Athenaeus (^{[pronunciation?]}; Ancient Greek Ἀθήναιος Nαυκρατίτης - Athếnaios Naukratítês, Latin Athenaeus Naucratita), of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The Suda says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus, who died in 192, shows that he survived that emperor.

Several of his publications are lost, but the fifteen volume Deipnosophistae mostly survives.

Publications[link]

Athenaeus himself states that he was the author of a treatise on the thratta — a kind of fish mentioned by Archippus and other comic poets—and of a history of the Syrian kings. Both works are lost.

The Deipnosophistes belongs to the literary tradition inspired by the use of the Greek banquet. Banqueters playing Kottabos while a musician plays the Aulos, decorated by the artist 'Nicias'/'Nikias'

[edit] The Deipnosophistae

The Deipnosophistae, which mean "dinner-table philosophers" or perhaps "authorities on banquets", survives in fifteen books. The first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh and fifteenth, are extant only in epitome, but otherwise the work seems to be entire. It is an immense store-house of information, chiefly on matters connected with dining, but also containing remarks on music, songs, dances, games, courtesans, and luxury. Nearly 800 writers and 2500 separate works are referred to by Athenaeus; one of his characters (not necessarily to be identified with the historical author himself) boasts of having read 800 plays of Athenian Middle Comedy alone. Were it not for Athenaeus, much valuable information about the ancient world would be missing, and many ancient Greek authors such as Archestratus would be almost entirely unknown. Book XIII, for example, is an important source for the study of sexuality in classical and Hellenistic Greece.

The Deipnosophistae professes to be an account given by an individual named Athenaeus to his friend Timocrates of a banquet held at the house of Larentius, a wealthy book-collector and patron of the arts. It is thus a dialogue within a dialogue, after the manner of Plato, but the conversation extends to enormous length. The topics for discussion generally arise from the course of the dinner itself, but extend to literary and historical matters of every description, including abstruse points of grammar. The guests supposedly quote from memory. The actual sources of the material preserved in the Deipnosophistae remain obscure, but much of it probably comes at second-hand from early scholars.

The twenty-nine named guests include individuals called Galen and Ulpian, but they are all probably fictitious personages, and the majority take no part in the conversation. If the character Ulpian is identical with the famous jurist, the Deipnosophistae may have been written after his death in 228; but the jurist was murdered by the Praetorian guards, whereas Ulpian in Athenaeus dies a natural death.

The complete version of the text, with the gaps noted above, is preserved in only one manuscript, conventionally referred to as A. The epitomized version of the text is preserved in two manuscripts, conventionally known as C and E. The standard edition of the text is Kaibel's Teubner. The standard numbering is drawn largely from Casaubon.

The encyclopaedist and author Sir Thomas Browne wrote a short essay upon Athenaeus^[1] which reflects a revived interest in the Banquet of the Learned amongst scholars during the 17th century following its publication in 1612 by the Classical scholar Isaac Casaubon.

First patents[link]

Athenaeus described what may be considered the first patents (i.e. exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to practice his/her invention in exchange for disclosure of the invention). He mentions that in 500 BC, in the Greek city of Sybaris (located in what is now southern Italy), there were annual culinary competitions. The victor was given the exclusive right to prepare his dish for one year.^[2]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Athenaeus and his world: reading Greek culture in the Roman Empire ed. David Braund and John Wilkins. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000. ISBN 0-85989-661-7.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Athenaeus

• The Deipnosophists, translated by C. D. Yonge, at The Literature Collection
• The Deipnosophists, long excerpts in searchable HTML format, at attalus.org
• The Deipnosophists, translated up to Book 9 with links to complete Greek original, at LacusCurtius
• Sir Thomas Browne, From a Reading of Athenaeus

Ramón Antonio García Fortunato (born December 9, 1969 in Guanare, Portuguesa State, Venezuela) is a former Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher who played for the Chicago White Sox (1991), Milwaukee Brewers (1996) and Houston Astros (1997).

In three-season career, García compiled a 17–16 record with 200 strikeouts, five saves, and a 4.84 of earned run average 95 games.

See also[link]

• List of players from Venezuela in Major League Baseball

External links[link]

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference

This biographical article relating to a Venezuelan baseball pitcher is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Piero Angela
300 px Piero Angela in 1993
Born	(1928-12-22) December 22, 1928 (age 83) Turin, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Science Journalist Pianist
Religion	Atheist
Children	Alberto Angela

Piero Angela, Grand Officer OMRI (born 22 December 1928) is an Italian science journalist and writer, and pianist. He was born in Turin.

Biography[link]

Music[link]

Son of the Turinese physician and antifascist Carlo Angela, around the age of seven he began taking private piano lessons and developing interest in jazz music. At the age of twenty, in 1948, he was performing jam sessions in various jazz clubs around Italy. In the same year he was noticed by entrepreneur Sergio Bernardini, who invited him to play at the opening evening of the Capannina night club in Forte dei Marmi.

In the early 1950s he formed a musical trio, along with drummer Franco Mondini and several alternating double bassists. The trio often played with other artists, such as Nini Rosso, Franco Pisano and former Duke Ellington cornetist Rex Stewart.

