Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/418

Rh 400 ATHENAEUS. she wears a cloak, the peplus, or, though rarely, the chlamys. The general expression of her figure is though tfulness and earnestness ; her face is ra- ther oval than round, the hair is rich and generally combed backwards over the temples, and floats freely down behind. The whole figure is majestic, and rather strong built than slender : the hips are small and the shoulders broad, so that the whole somewhat resembles a male figure. (Hirt. Mi/thoL Bilderh. i. p. 46, &c.; Welcker, ZeitscJiriftf'ur Gesch. Jer alten Kunst, p. 256, &c.) [L. S.] ATHENAEUS {'Adriuaios), historical. The name differed in pronunciation from the Greek adjective for AUtenian, the former being accentu- ated ""Mrivaios, and the latter 'AQt]vouos. (Eustath. ud II. )8. p. 237.) 1. Son of Pericleidas, a Lace- daemonian, was one of the commissioners, who, on the part of the Lacedaemonians and their allies, ratified the truce for one year which in b. c. 423 Avas made between the Lacedaemonians and Athe- i)ians and their allies ; and afterwards with Aris- tonymus, an Athenian, went round to announce the truce to Brasidas and other officers of the belligerent parties. (Thuc. iv. 119, 122.) The names Athenaeus and Pericleidas mark the friendly relations which subsisted between this family and the Athenians, and more especially the family of Pericles. 2. A lieutenant of Antigonus, who was sent against the Nabataeans, an Arabian people, (b. c. 312.) He surprised the stronghold of Petra, but afterwards suffered himself to be surprised in the night, and his army was almost entirely destroyed. (Diod. xix. 94.) 3. A general in the service of Antiochus VIL He accompanied him on his expedition against the Parthians, and was one of the first to fly in the battle in which Antiochus lost his life, b. c. 128. He, however, perished with hunger in his flight, as in consequence of some previous excesses, none of those to whom he fled would furnish him with the necessaries of life. (Diod. Exc. de Virt. et Vit. p. 603, ed. Wess.) 4. Son of Attalus I., king of Pergaraus. [Eu- MENKS ; Attalus.] His name occurs not un- frequently in connexion with the events of his time. He was on various occasions sent as am- bassador to Rome by his brothers Eumenes and Attalus. (Polyb. xxiv. 1, xxxi. 9, xxxii. 26, xxxiii. 11; Liv. xxxviii. 12, 13, xlii. 55, xlv. 27.) 5. A Cappadocian, who had been banished at the instance of queen Athenais, but through the influence of Cicero was restored, b. c. 51. (Cic. ad Fam. xv. 4.) [C. P. M.] ATHENAEUS ('A0^mtos), literary. 1. A contemporary of Archimedes, the author of an ex- tant work Ilepi M7)xa'^AiaTco»' (on warlike engines), addressed to Marcellus (probably the conqueror of Syracuse). He is perhaps the same with Athe- naeus of Cyzicus, mentioned by Proclus (in Euclid, p. 19) as a distinguished mathematician. The above-mentioned work is printed in Thevenot's Mathematici Veteres, Paris, 1693. (Fabric. B^l. Graec. iv. p. 222, &c.) 2. An EPioRAMMATic poet, mentioned by Diogenes Laertius. (vi. 14, vii. 30.) He was the author of two epigrams in the Greek Antholog5% (Brunck, Anal. ii. p. 257.) 3. Arhetorician, the contemporary and oppo- nent of Hermagoras. He defined rhetoric to be the art of deceiving. (Quintil. iii. 1. § 16, ii. 15. § 23.) ATHENAEJS. 4. Of Seleucus, a philosopher of the Peripa- tetic school, mentioned by Strabo (xiv. p. 670) as a contemporary of his own. He was for some time the leading demagogue in his native city, but afterwards came to Rome and became acquainted with L. Licinius Varro Muraena. On the discovery of the plot which the latter, with Fannius Caepio, had entered into against Augustus, Athenaeus ac- companied him in his flight. He was retaken, but pardoned by Augustus, as there was no evidence of his having taken a more active part in the plot. He is perhaps the same with the writer mentioned by Diodorus. (ii. 20.) 5. A STOIC philosopher, mentioned by Porphy- rins in his life of Plotinus. (c. 20.) There was also an Epicurean philosopher of this name. (Diog. Laert x. 22. 12.) [C. P. M.] ATHENAEUS {'hHvaios), a native of Nau- cratis, a town on the left side of the Canopic mouth of the Nile, is called by Suidas a ypafifxan- k6s, a term which may be best rendered into English, a literary man. Suidas places him in the "times o{ Marcus, but whether by this is meant Marcus Aurelius is uncertain, as Caracalla was also Marcus Antoninus. We know, however, that Oppian, who wrote a work called Halieutica in- scribed to Caracalla, was a little anterior to him (Athen. i. p. 13), and that Commodus was dead when he wrote (xii. p. 537), so that he may have been bom in the reign of Aurelius, but flourished under his successors. Part of his work must have been written after A. d. 228, the date given by Dion Cassius for the death of Ulpian the lawyer, which event he mentions, (xv. p. 686.) His extant work is entitled the Deipnosophistae, i. e. the Jianquet of the Learned^ or else, perhaps, as has lately been suggested, Tlie Contrivers of Feasts. It may be considered one of the earliest collections of what are called A na, being an immense mass of anecdotes, extracts from the writings of poets, his- torians, dramatists, philosophers, orators, and phy- sicians, of facts in natural history, criticisms, and discussions on almost every conceivable subject, especially on Gastronomy, upon which noble science he mentions a work (now lost) of Archestratus [Archestratus], whose place his own 15 books have probably supplied. It is in short a collection of stories from the memory and common-place book of a Greek gentleman of the third century of the Christian era, of enormous reading, extreme love of good eating, and respectable ability. Some no- tion of the materials which he had amassed for the work, may be formed from the fact, which he tells us himself, that he had read and made extracts from 800 plays of the middle comedy only. (viii. p. 336.) Athenaeus represents himself as describing to his friend Timocrates, a banquet given at the house of Laurentius (Aap^vaLos), a noble Roman, to several guests, of whom the best known are Galen, a physician, and Ulpian, the lawj'er. The work is in the form of a dialogue, in which these guests are the interlocutors, related to Timocrates : a double machinery, which would have been incon- venient to an author who had a real talent for dra- matic Avriting, but which in the hands of Athe- naeus, who had none, is wholly unmanageable. As a work of art the failure is complete. Unity of time and dramatic probability are utterl}^ violated by the supposition that so immense a work is the record of the conversation at a single banquet, and