(b Naucratis, Egypt; fl c200 ce). Greek grammarian and encyclopedist. He settled in Rome at the beginning of the 3rd century ce. None of his works has survived except the Deipnosophistai, a vast compendium in 15 extant books, probably written after 192 ce. Its generic form is that of the literary symposium; as a species, it deals with antiquarian lore rather than such ‘higher themes’ as philosophy. Its main topic is food; the mock-academic title, often translated as ‘The Sophists at Dinner’, properly describes specialists whose learning centres tirelessly upon the joys of the kitchen. The work is not, however, a cookery book.
Many characters engage in this marathon after-dinner conversation; they include representatives of every profession thought to be consequential, among them musicians, both professional and amateur. It has been rightly noted that the diverse themes are related to the banquet itself with but indifferent success. The unified structure of Plato's Symposium, like its wit, has no parallel in the miscellaneous learning of Athenaeus. When his speakers turn their attention to music, what they say has frequent, and sometimes unique, value for the historian of ancient music (especially in books i, iv, xiv and xv).
Almost at the outset (14b–d), Athenaeus interprets the function of bards in Homer as didactic: for him they are sober teachers of morality, not entertainers. A long section on instruments (174a–185a) contains valuable information: after a description of the hydraulis or water-organ (174a–e), the author considers the varieties of aulos and its popularity among the Greeks ‘of the olden time’ (176f–182e, 184d–f). The aulos is discussed further in a much later passage (616e–618c) containing especially valuable literary quotations. There follows an extensive and highly important section on the ethical and educational aspects of music (623f–638e). It embodies long passages (624c–625e) taken from the writings of an anonymous Academic theoretician from Heraclea in Pontus, a figure of the 4th century bce usually given the name ‘Heraclides Ponticus’. Most notably, he maintains that there were only three modes, corresponding to the broad national characteristics of the Dorians, Aeolians and Ionians. The claim at the end of this section that ‘a mode must have a specific character (ēthos) or feeling (pathos)’ sounds like a distorted version of Aristotle's comment in the opening passages of the Poetics (1447a28), perhaps including also the favourite ethos–pathos distinction made by later rhetoricians. A notable reference follows (628c) to the Damonian theory of singing and dancing as consequences of the soul's motion. He also mentions Pythagoras's belief in music as the binding principle of the cosmos (632b–c).
Athenaeus's claim to literary eminence is that of a compiler. He salvaged from oblivion more than 10,000 lines of Greek verse, including some of the finest surviving fragments of the lyrics of Sappho and Alcaeus. The great number of citations and comments concerning Hellenic and Hellenistic music has secured for him an unquestioned place among the valued later sources.
G. Kaibel, ed.: Athenaei Naucratitae: Deipnosophistarum libri XV (Leipzig, 1887–90/R)
G.B. Gulick, ed. and trans.: Athenaeus: The Deipnosophists (London and Cambridge, MA, 1927–41/R)
A.M. Desrousseaux, ed. and trans.: Athénée de Naucratis: Les deipnosophistes (Paris, 1956)
G. Turturro, ed. and trans.: Ateneo: I deipnosofisti, o Sofisti a banchetto (Bari, 1961)
C.A. Bapp: De fontibus quibus Athenaeus in rebus musicis lyricisque enarrandis usus sit (Leipzig, 1885)
A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 258–303 [translated excerpts referring to musical subjects]
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN