Athenaios Filosofernas middagsbjudning : En studie av syfte och innehåll ur ett dryckesperspektiv

Sammanfattning: Alpsten, M. 2016. Athenaeus The learned banqueters. A study of the purpose and content from a beverage perspective The objective of this paper is to explore the purpose or purposes with which the Greek author Athenaeus wrote his extensive work, The Learned Banqueters. The basis for this study is a survey of the different beverages, i.e. wine, water, milk, blood, beer and gruel, Athenaeus writes about in his work. The objective of the thesis is also to lift up what Athenaeus writes about these drinks. The Athenaeus text has been closed read (close reading) and various questions were posed to the text, a number of structural concepts have been used, and these, together with the above questions, are a good way to reveal Athenaeus’ purpose. The results have shown that Athenaeus probably wanted to write an encyclopedia, for his books show a strong desire to inform the reader about various phenomena and things. But it was no ordinary reference book he wrote but a reference book about Greek customs and traditions. His purpose was that in the Roman time he lived in influencing people to return to a, for him, remote but magnificent ancient Greece.