The Deipnosophistes (deipnon “dinner” and sophistae, “the wise ones”) is variously translated as The Banquet of the Learned or Philosophers at Dinner or The Gastronomers is work of some 15 books (some complete and some surviving in summaries only) by the ancient Greek author Athenaeus of Naucratis in Egypt, written in Rome in the early second century CE. The protagonist is Ulpian, the host of a leisurely banquet in which food and wine, music, sexual mores, literary gossip, pornography and philology, amongst other topics are discussed, with wide-ranging quotes and literary allusions. Characters include a handful of grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians and hangers-on. The work is invaluable for providing much information about the Hellenistic literary world of the leisured class during the Roman Empire.

The encyclopaedist Sir Thomas Browne wrote a short essay upon Athenaeus which reflects a revived interest in the Banquet of the Learned amongst scholars following the publication of the Deipnosophistae in 1612 by the Classical scholar Isaac Casaubon. Browne wrote of it—

Would that a little part survived of the writers from whom Athenaeus quotes, scattered here and there, notable, startling or amusing sayings, and whets the appetite of his eager reader..... Mimes, fools, parasites, lute-girls are bearable and not inappropriate amusement for a drinking party. There is a most amusing story in Athenaeus about the boys in the inn at Agrigentum. They are so mad with drink that they think they are sailing in a ship tossed about by a wild storm. To lighten the ship they throw out all the carpets and crockery, call the police 'mermen', offer rewards for their rescue to those who reproach them, and do not even return to their senses when the onlookers take their things.

Full essay at http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_a_reading_of_Athenaeus

By the Victorian era, literary criticism described The Banquet of the Learned or Philosophers at Dinner and its author as—

'the somewhat greasy heap of literary rag-and-bone-picker like Athenaeus, is turned to gold by time'.

Modern readers question whether the Deipnosophitae genuinely evokes a literary symposium of learned disquisitions on a range of subjects suitable for such an occasion, or whether it has a satirical edge, rehashing the cultural clichés of the urbane literati of its day.

External links

• Extracts Extracts from The Deisophistes concerning homosexuality from Book 12 (This is mislabeled as from book XIII in the header.)
• Extracts from The Deisophistes (Book 13 3 pages)