Archestratus
Archestratus (
This utterly admirable Chrysippus, in On Goodness and Pleasure book V, talks of: Books like Philaenis’s, and the Gastronomy of Archestratus, and stimulants to love and sexual intercourse, and then again slave girls practised in such movements and postures and specialising in the subject; and further on he says: studying all this and getting the books about it by Philaenis and Archestratus and the other writers of such stuff; and in book VII he says: one is therefore not to study Philaenis, or the Gastronomy of Archestratus, with the expectation of improving one’s life! Clearly, in quoting this Archestratus so often, you people have filled our banquet with indecency. Is there anything calculated to corrupt that this fine poet has failed to say?
- Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 335b.
Sixty-two fragments from Archestratus's poem (including two doubtful items) survive, all via quotation by Athenaeus in the Deipnosophistae. The poem was translated or imitated in Latin by Ennius, a work that has not survived. The standard edition of the fragments, with commentary and translation, is by Olson and Sens (2000).
References
- ^ prospectbooks.co.uk Archived 2014-12-31 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 366.
- Andrew Dalby, "Archestratos: where and when?" in Food in antiquity ed. John Wilkins and others (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1995) pp. 400–412.
- Kathryn Koromilas, "Feasting with Archestratus Archived 2016-10-08 at the Wayback Machine" in Odyssey (November/December 2007)
- S. Douglas Olson and Alexander Sens, Archestratos of Gela: Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century BCE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. [Text, translation, commentary.]
- John Wilkins, Shaun Hill, Archestratus: The life of luxury. Totnes: Prospect Books, 1994. [Introduction, translation, commentary.] Online text of introduction