An international team of literary specialists explore Athenaeus' work as a whole, and in its own right. Almost all classicists and ancient historians make use of Athenaeus; 'Athenaeus and his World' is the first sustained attempt to understand and explore his work as a whole, and in its own right. The work emerges as no mere compendium of earlier texts, but as a vibrant work of complex structure and substantial creativity. The book makes sense of the massive and polyphonous Deipnosophistae, the quarry upon which classicists and ancient historians depend for their knowledge of much ancient...

Food as a cultural symbol was as important in antiquity as in our own times and Food in Antiquity investigates some of the ways in which food and eating shaped the lives and thoughts of the indigenous peoples of the ancient Mediterranean. In this volume thirty contributors consider aspects of food and eating in the Greco-Roman world. This is the most comprehensive exploration of questions relating to food in antiquity in this country. The authors, some specialists in this field, others with expertise in other areas, use a range of approaches to investigate the production and distribution of...