Hired by RAI, at the time the Italian State radio broadcaster, in 1952 Angela stopped his professional music work to devote himself to journalism. Angela sometimes played piano in one of his TV scientific programs.

Journalism[link]

His first job at RAI was as a reporter and collaborator of the radio news; with the advent of television in 1954 Angela became a correspondent for the television news, first from Paris and later from Brussels, from 1955 to 1968. Together with Andrea Barbato, he anchored the first lunchtime edition of the Italian TV news in 1968 and, in 1976, became the first anchorman of the newly born second Italian network.

Influenced by Roberto Rossellini, in 1968 Piero Angela realized a series of documentaries titled Il futuro nello spazio ("Future in space"), centered on the Apollo Program and the quest of taking the first astronaut to the Moon). Thus began his long activity of informal science education, that brought him to host and produce several information programs in the following years.

Science education[link]

At the end of the 1970s, Angela decided to entirely devote himself to scientific TV programs and in 1981 went on to produce Quark, the first show of the kind in Italy aimed at a general public.

The format relied on the most advanced technological means and the latest communication techniques available at the time, in order to make scientific topics accessible to the average family. Examples include featuring documentaries by the BBC and by David Attenborough, or cartoons by Bruno Bozzetto in order to help visualize the most abstract concepts; interviewing experts who strove to use the simplest possible language adequate to the complexity of subjects; or staging experiments and explanations directly in the studio. This first program originated many different spin-offs, some of which still exist, dedicated to different subjects: naturalistic documentaries (Quark speciale and Il mondo di Quark), finance (Quark Economia) and politics (Quark Europa).

In 1984 a new project, Pillole di Quark, first aired on Rai Uno, consisting of short 30-second clips about technical, medical, scientific, social and educational topics. In the same year Piero Angela produced the first talk-show to mix entertainment with science education finalities: six prime-time shows with live public interacting with public figures from culture, science, media and sports.

In 1986 and in 1987, from Turin's indoor arena, he hosted two prime-time events aired on Rai Uno centered on climate problems, followed by three TV series exploiting newly developed computer graphics technologies, staging a trip inside the human body (La Macchina meravigliosa: eight episodes), life in pre-human times (Il pianeta dei dinosauri: four episodes), and outer space (Viaggio nel cosmo: seven episodes). Such series, realized with the collaboration of his son Alberto, was translated into English and sold in over forty countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia (including Arabic countries and China).

Quark italiani, a series of documentaries about nature, the environment, explorations, and the animal world, produced and filmed by Italian authors (among which Alberto Angela, who realized some documentaries in Africa), also aired in 1988.

In 1995 Superquark was launched, and on 4 June 1999 two thousand episodes of the Quark franchise were celebrated. In the same year Speciali di Superquark (evenings dedicated to a single issue of great social, psychological and scientific interest) was also kicked off, and a collaboration was started with the Sunday TV program Domenica In, where Piero Angela hosted a space devoted to culture.

Since 2000 Piero and Alberto Angela also produce and host Ulisse, a program consisting of episodes centered about historical and scientific subjects.

Piero Angela shakes hands with 12 years-old Marina Brunello at the Turin 2006 chess olympiad.

Together with his popular activity on television, Piero Angela has been active in scientific awareness publishing. He is the long-time editor of the space "Scienza e società" on the magazine TV Sorrisi e Canzoni; in 2001 he founded the monthly magazine Quark, modeled on the show of the same name, which he also edited and supervised, and later closed in 2006 for lack of funds.

Piero Angela is also the author of over thirty books, many of which translated into English, German and Spanish, with overall sales volume of over three million copies.

In 1989 Piero Angela was among the co-founders of CICAP, an association promoting scientific and critical investigation of claims on paranormal phenomena.

During his long career Piero Angela has received numerous recognitions in Italy and other countries, among which the Kalinga Prize of UNESCO for his contributions to public awareness of science, and several honorary degrees (currently eight).

He likes to play chess from time to time, though he never takes part in tournaments. In 2006 he was a guest of honour at the 37th Chess Olympiad, played in his home city.

List of television programs[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Piero Angela

All the following programs have been broadcast by Rai Uno.

• Il futuro nello spazio (1968)
• Destinazione uomo (1971)
• Da zero a tre anni
• Dove va il mondo?
• Nel buio degli anni luce
• Indagine sulla parapsicologia (1978)
• Nel cosmo alla ricerca della vita (1980)
• Quark (since 1981), and related sister projects:
  • Pillole di Quark (since 1983)
  • Il mondo di Quark (since 1984)
  • Quark Economia (1986)
  • Quark Europa (1986)
  • Quark Speciale
  • Quark Scienza
  • Enciclopedia di Quark (1993)
  • Superquark (since 1994)
  • Speciali di Superquark (since 1999)
• La macchina meravigliosa (1990)
• Serata Oceano (1991)
• Il pianeta dei dinosauri (1993)
• Viaggio nel cosmo (1998)

References[link]