of the Learned’ is an immense storehouse of Ana, or table-talk.  Into its receptacles the author gathers fruitage from nearly every branch of contemporary learning.  He seemed to anticipate Macaulay’s “vice of omniscience,” though he lacked Macaulay’s incomparable literary virtues.  Personal anecdote, criticism of the fine arts, the drama, history, poetry, philosophy, politics, medicine, and natural history enter into his pages, illustrated with an aptness and variety of quotation which seem to have no limit.  He preserves old songs, folk-lore, and popular gossip, and relates whatever he may have heard, without sifting it.  He gives, for example, a vivid account of the procession which greeted Demetrius Poliorketes:—­

“When Demetrius returned from Leucadia and Corcyra to Athens, the Athenians received him not only with incense and garlands and libations, but they even sent out processional choruses, and greeted him with Ithyphallic hymns and dances.  Stationed by his chariot-wheels, they sang and danced and chanted that he alone was a real god; the rest were sleeping or were on a journey, or did not exist:  they called him son of Poseidon and Aphrodite, eminent for beauty, universal in his goodness to mankind; then they prayed and besought and supplicated him like a god.”

The hymn of worship which Athenaeus evidently disapproved has been preserved, and turned into English by the accomplished J.A.  Symonds on account of its rare and interesting versification.  It belongs to the class of Prosodia, or processional hymns, which the greatest poets delighted to produce, and which were sung at religious festivals by young men and maidens, marching to the shrines in time with the music, their locks crowned with wreaths of olive, myrtle, or oleander; their white robes shining in the sun.

     “See how the mightiest gods, and best beloved,
       Towards our town are winging! 
     For lo!  Demeter and Demetrius
       This glad day is bringing! 
     She to perform her Daughter’s solemn rites;
       Mystic pomps attend her;
     He joyous as a god should be, and blithe,
       Comes with laughing splendor. 
     Show forth your triumph!  Friends all, troop around,
       Let him shine above you! 
     Be you the stars to circle him with love;
       He’s the sun to love you. 
     Hail, offspring of Poseidon, powerful god,
       Child of Aphrodite! 
     The other deities keep far from earth;
       Have no ears, though mighty;
     They are not, or they will not hear us wail: 
       Thee our eye beholdeth;
     Not wood, not stone, but living, breathing, real,
       Thee our prayer enfoldeth. 
     First give us peace!  Give, dearest, for thou canst;
       Thou art Lord and Master! 
     The Sphinx, who not on Thebes, but on all Greece
       Swoops to gloat and pasture;
     The AEtolian, he who sits upon his rock,