione libica ascrivibili all'ampia produzione di carattere etnografico di Ellanico di Lesbo, tràditi rispettivamente da Ateneo (FGrHist 4 F 67) e in un passo, ignoto a Jacoby, di uno scritto teologico in lingua siriaca opera di Gregorios Aboū’l Faradj, noto come Bar-‘Ebrāyā/Bar Hebraeus (cf. PO XXIV/3, p. 407), ampiamente tributario della trattatistica aristotelica e della correlata letteratura esegetica: a quest'ultima deve ricondursi la citazione siriaca di Ellanico, punto di contatto con uno dei canali tradizionali (Nicolao di Damasco) dell'altra "citazione libica" del Lesbio riportata da Ateneo. L’analisi puntuale condotta sulla complessa e stratificata tradizione di entrambi i frammenti, di contenuto differente e reciprocamente indipendenti, permette di individuare in questi eccezionali “frammenti libici” di Ellanico i testimonia di un certo filone della letteratura etnografica, avente per referente ultimo (pur nel diramarsi delle tradizioni) quel genere specifico di letteratura sui nomima barbarika inaugurata proprio dal Lesbio e precisamente incentrata sugli ethe paradossali delle popolazioni barbare, ma di cui si deve riconoscere nell’ Erodoto autore dei Libykoi logoi l’archegeta, nonché l’auctoritas indiscussa. La questione richiama anche la problematica della cronologia reciproca fra i due storici e dei termini di dipendenza nella trattazione di argomenti analoghi, che viene approfondita in questo studio in relazione alle tematiche testimoniate nei "frammenti libici" ellanicei.

Posidippus’ epigram on Doricha, a hetaera from Naucratis and the lover of Sappho’s brother Charaxus, is usually interpreted as a variation of the poetic topos that opposes the mortality of physical beauty and the immortality of poetry: Doricha herself is gone, but her name lives in Sappho’s verses. However, this reading of the poem clashes with other sources that state plainly that Sappho’s reaction to Charaxus’ love aff air was highly negative (Hdt. 2, 135; Athen. 13, 596b). Following an examination of textological problems and of the poem’s structure, the article proposes a different interpretation. It is shown that Posidippus emphasizes the part played by the city of Naucratis to preserve Doricha’s memory against the working of time and Sappho’s influential disapproval, while his own epigram, engraved on a real or imaginary monument for the courtesan, will help to re-establish Doricha’s rightful fame.

Intellectual puzzles have a tendency to intermix and accumulate in miscellaneous collections, as happens in present-day puzzle magazines. This phenomenon is already observable in ancient compilations (cf. Palatine Anthology, book 14) and theoretical treatises (Clearchus’ On riddles, Athenaeus’ book 10). Long before such works, fictional and legendary narratives provided a framework for stringing together multifarious types of mental games. The Near-Eastern Story of Ahiqar and the Greek Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi use the age-old theme of the competition between two great sages as a plot structure to accommodate a veritable anthology of riddle genres. The legend behind the Certamen may have influenced Aristophanic comedies such as the Frogs and the Wasps. But while in the East the narrative form of the miscellaneous riddle contest was a fantastic outgrowth of the medleys of wisdom literature, the corresponding Greek narratives were fictionalizations of the multifaceted entertainments of the symposium.