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Comic poets such as Menander may not have been consistent in their choices, and the papyri, which range in date from the 3rd century BC down to at least the 5th century AD, may at times reflect the spellings accepted at the time of the copying scribes rather than those of the original authors. In order to consider the need to cite apparently minor orthographical variants when editing and translating later Greek comedy this chapter looks at readings in the Marcianus codex of the original version of Athenaeus and in manuscripts of its Epitome.

This chapter explores the performative context of the Hermias song, taking a dialectical approach to context both as a reflection of historical reality and as a projection of the poetic text itself. Reconstructions of the première of Aristotle’s song are examined, including Wilamowitz’ hypothesis that it was composed to be performed alongside a prose text by Callisthenes in honor of Hermiasat a commemorative ceremony for Hermias held by Aristotle and fellow philosophers and friends of the deceased. An extract of Callisthenes’ Hermias is examined and its possible generic status is explored in light of the variety of fourth-century prose forms. Although there is not sufficient evidence to prove or disprove Wilamowitz’ scenario, it is argued that the poem gives every sign of being an authentic work of Aristotle’s. The story of the song being put on trial is also found credible in its essence by drawing out its political implications for the 320s.

This chapter examines six topics which, although they feature in higher literature, might be thought both beneath the dignity of their genres and to entail in consequence the use of indecorous vocabulary, for they involve passages in which cow dung, breasts, farting, animal sexuality, infantile incontinence, and urination are mentioned. It shows that writers in the higher genres were capable of dealing with such apparently intractable topics while both preserving the dignity of the diction and without having to resort to vulgarisms. In the case of those passages where epic is involved, the chapter scrutinizes Wackernagel's suggestion that epic, or more particularly Homeric epic, shows more ‘Dezenz’ than other branches of high literature. In his view of Homer he had a predecessor in Athenaeus (or a source of Athenaeus).

A great unknown is Heracleides of Cyme, the third Persica author who appears in Plutarch's corpus. The chapter begins with a literary interpretation of the references to Heracleides in Plutarch's works, proceeds to what we know of his Persica, and on the basis of what we can conjecture about Heracleides' work, it attempts to arrive at Plutarch's work method concerning this author. A discussion addresses a passage in Athenaeus' work, which deals with Timagoras. An excursus is included concerning Charon of Lampsacus and Plutarch's potential use of his lost Persica.

The polymath Athenaeus (2^nd Century AD) is a literary treasure-house of quotations, many unique, from Greek literature, particularly verse and Tragedy. The paper assesses their number of these book-fragments (quotations in other ancient authors), and their accuracy when the source-texts survive complete, and by comparison their probable reliability when only Athenaeus preserves them. These issues are the chief subject of the paper, which begins with the author's methodology. It first takes account, however, of a problem in Athenaeus’ own text, the relationship between the medieval manuscripts of the complete work and an Epitome which, when the paper was written was attributed to the 11^th Century Byzantine scholar Eustathius.

This chapter is concerned with the poetic imagination of the sympotic wine vessel. It looks at the symbolic values attached to ekpomata in the strategies of language found both in and out of the symposium. The first part is devoted to the range of metaphorical echoes and correspondences associated to sympotic vessels outside of the symposium: how ekpomata can be made to project the symposium on the world. The second part discusses the indexical uses of ekpomata in poetic performance at the symposium: the roles played by ekpomata in projecting the world on the symposium. The collection of readings gathered in this chapter is designed to illustrate the rich variety of interactions between texts and vessels that can be found in the symposion.

This chapter argues that a tricky passage of Athenaeus, about Euripides’ use of melodic responsion in the play’s odes (453c–454a), is worth taking seriously. The reasons for doubting its information are not overwhelming, and moreover the effects of such responsion tie in excellently with what a number of the characters within the play (especially the chorus in the first and third stasima) have to say about music. In testing the hypothesis that Euripides employed ‘melodic responsion’ in the Medea, the chapter shows that melodic structure could have reinforced the odes’ semantics and themes, but also that it would have been a crucial element in the characterization of the chorus. This use of melody is also examined in the context of existing scholarship on Euripides’ adoption of various ‘New Musical’ forms later in his career.

As prelude to the discussions of the six chapters that follow, this introduction gives an overview of the evidence for the accessibility of Old Comedy—beyond Aristophanes’s extant plays—during the Imperial era. It also lays out what have been perceived as the two primary ways that Imperial-era authors approached the genre: as a linguistic source and as a problem. In doing so, it provides a survey of the scholarly approaches adopted by the lexicographers (Julius Pollux, Phrynichus, the Anti-atticist) and Athenaeus. It also considers the persistent influence that the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic critics exerted on how later Greeks understood the genre. As examples of this, it discusses Dio Chrysostom’s commentary on the comic poets in Or. 33 (First Tarsian) and Aelian’s account of Socrates’s trial and execution in Historical Miscellany. The chapter concludes with an outline of the structure and argument of the other sections of the book.

The Conclusion draws together the book’s main considerations by examining some sympotic citations of Pindar in Athenaeus, as well as Leonidas of Tarentum’s epigram on Pindar. These passages exemplify the way Pindar’s texts are put to new uses by later authors, and the effects that such engagements would have had on how readers approached the Pindaric corpus.

Chapter II collects and analyses the Greek sayings that circulated under Theano’s name, and briefly discusses the Syriac collection. It situates Theano in the gallery of sages and clever women whose personae were represented and repeatedly performed through chreiai. Theano articulates her program within a greater network of sayings and anecdotes, including sayings of clever courtesans, Sappho, Diogenes, Herodotus, and Spartan women, to then be deployed in intellectual games by men—and women. The chapter draws attention to the tactics of appropriation, allusion, and citation that connect Theano’s aphorisms to that network. The sayings allude to tensions between the Pythagorean and Cynic ideas about sex, marriage, and women’s education; they reveal a debate on women’s role as defined by the teachings of the two schools. The extensive Syriac collection is linked to a group of Greek sayings that present Theano as a universal sage whose pronouncements matter to men as much as to women.