TH       DEIPNOSOPHISTS 
OR 
THE BANQUET OF THE LEARNED.1 
*** Thefirst two Books, and a portion of the third, as is known to the scholar,
exist only in Epitome. 
BOOK I.-EPITOME. 
1. ATHENEnUS is the author of this book; and in it he is 
discoursing with Timocrates: and the name of the book is 
the Deipnosophists. In this work Laurentius is introduced, a 
Roman, a man of distinguished fortune, giving a banquet in 
his own house to mren of the highest eminence for every kind 
of learning and accomplishment; and there is 110 sort of 
gentlemanly knowledge which he does not mention in the 
conversation which he attributes to them; for he has put 
down in his book, fish, and their uses, and the meaning of 
their names; and he has described divers kinds of vegetables, 
and animals of all sorts. He has introduced also men who 
have written histories, and poets, and, in short, clever men of 
all sorts; and he discusses musical instruments, and quotes 
ten thousand jokes: he talks of the different kinds of drinking 
cups, and of the riches of kings, and the size of ships, and 
numbers of other things which I cannot easily enumerate, 
and the day would fail me if I endeavoured to go through 
them separately. 
And the arrangement of the conversation is -an imitation 
of a sumptuous banquet; and the plan of the book follows 
the arrangement of the conversation.  This, then, is the 
delicious feast of words which this admirable master of the 
iWe have adopted the conventional title, "Banquet of the Learned "
but it may, perhaps, be more accurate to translate it, " The Contrivers
of Feasts." Vide Smith's Biographical Dictionary, voc. Athenmeus. 
VOL I.-ATH.              B