ATHENÆA, in antiquity, a feast celebrated by the ancient Greeks in honour of Minerva, who was called Athena.

ATHENÆUM, in antiquity, a public place where-in the professors of the liberal arts held their assemblies, the rhetoricians declaimed, and the poets rehearsed their performances. These places, of which there were a great number at Athens, were built in the manner of amphitheatres, encompassed with seats, called cunei. The three most celebrated Athenæa were those at Athens, at Rome, and at Lyons; the second of which was built by the emperor Adrian.

ATHENÆUS, a physician, born in Sicilia, contemporary with Pliny, and founder of the Pneumatic sect. He taught that the fire, air, water, and earth, are not the true elements, but that their qualities are, viz. heat, cold, moisture, and dryness; and to these he added a fifth element, which he called spirit, whence his sect had its name.

ATHENÆUS, a Greek grammarian, born at Naucratis in Egypt in the third century, one of the most learned men of his time. Of all his works we have none extant but his Deipnosophi, i.e. the sophists at table. There is an infinity of facts and quotations in this work which render it very agreeable to admirers of antiquity.

There was also a mathematician of this name, who wrote a treatise on mechanics, which is inserted in the works of the ancient mathematicians, printed at Paris in 1603, in folio, in Greek and Latin.