The Learned Banqueters Vol. I

A foundational text of ancient Greek and Roman culinary and symposiastic culture, this volume presents the opening books of Athenaeus of Naucratis's *Deipnosophistae* (late 2nd to early 3rd century CE), in which learned scholars discourse across a series of elaborate banquets on topics ranging from food and wine to literature, music, and philosophy. The work is not a recipe collection but rather a richly allusive narrative and reference text, aimed at scholars, classicists, and serious students of ancient Mediterranean culture. Its historical significance lies in the thousands of quotations it preserves from otherwise lost classical authors, making it an irreplaceable source for the culinary and intellectual history of antiquity. This Loeb Classical Library edition, translated and edited by S. Douglas Olson, presents the Greek text on facing pages alongside the English translation.