Athenaeus in the context of "Commodus"

Ancient Greek comedy (Ancient Greek: κωμῳδία, romanized: kōmōidía) was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece; the others being tragedy and the satyr play. Greek comedy was distinguished from tragedy by its happy endings and use of comically exaggerated character archetypes, the latter feature being the origin of the modern concept of the comedy. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods; Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven extant plays of Aristophanes; Middle Comedy is largely lost and preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis; New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. A burlesque dramatic form that blended tragic and comic elements, known as phlyax play or hilarotragedy, developed in the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia by the late 4th century BC.

The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster. C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world.

Cleitus (Clitus) the White (Ancient Greek: Κλεῖτος ὁ λευκός; died c. 317 BC) was an officer of Alexander the Great surnamed "White" to distinguish him from Cleitus the Black. He is noted by Athenaeus and Aelian for his pomp and luxury, and is probably the same who is mentioned by Justin among the veterans sent home to Macedonia under Craterus in 324 BC.

Kinaros (Greek: Κίναρος), is a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea, named after the artichoke (κίναρα; kinara) which it produced. It is located west of Kalymnos and Leros, east of Amorgos, and 5.5 nautical miles west-southwest of Levitha. It is the second westernmost island of the Dodecanese after Astypalea, and has an area of 4.5 km². The island's highest point is 296m. It was noted by several ancient authors including Pliny the Elder, Pomponius Mela, and Athenaeus.

Aphrodite Pandemos (Ancient Greek: Πάνδημος, romanized: Pándēmos; "common to all the people") occurs as an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. This epithet can be interpreted in different ways. In Plato's Symposium, Pausanias of Athens describes Aphrodite Pandemos as the goddess of sensual pleasures, in opposition to Aphrodite Urania, or "the heavenly Aphrodite". At Elis, she was represented as riding on a ram by Scopas. Another interpretation is that of Aphrodite uniting all the inhabitants of a country into one social or political body. In this respect she was worshipped at Athens along with Peitho (persuasion), and her worship was said to have been instituted by Theseus at the time when he united the scattered townships into one great body of citizens. According to some authorities, it was Solon who erected the sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos, either because her image stood in the agora, or because the hetairai had to pay the costs of its erection. The worship of Aphrodite Pandemos also occurs at Megalopolis in Arcadia, and at Thebes. A festival in honour of her is mentioned by Athenaeus. The sacrifices offered to her consisted of white goats. Pandemos occurs also as a surname of Eros. According to Harpocration, who quotes Apollodorus, Aphrodite Pandemos has very old origins, "the title Pandemos was given to the goddess established in the neighborhood of the Old Agora because all the Demos (people) gathered there of old in their assemblies which they called agorai." To honour Aphrodite's and Peitho's role in the unification of Attica, the Aphrodisia festival was organized annually on the fourth of the month of Hekatombaion (the fourth day of each month was the sacred day of Aphrodite). The Synoikia that honoured Athena, the protectress of Theseus and main patron of Athens, also took place in the month of Hekatombaion.

Christine Downing comments that, "Pausanias's description of the love associated with Aphrodite Pandemos as dedicated only to sensual pleasure and therefore directed indifferently to women and men, and that associated with the Ouranian Aphrodite as "altogether male" and dedicated to the education of the soul of the beloved is actually an innovation—for Aphrodite Ourania was served in Corinth by prostitutes and Aphrodite Pandemos was the goddess as worshipped by the whole community."

Adrantus (Ancient Greek: Ἄδραντος), or Ardrantus or Adrastus, was a contemporary of Athenaeus in the 2nd or 3rd century AD who wrote a commentary in five books upon the work of Theophrastus, entitled Περὶ Ἠθῶν, to which he added a sixth book upon the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.

The Deipnosophistae (Ancient Greek: Δειπνοσοφισταί, Deipnosophistaí, lit. 'The Dinner Sophists', where sophists may be translated more loosely as 'sages, philosophers, experts') is a work written c. 200 AD in Ancient Greek by Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of literary, historical, and antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist Publius Livius Larensis [de] for an assembly of grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on.

Sopater of Paphos (Ancient Greek: Σώπατρος ὁ Πάφιος) was a 3rd-century BC parodist and playwright. Atheneus reports on his lifetime in his Deipnosophistae. According to Atheneus, Sopater lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and "was still alive in the reign of the second king of Egypt". After Ptolemy II Philadelphus (308-246 BC) succeeded his father on the throne of Egypt in 283/2 BC, and considering that the work of Sopater was likely composed after Ptolemy II's victory against the Gauls in 270 BC and makes reference to him, scholars place Sopater in the last thirty years of the 4th and the first half of the 3rd century BC. He is believed to have spent a significant part of his life spent in Alexandria.

A few of Sopater's works are known to us through Atheneus' Deipnosophistae, these are: Bacchus, Eubulotheombrutus, Pylaeus and Phacis are described in the ancient source as dramas. Other sources like the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia Suidas count nine works in total: Hippolytus, Physiologus, Silpho, Cnidia, Nekia, Pylaeus, Orestes, Phacis and Bacchus. Sopatros, in addition to the indicative of his Paphos descent, is called a parodist and a phlyax writer in Athenaeus, and a comedian in Suidas.