1612 DEIPNOSOPHISTAE GREEK LATIN antique FOLIO Banquet of Learned COOKBOOK RARE

ATHENAEI  DEIPNOSOPHISTARUM

Deipnosophists, edited by Isaac Casaubon, in Greek and Jacques Dalechamps' Latin translation

Lugduni, 1612

Folio, Size 9 by 13 3/4"

811 pages

MISSING BINDING

Good interior condition.

Text in Greek and Latin

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The Deipnosophistae is an early 3rd-century AD Greek work (Deipnosophistai, lit. "The Dinner Sophists/Philosophers/Experts") by the Greek author Athenaeus of Naucratis.
It is a long work of literary, historical, and antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist Publius Livius Larensis [de] for an assembly of grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on.
It is sometimes called the oldest surviving cookbook.


The Greek title Deipnosophistai derives from the combination of deipno- ("dinner") and sophistes ("expert").
It and its English derivative deipnosophists thus describe people who are skilled at dining, particularly the refined conversation expected to accompany Greek symposia.
However, the term is shaded by the harsh treatment accorded to professional teachers in Plato's Socratic dialogues, which made the English term sophist into a pejorative.

In English, Athenaeus's work usually known by its Latin form Deipnosophistae but is also variously translated as The Deipnosophists, Sophists at Dinner,  The Learned Banqueters,  The Banquet of the Learned,  Philosophers at Dinner, or The Gastronomers.

The Deipnosophistae professes to be an account, given by Athenaeus to his friend Timocrates, of a series of banquets held at the house of Larensius, a scholar and wealthy patron of the arts.
It is thus a dialogue within a dialogue, after the manner of Plato,  although each conversation is so long that, realistically, it would occupy several days.
Among the numerous guests,  Masurius, Zoilus, Democritus, Galen, Ulpian and Plutarch are named, but most are probably to be taken as fictitious personages,  and the majority take little or no part in the conversation.
If Ulpian is identical with the famous jurist, the Deipnosophistae must have been written after his death in 223; but the jurist was murdered by the Praetorian Guard, whereas Ulpian in Athenaeus dies a natural death.
Prosopographical investigation, however, has shown the possibility of identifying several guests with real persons from other sources; the Ulpian in the dialog has also been linked to the renowned jurist's father.

The work is invaluable for providing fictionalized information about the Hellenistic literary world of the leisured class during the Roman Empire.[citation needed] To the majority of modern readers, even more useful is the wealth of information provided in the Deipnosophistae about earlier Greek literature.
In the course of discussing classic authors, the participants make quotations, long and short, from the works of about 700 earlier Greek authors and 2,500 separate writings, many of them otherwise unrecorded.
Food and wine, luxury, music, sexual mores, literary gossip and philology are among the major topics of discussion, and the stories behind many artworks such as the Venus Kallipygos are also transmitted in its pages.

The Deipnosophistae is an important source of recipes in classical Greek.
It quotes the original text of one recipe from the lost cookbook by Mithaecus, the oldest in Greek and the oldest recipe by a named author in any language.
Other authors quoted for their recipes include Glaucus of Locri, Dionysius, Epaenetus, Hegesippus of Tarentum, Erasistratus, Diocles of Carystus, Timachidas of Rhodes, Philistion of Locri, Euthydemus of Athens, Chrysippus of Tyana, Paxamus and Harpocration of Mende. It also describes in detail the meal and festivities at the wedding feast of Caranos.

Homosexuality

In addition to its main focuses, the text offers an unusually clear portrait of homosexuality in late Hellenism.
Books XII-XIII holds a wealth of information for studies of homosexuality in Roman Greece.
It is subject to a broader discussion that includes Alcibiades, Charmides, Autolycus, Pausanias and Sophocles.
Furthermore, numerous books and now lost plays on the subject are mentioned, including the dramatists Diphilus, Cratinus, Aeschylus, and Sophocles and the philosopher Heraclides of Pontus.
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