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The Deipnosophistae is an early 3rd-century AD Greek work ( Ancient Greek : Δειπνοσοφισταί , Deipnosophistaí , 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.

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51-409: The Greek title Deipnosophistaí ( Δειπνοσοφισταί ) derives from the combination of deipno- ( δειπνο- , "dinner") and sophistḗs ( σοφιστής , "expert, one knowledgeable in the arts of ~"). 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

102-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

153-525: A fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as

204-620: A new critical edition for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana inclusive of the Epitome , also edited in parallel volumes. Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ),

255-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

306-487: A satirical edge, rehashing the cultural clichés of the urbane literati of its day. The first critical edition in accordance to the principles of classical philology was published by German scholar Georg Kaibel in 1887–1890 in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana ; this three-volume set remained the authoritative text for about 120 years and the only complete critical text. Charles Burton Gulick translated

357-429: 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

408-542: A strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either

459-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

510-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

561-530: 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

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612-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

663-679: The Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about

714-606: The Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek

765-501: The Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

816-603: The epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between

867-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

918-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

969-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

1020-643: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Diocles of Carystus Diocles of Carystus ( / ˈ d aɪ . ə k l iː z / ; Greek : Διοκλῆς ὁ Καρύστιος ; Latin : Diocles Carystius ; also known by

1071-486: The Classical scholar Isaac Casaubon . Browne was also the author of a Latin essay on Athenaeus . By the nineteenth century however, the poet James Russell Lowell in 1867 characterized the Deipnosophistae and its author thus: Modern readers question whether the Deipnosophistae genuinely evokes a literary symposium of learned disquisitions on a range of subjects suitable for such an occasion, or whether it has

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1122-545: The Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for

1173-590: The Latin name Diocles Medicus , i.e. "Diocles the physician"; c. 375 BC – c. 295 BC ) was a well-regarded Greek physician, born in Carystus , a city on Euboea , Greece. His significance was as a major thinker, practitioner, and writer of the fourth century. Diocles lived not long after the time of Hippocrates , to whom Pliny says he was next in age and fame. Not much is known of his life, other that he lived and worked in Athens , where he wrote what may be

1224-594: 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 . 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,

1275-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

1326-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

1377-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

1428-530: The dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under

1479-510: The divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at

1530-586: The entire text into English for the Loeb Classical Library . In 2001, a team of Italian classical scholars led by Luciano Canfora (then Professor of Classical Philology, now Emeritus, University of Bari ) published the first complete Italian translation of the Deipnosophistae , in a luxury edition with extensive introduction and commentary. A digital edition of Kaibel's text, with search tools and cross-references between Kaibel's and Casaubon's texts and digitalized indexes and Dialogi Personae ,

1581-611: The first medical treatise in Attic (not in Ionic as was customary in Greek medical writings ). His most important work was in practical medicine, especially diet and nutrition, but he also wrote the first systematic textbook on animal anatomy . According to a number of sources, he was the first to use the word "anatomy" to describe the study. He belonged to the medical sect of the Dogmatici , and wrote several medical works, of which only

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1632-692: 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

1683-460: The late Enzo Degani (formerly Professor of Greek in the University of Bologna); Burzacchini himself translated and commented Book 5 in more recent years. In 2006, American classical philologist S. D. Olson renewed Loeb text thanks to a new collation of the manuscripts and the progression of critical studies on Athenaeus and newly translated and commented the whole work; in 2019, the same started

1734-537: 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;

1785-556: The meal and festivities at the wedding feast of Caranos . In expounding on earlier works, Athenaeus wrote that Aeschylus "very improperly" introduces the Greeks to be "so drunk as to break their vessels about one another's heads": This is the man who threw so well The vessel with an evil smell And miss'd me not, but dash'd to shivers The pot too full of steaming rivers Against my head, which now, alas! sir, Gives other smells besides macassar . In addition to its main focuses,

1836-543: The narrator Athenaeus , the Deipnosophistae includes several characters. This includes Aemilian of Mauretania, Alcides of Alexandria, Amoebeus, Arrian, Cynulcus, Daphnus of Ephesus, Democritus of Nicomedia, Dionysocles, Galen of Pergamum, Larensius, Leonides of Elis, Magnus, Masurius, Myrtilus of Thessaly, Palamedes the Eleatic, Philadelphus of Ptolemais, Plutarch of Alexandria, Pontian of Nicomedia, Rufinus of Nicaea, Ulpian of Tyre, Varus, and Zoilus . The Deipnosophistae

1887-457: The nature of the universe and its relationship to man. Diocles emphasised that nerves are the channels of sensations and that interference with them is directly involved in the pathology of disease. There is a letter in his name addressed to king Antigonus, entitled A Letter on Preserving Health ( Greek : Ἐπιστολὴ Προφυλακτική ), which is inserted by Paul of Aegina at the end of the first book of his own medical compendium, and which, if genuine,

1938-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

1989-506: 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 (such as the swallow song of Rhodes ). 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. In addition to

2040-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

2091-405: The philosopher Heraclides of Pontus . Athenaeus described what may be considered the first patents (i.e. exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to practice his/her invention in exchange for disclosure of the invention). He mentions that several centuries BC, in the Greek city of Sybaris (located in what is now southern Italy), there were annual culinary competitions. The victor

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2142-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

2193-514: 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

2244-467: The time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with

2295-547: The titles and some fragments remain, preserved by Galen , Caelius Aurelianus , Oribasius , Athenaeus (in the Deipnosophistae ), and other ancient writers. He was the inventor of the Spoon of Diocles , a surgical instrument for the extraction of weapons or missiles such as barbed arrowheads that were embedded into the body ( Greek : κυαθίσκος τοῦ Διοκλέους ). Diocles insisted that health requires an understanding of

2346-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

2397-452: Was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in

2448-419: Was given the exclusive right to prepare his dish for one year. Such a thing would have been unusual at the time because Greek society at large did not recognize exclusivity in inventions or ideas. The Deipnosophistae was originally in fifteen books. The work survives in one manuscript from which the whole of books 1 and 2, and some other pages too, disappeared long ago. An Epitome or abridgment (to about 60%)

2499-457: Was made in medieval times, and survives complete: from this it is possible to read the missing sections, though in a disjointed form. The English polymath Sir Thomas Browne noted in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica : Browne's interest in Athenaeus reflects a revived interest in the Banquet of the Learned amongst scholars following the publication of the Deipnosophistae in 1612 by

2550-457: Was probably addressed to Antigonus II Gonatas , king of Macedon , who died in 239 BC, at the age of eighty, after a reign of forty-four years. It resembles in its subject matter several other similar letters ascribed to Hippocrates, and treats of the diet fitted for the different seasons of the year. It used to be said that Diocles was the first to explain the difference between the veins and arteries , but this does not seem to be correct, nor

2601-469: Was put online by Italian philologist Monica Berti and her team, currently working at the Alexander von Humboldt University . In 2001, Eleonora Cavallini (Professor of Greek, University of Bologna ) published a translation and commentary on Book 13. In 2010, Gabriele Burzacchini (Professor of Greek, University of Parma ) published a translation and commentary of Book 1 found among the unpublished studies of

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