Athenaeus Quotes

late 2nd/early 3rd century Greek rhetorician and grammarian

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Athenaeus (Ancient Greek: Ἀθήναιος Nαυκράτιος, Athếnaios Naukratios; Latin: Athenaeus Naucratita), of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century A.D. Suidas only tells us that he lived in the times of Marcus; but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus (died 192) shows that he survived that emperor.

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Alternative Names: Athenaeus of Naucratis • Athenæus

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On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a wine-cooler, and said that it was sixteen years old. "It is very small for its age," said Gnathæna.

οὐκ ἐν τῷ μεγάλῳ τὸ εὖ κείμενον εἶναι, ἀλλὰ ἐν τῷ εὖ τὸ μέγα.

For it would be unbecoming, says Aristotle, to come to banquet covered in sweat and dust; for the true gentleman should neither be dirty nor be unwashed nor [Rejoice in mire], as Heraclitus says.

Dorion, ridiculing the description of a tempest in the "Nautilus" of Timotheus, said that he had seen a more formidable storm in a boiling saucepan.

Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach.

It was a saying of Demetrius Phalereus, that "Men having often abandoned what was visible for the sake of what was uncertain, have not got what they expected, and have lost what they had,—being unfortunate by an enigmatical sort of calamity."