ATHENAEUM, a name originally applied in ancient Greece to buildings dedicated to Athena, and specially used as the desig nation of a temple in Athens, where poets and men of learning were accustomed to meet and read their productions. The acad emy for the promotion of learning which the emperor Hadrian built (about A.D. 135) at Rome, near the Forum, was also called the Athenaeum. Poets and orators still met and discussed there, but regular courses of instruction were given by a staff of pro fessors in rhetoric, jurisprudence, grammar and philosophy. The institution, later called Schola Romana, continued in high repute till the 5th century. Similar academies were founded in the provinces and at Constantinople by the emperor Theodosius II. In modern times the name has been applied to various academies, as those of Lyons and Marseilles and the Dutch high schools; and it has become a very general designation for literary and scientific clubs, the most famous club of the name being that which was founded in London by Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Moore in 1824. It is also familiar as the title of several literary periodicals, notably of the London literary weekly founded in 1828 by James Silk Buckingham and successfully established by C. W. Dilke. The Athenaeum was absorbed by the Nation in 192I.