ATHENÆUM, a name originally applied to buildings dedicated to Athena (Minerva), was specially used as the designation of a temple in Athens, where poets and men of learning were accustomed to meet and read their productions. The academy for the promotion of learning which the Emperor Hadrian built at Rome, near the Forum, was also called the Athenæum. Poets and orators still met and discussed there, but regular courses of instruction were given by a staff of professors in rhetoric, jurisprudence, grammar, and philosophy. This species of university continued in high repute till the 5th century. The same name was afterwards applied to similar institutions in Lyons and Marseilles; and it has become a very general designation for literary clubs or academies. It has also been used as the title of literary periodicals, particularly of the journal of art criticism edited by the brothers Schlegel, and the two well-known modern papers published in London and Paris.
ATHENÆUS, a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, or man of letters, was a native of Naucratis, a town in Egypt, near the mouth of the Nile. Exceedingly little is known of his life, but from one or two references to known events which occur in his works it may be gathered that he flourished about the end of the 2d and the beginning of the 3d century A.D. Besides a history of the Syrian kings, and a small tract on the identification of the thratta, a peculiar kind of fish, mentioned by the comic poet Archippus, both of which are lost, he wrote the extensive work, in fifteen books, called the Deipnosophistæ, i.e., the Feast of the Learned, or, as it may be translated, the Skilled in Feasting. The first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh, and fifteenth, are only extant in epitome, but otherwise we seem to possess the work entire. It is an immense store-house of miscellaneous information, largely but not exclusively on matters connected with the table, and full of quotations from writers whose works have not come down to us. It has been calculated that nearly 800 writers and 2500 separate writings are referred to by Athenæus; and he boasts of having read 800 plays of the Middle Comedy alone. Of many writers we have no remains, save the excerpts given by him; and a glance at any collection of Greek fragments will show how large is the proportion drawn solely from this source. The plan of the Deipnosophistæ is exceedingly cumbrous, and is badly carried out. It professes to be an account given by the author to his friend Timocrates of a banquet held at the house of Laurentius, a wealthy patron of art. It is thus a dialogue within a dialogue, after the manner of Plato, but a conversation of sufficient length to occupy several days (though represented as taking place in one) could not be conveyed in a style similar to the short conversations of Socrates. Among the twenty-nine guests whose remarks Athenæus reports are Galen and Ulpian, a lawyer, supposed to be the famous jurist. Their conversation ranges from the dishes before them to literary matters of every description, including points of grammar and criticism; and the guests are expected to bring with them extracts from the poets, which are read aloud and discussed at table. The whole is but a clumsy apparatus for displaying the varied and extensive reading of the author. As a work of art it can take but a low rank, but as a repertory of fragments and morsels of information it is invaluable. The text, particularly in the quotations from the minor comic poets, is still in a very corrupt state.
Editions:—Casaubon's, 1597; Schweighäuser's, 14 vols., with translation and copious commentary, 1801–1807; the best recent editions are Dindorf's, 3 vols., 1827, and Meincke's, 4 vols., 1858-66.
