ATHENilUS. 



11 



Athenxus. died A. D. 138, and the other dedicated a poem to 



1 1 ' Caracalla in the year 204, we see no reason for the 



inference of great age ; since Pancrates might have 

 lived 40 or 50 years after Hadrian, and since Oppian, 

 who died of the plague at the age of 30, could not 

 have long survived the date of his Halieufics. We 

 can infer no more from these data, than that Athe- 

 naeus was born towards the end of the second century, 

 and flourished, not under Marcus Aurelius, as Suidas 

 asserts, but in the interval between the reigns of Ca- 

 racalla and G^rdian. 



The works of Athenicus have suffered severely in 

 the general wreck of ancient literature. He is sup- 

 posed to have written, " An Account of the Kings 

 of Syria." Vossius thinks that he also wrote a trea- 

 tise " concerning the great commanders, of armies." 

 The only work of his which has come down to us, is 

 that entitled, " The Deipnosophists," or " The Con- 

 vivial Men of Learning." This work consisted ori- 

 ginally of 15 books ; but the two first, the beginning 

 of the third, and several pages of the 11th and 15th, 

 are wanting. These deficiencies, which occur in all 

 the copies of Athenaeus, are traced to one common 

 source, the ancient Venetian manuscript, on which 

 alone is supposed to have once depended the existence 

 of the Deipnosophists. Fortunately for the cause of 

 literature, a very old, though inaccurate, abridgment 

 of Athenaeus has been preserved, out of which the 

 lacunae are tolerably well supplied, and even some false 

 readings in the original corrected. This author has 

 been most cruelly mangled by the transcribers and 

 first editors : on his first appearance scarcely a sen- 

 tence occurred which did not require emendation ; 

 and the labour of correcting the poetical quotations, 

 which were long written without regard to the divi- 

 sion into lines, appeared absolutely hopeless. Casau- 

 bon, and other critical pioneers, have wonderfully suc- 

 ceeded in clearing this thorny field ; though, it must 

 be confessed, it is still far from being an agreeable 

 walk for an ordinary Greek scholar. 



The plan of this work is somewhat whimsical. 

 Athena-us feigns one Larensius, a learned Roman of 

 opulence and taste, to have entertained at a splendid 

 feast a company of the most distinguished literati, 

 consisting of poets, physicians, lawyers, naturalists, 

 and grammarians ; and to these the different dishes 

 and accompaniments serve, in their order, as topics of 

 discussion. In this manner the author contrives to 

 present, ah oro usque ad mala, the opinions of the an- 

 cients in almost all their arts and sciences. Thus, the 

 various kinds of fishes, pot-herbs, and poultry, are 

 discussed : in the course of this hodgepodge conver- 

 sation, historians, poets, and philosophers, are intro- 

 duced : instruments of music, drinkmg-glasses and 

 jokes, some of them not the must seemly, pass next in 

 review ; not to mention the disquisitions on regal mag- 

 nificence, naval arts, and an infinity of other subjects. 

 The whole of this strange production is thrown into 

 a dramatic form ; by which contrivance Athenxus, 

 who was himself one of the Deipnosophists, is enabled 

 to pass with facility from one di3h to another, and to 

 digress with seeming propriety, while replying to the 

 remarks and queries of Timocrates, the other speaker 

 in the dialogue. 



Athenaeus, considered as a man of talent and taste, 



occupies but a low station among the ancients. A Athenaus, 

 mere collector of lines and sentences, and a plagiarist Athenago- 

 who borrowed whole passages from others to express , 

 his own meaning, he can be regarded only as a laborious 

 unenlightened compiler: and in this view, there is no 

 doubt, his cotemporaries considered him. But time 

 and accident have conferred on this mechanical writer 

 a degree of importance, which has raised him to a level 

 with the classics. The crude mass of compilation 

 which at one time would scarcely have been noticed, 

 is now, from the destruction of better works, become 

 a precious mine of information. On examining the 

 catalogue of authors and works consulted by Athe- 

 naeus in his multifarious researches, as it is drawn up 

 by Fabricius, we find some hundred writers quoted, 

 who no longer exist, and near 2000 pieces referred to, 

 of which 800 are dramatic. This wonderful collec- 

 tion of literature was accordingly greedily attacked 

 by the succeeding bookmakers. Lilian frequently 

 copies it in silence : Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, 

 adopts at once its plan and its materials ; and Suidas 

 Eustathius, Stephanus Niger, and many more, have 

 pillaged and appropriated, with shameless audacity, 

 the rich treasures of Athenaeus. 



Of this author there have not been many editions. 

 The first was that of Aldus, in folio, printed at Ve- 

 nice, in 1514. Another edition appeared in 1535 at 

 Basle, which, like the former, was accompanied with 

 neither translation nor notes, and was besides exceed- 

 ingly incorrect. The first edition of any value was 

 that ofCasaubonof 1597, which went through several 

 impressions. This edition had the Latin translation 

 of Dalechampius, and the admirable annotations of 

 Casaubon ; and still further corrected and enlarged, 

 it again appeared in 1657, 2 torn. 1 vol. Lugd. which 

 is the^edition now before us. The Strasburg edition 

 of 1801, by Schweighaeuser, we have not yet seen. 



There have been several other writers of less note 

 who bore the same name. Athenaeus the mathema- 

 tician, who flourished about A. C. 200, wrote a trea- 

 tise on machines, which he dedicated to Marcellus the 

 Conqueror of Syracuse, and which still remains. 

 Athenaeus Attalensis was a physician, who ascribed 

 the human pulse to the agency of a spirit, or princi- 

 ple of vitality, which he supposed to be a fifth ele- 

 ment in nature. He was the chief of the Pneumatic 

 sect, and flourished about the beginning of our aera. 



See Athenceus, Ed. Lugd. 1657, p. 1. Suid. Lexic. 

 Tan. Fab. ch. 43. Diction, de Bayle. Fabricii 

 Bib. Grcec. 1. iii. c. 24. 1. iv. c. 20. Edin. Review, 

 vol. iii. (e) 



ATHENAGORAS, an Athenian philosopher, 

 who was converted from paganism to Christianity. 

 He flourished after the middle of the second century, 

 and was held by his cotemporaries in high estimation 

 for his learning, acuteness,and zeal. Having spent his 

 youth at Athens in the company of the sages and 

 rhetoricians of that period, he removed to Alexandria, 

 then a great theatre of learning. Here our philoso- 

 pher keenly entered into the disputes of the time, and 

 directed the whole torrent of his eloquence and eru- 

 dition against Christianity. Deeming it necessary to 

 acquire a thorough knowledge of the system which 

 he intended to overthrow, he applied himself with 

 eagerness to the reading of the scriptures. His can- 



