Athenaeus: The Learned
Banqueters, Books 12-13.594b.
But for the popping of corks and the rattle of plates you would have sworn the great hall was empty or that some evil spirit had sealed the
banqueters' lips.
The
banqueters leap to their feet in panic and the banquet tumbles in chaos to the ground.
and trans., Athenaeus VI: The Learned
Banqueters Books 8-10.420e.
In his long chapter on horror fiction, he thoroughly disparages those academics who disagree with his convictions that story is more important than theme, mood, tone, symbol, style, and even characterization and that it is "impervious to analysis"; such critics "would feel vastly more comfortable if Moby-Dick were a doctoral thesis on cetology rather than an account of what happened on the Pequod's final voyage." Such critics are bullshit-slingers; they are
banqueters at the "long and groaning table of Graduate Studies in English"; they are tailors for the Emperor
For the more familiar anglo-Chinese, the Rendezvous in Darras Hall, Ponteland, is a
banqueters' delight for special occasions.
Then the harvest was made ready for Man, and a great rejoicing of
banqueters, because in you, o sweet Virgin, no joy is lacking.
Toward midnight the
banqueters touched glasses in a final toast.
We look across at the
banqueters artfully arrayed in an arc around the crackling fire, yet the carpets are seen from above, and the ground plain has been tilted up as if it were wallpaper.
(80) Indeed, from the Early Hellenistic period through Roman times the image of a snake drinking out of a cup was a standard feature of stone reliefs and terracotta plaques representing heroes or the heroized dead as riders,
banqueters, and warriors.
By a Nelson Flag is meant a Handkerchief of those Colours fancifully disposed as it looks very pretty." (48) After Emma Hamilton had regaled the
banqueters at the Beaufort Arms in Monmouth in 1802 with "Rule Britannia", she finished with an encore, a patriotic song that was especially popular in the West Country, which included the lines, "Come hither all ye youths of Bath,/Whose bosoms pant for glory." (49) Bath was keen to assert its loyalty.
Do the Hypatan
banqueters laugh because a deformed narrator has both suffered a humility and then added to it by telling his own sorry tale, or do they laugh because a full-faced narrator has delayed till the very end of his tale the fact that his ego-protagonist is deformed, and that the whole tale has therefore been a fiction (21, 302 & 395)?
The God of the Covenant and the Father of the suffering Christ is imagined sharing the sybaritic taste and fare of the most fortunate
banqueters here below, and the image of His copious table is not likely to encourage meditation on his Son's last supper.
