ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates Myrtilu's discourse on courtesans in Book 13 of the Deipnosophistae makes use of rhetorical technique. It explains Athenaeu's oeuvre belongs to the body of rhetorical literature from the Severan period, making him a contemporary of Philostratus, although the precise dating of the Deipnosophistaehas provoked much debate. In structuring Book 13, Athenaeus deploys conventional rhetorical forms, such as antithesis, paradox, and stock debates. Through the quarrel over erotic proclivities between the pedantic grammarian Myrtilus and the moralizing Cynic philosopher, the author forges a dramatic structure capable of supporting the numerous fragmentary accounts of hetaeras. Athenaeus trawled the speeches of orators such as Hyperides, Isocrates, and Stephanus, for names of hetaeras and then borrowed from Idomenaeus and other Hellenistic biographers accounts of their scandalous affairs. The purpose of the chapter has been to situate Book 13 of the Deipnosophistae in its cultural and literary context and to show the complexity involved in interpreting its representations of the Greek hetaera.
