The Web of Athenaeus (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780674073289)

In The Web of Athenaeus, Christian Jacob produces a completely fresh and unique reading of Athenaeus's Sophists at Dinner (ca. 200 CE). Jacob provides the reader with a map and a compass to navigate the unfathomable number of intersecting paths in this enormous work: the books, the quotations, the diners, the dishes served, and--above all--the wordplay, all within the simulacrum of an ancient Greek library. A text long mined merely for its testimonies to lost classical poets, the Sophists at Dinner has now received a full literary re-imagining by Jacob, who connects the world of Hellenistic erudition with its legacy among Hellenized Romans. The Web of Athenaeus simultaneously offers a literary history of the rarest and finest of Greek culture along with a creative anthropology of a Roman imperial world obsessed with the Greek past.

Author: Christian Jacob
ISBN-10: 0674073282
ISBN-13: 9780674073289
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/27/2013
Pages: 150
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.46lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.32d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2014