Kitap 1
1
And the arrangement of the conversation is an imitation of a sumptuous banquet; and the plan of the book follows the arrangement of the conversation. This, then, is the delicious feast of words which this admirable master of the feast, Athenæus, has prepared for us; and gradually sur- passing himself, like the orator at Athens, as he warms with his subject, he bounds on towards the end of the book in noble strides.
2
And the Deipnosophists who were present at this banquet were, Masyrius, an expounder of the law, and one who had been no superficial student of every sort of learning; Magnus. . . . [Myrtilus] a poet, a man who in other branches of learning was inferior to no one, and who had devoted himself in no careless manner to the whole circle of arts and learning; for in everything which he discussed, he appeared as if that was the sole thing which he had studied; so great and so various was his learning from his childhood. And he was an iambic poet, inferior to no one who has ever lived since the time of Archilochus. There were present also Plutarchus, and Leonidas of Elis, and Aemilianus the Mauritanian, and Zöilus, all the most admirable of grammarians.
