Note 202 — Chapter V · DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS, PLUTARCH, LUCIAN, LONGINUS.

We are, however, by no means so fortunate (from the point of view of this book) in our remains of Greek Symposiacs as we are in those of Latin. The famous Deipnosophists of Athenæus, in which, about 230 A.D., its invaluable author accumulated (under the guise of a conversation in which persons of the importance of Ulpian and Galen took part) the most enormous miscellany of quotation, anecdote, and quodlibeta, in ancient if not in all literature, is, of course, for all its want of literary form, a priceless book. As a storehouse of quotation it has no rival but the Anatomy of Melancholy: and though it is, in spirit, unity, literary gifts, and almost everything else, as far below the Anatomy as one book can be below another, it is from this special point of view to be preferred to it, because the vast majority of its sources of quotation are lost. For the history of literature, as for that of manners, it is a mine of wealth; for the history of literary criticism almost barren. For expression Athenæus seems to have had no care at all, though his curiosity as to matter was insatiable, and as nearly as possible indiscriminate. His spirit is exactly that of the scholiasts referred to in a former page; and whether he is discussing the varieties of vegetables and wines and oysters, or the highly spiced and salted witticisms of Athenian ladies of pleasure, or any other subject, he hardly becomes a critic for one moment, though no critic can neglect him. Perhaps the nearest approach to sustained critical remark is the captious attack on Plato at the end of the 11th book, which is as feeble as it is captious. (The standard edition of Athenæus is still that of Schweighaüser (14 vols., Argentorati, 1801-7); but those who suffer from inadequate shelf-room may have (as the present writer long ago had regretfully) to expel this in favour of the far less handsome and useful, but compacter, one of Dindorf (3 vols. Leipsic, 1827).)