Aulus Gellius (c. 125after 180 AD) was a ancient Rome author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome. He is famous for his Attic Nights, a commonplace book, or compilation of notes on grammar, philosophy, history, antiquarianism, and other subjects, preserving fragments of the works of many authors who might otherwise be unknown today.
Name
Medieval manuscripts of the
Noctes Atticae commonly gave the author's name in the form of "Agellius", which is used by
Priscian;
Lactantius, Servius and
Saint Augustine had "A. Gellius" instead. Scholars from the Renaissance onwards hotly debated which one of the two transmitted names is correct (the other one being presumably a corruption) before settling on the latter of the two in modern times.
Life
The only source for the life of Aulus Gellius is the details recorded in his writings.
Internal evidence points to Gellius having been born between AD 125 and 128.
[Leofranc Holford-Strevens, "Towards a Chronology of Aulus Gellius", Latomus, 36 (1977), pp. 93–109] He was of good family and connections,
[Leofranc Holford-Strevens (2003), Aulus Gellius: an Antonine scholar and his achievement, pp. 13–15] and he was probably born and certainly brought up in
Rome. He attended the
Pythian Games in the year 147,
[ and resided for a considerable period in Athens.]
He returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office.
Attic Nights
Gellius' only known work is the Attic Nights (), which takes its name from having been begun during the long nights of a winter which he spent in Attica. He afterwards continued it in Rome. It is compiled out of an Adversaria, or commonplace book, in which he had jotted down everything of unusual interest that he heard in conversation or read in books, and it comprises notes on grammar, geometry, philosophy, history and many other subjects.[
]
The work, deliberately devoid of sequence or arrangement, is divided into twenty books. All have survived except the eighth, of which only the index survives. The Attic Nights are valuable for the insight they afford into the nature of the society and pursuits of those times, and for its many excerpts from works of lost ancient authors.
The Attic Nights found many readers in antiquity. Writers who used this compilation include Apuleius, Lactantius, Nonius Marcellus, Ammianus Marcellinus, the anonymous author of the Historia Augusta, Servius, and Augustine; but most notable is how Gellius' work was mined by Macrobius, "who, without mentioning his name, quotes Gellius verbatim throughout the Saturnalia, and is thus of the highest value for the text".[P. K. Marshall, "Aulus Gellius" in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 176]
Editions
The editio princeps was published at Rome in 1469 by Giovanni Andrea Bussi, bishop-designate of Aleria.[Unless otherwise indicated, this section is based on Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1988), pp. 241–244] The earliest critical edition was by Ludovicus Carrio in 1585, published by Henricus Stephanus; however, the projected commentary fell victim to personal quarrels. Better known is the critical edition of Johann Friedrich Gronovius; although he devoted his entire life to work on Gellius, he died in 1671 before his work could be completed. His son Jakob Gronovius published most of his comments on Gellius in 1687, and brought out a revised text with all of his father's comments and other materials at Leyden in 1706; this later work became known as the "Gronoviana". According to Leofranc Holford-Strevens, the "Gronoviana" remained the standard text of Gellius for over a hundred years, until the edition of Martin Hertz (Berlin, 1883–85; there is also a smaller edition by the same author, Berlin, 1886), revised by C. Hosius, 1903, with bibliography. A volume of selections, with notes and vocabulary, was published by Nall (London, 1888). There is an English translation by W. Beloe (London, 1795), and a French translation (1896).
Translations
See also
Notes
Further reading
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Anderson, Graham. (1994). "Aulus Gellius: a Miscellanist and His World," in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. II.34.2. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
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Beall, S. (1997). "Translation in Aulus Gellius." The Classical Quarterly, 47(1), 215–226.
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Ceaicovschi, K. (2009). "Cato the Elder in Aulus Gellius." Illinois Classical Studies, (33–34), 25–39.
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Lakmann, Marie-Luise. (1995). Der Platoniker Tauros in der Darstellung des Aulus Gellius. Leiden, The Netherlands, and New York: Brill.
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Garcea, Alessandro. (2003). "Paradoxes in Aulus Gellius." Argumentation 17:87–98.
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Gunderson, Eric. (2009). Nox Philologiae: Aulus Gellius and the Fantasy of the Roman Library. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
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Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. (2003). Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and his Achievement. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. (1982). "Fact and fiction in Aulus Gellius." Liverpool Classical Monthly 7:65–68.
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Holford-Strevens, Leofranc, and Amiel Vardi, eds. (2004). The Worlds of Aulus Gellius. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Howley, Joseph A. (2013). "Why Read the Jurists ?: Aulus Gellius on Reading Across Disciplines." In New Frontiers: Law and Society in the Roman World. Edited by Paul J. du Plessis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Howley, Joseph A. (2018). Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture. Text, Presence, and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Johnson, William A. (2012). "Aulus Gellius: The Life of the Litteratus" In Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities. Classical Culture and Society. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
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Ker, James (2004). "Nocturnal Writers in Imperial Rome: The Culture of Lucubratio." Classical Philology, 99(3), 209–242.
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Keulen, Wytse. (2009). "Gellius the Satirist: Roman Cultural Authority in Attic Nights." Mnemosyne Supplements 297. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
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McGinn, Thomas A.J. (2010). "Communication and the Capability Problem in Roman Law: Aulus Gellius as Iudex and the Jurists on Child-Custody." RIDA 57, 265–298.
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Russell, Brigette. (2003). "Wine, Women, and the Polis: Gender and the Formation of the City-State in Archaic Rome." Greece & Rome, 50(1), 77–84
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