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Aulus Gellius

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Aulus Gellius
Frontispiece to a 1706 Latin edition of the Attic Nights [fr] by Jakob Gronovius
Frontispiece to a 1706 Latin edition of the Attic Nights [fr] by Jakob Gronovius
Bornc. 125 AD
Diedc. 180 AD
Library resources about
Aulus Gellius
By Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius (c. 125 – after 180 AD) was a Roman 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.

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Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

In modern historiography, Ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic and Roman Empire until the fall of the western empire.

Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy. It is also the capital of the Lazio region, the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, and a special comune named Comune di Roma Capitale. With 2,860,009 residents in 1,285 km2 (496.1 sq mi), Rome is the country's most populated comune and the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome, with a population of 4,355,725 residents, is the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Its metropolitan area is the third-most populous within Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber. Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city. Rome is often referred to as the City of Seven Hills due to its geographic location, and also as the "Eternal City". Rome is generally considered to be the "cradle of Western civilization and Christian culture", and the centre of the Catholic Church.

Athens

Athens

Athens is a major coastal city in the Mediterranean and is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With its surrounding urban area’s population numbering over three million, it is also the seventh largest urban area in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE.

Commonplace book

Commonplace book

Commonplace books are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: sententiae, notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes. Entries are most often organized under subject headings and differ functionally from journals or diaries, which are chronological and introspective." Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts; sometimes they were required of young women as evidence of their mastery of social roles and as demonstrations of the correctness of their upbringing. They became significant in Early Modern Europe.

Grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domains such as phonology, morphology, and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are currently two different approaches to the study of grammar: traditional grammar and theoretical grammar.

Philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras, although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation.

History

History

History is the systematic study and documentation of human activity. The time period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries.

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.[1]

Life

The only source for the life of Aulus Gellius is the details recorded in his writings.[2] Internal evidence points to Gellius having been born between AD 125 and 128.[3] He was of good family and connections, possibly of African origin,[4] but he was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He attended the Pythian Games in the year 147,[3] and resided for a considerable period in Athens.[2] Gellius studied rhetoric under Titus Castricius and Sulpicius Apollinaris; philosophy under Calvisius Taurus and Peregrinus Proteus; and enjoyed also the friendship and instruction of Favorinus, Herodes Atticus, and Fronto.[2]

He returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office.[5] He was appointed by the praetor to act as an umpire in civil causes, and much of the time which he would gladly have devoted to literary pursuits was consequently occupied by judicial duties.[2]

Discover more about Life related topics

Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy. It is also the capital of the Lazio region, the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, and a special comune named Comune di Roma Capitale. With 2,860,009 residents in 1,285 km2 (496.1 sq mi), Rome is the country's most populated comune and the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome, with a population of 4,355,725 residents, is the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Its metropolitan area is the third-most populous within Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber. Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city. Rome is often referred to as the City of Seven Hills due to its geographic location, and also as the "Eternal City". Rome is generally considered to be the "cradle of Western civilization and Christian culture", and the centre of the Catholic Church.

Pythian Games

Pythian Games

The Pythian Games were one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece. They were held in honour of Apollo at his sanctuary at Delphi every four years, two years after the Olympic Games, and between each Nemean and Isthmian Games. The Pythian Games were founded sometime in the 6th century BC. In legend they were started by Apollo after he killed Python and set up the oracle at Delphi. They continued until the 4th century AD.

Athens

Athens

Athens is a major coastal city in the Mediterranean and is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With its surrounding urban area’s population numbering over three million, it is also the seventh largest urban area in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE.

Sulpicius Apollinaris

Sulpicius Apollinaris

Sulpicius Apollinaris was a learned grammarian of Carthage who flourished in the 2nd century AD. He taught Pertinax, himself a teacher of grammar before he was emperor, and Aulus Gellius, who speaks of him in the highest terms. He is the reputed author of the metrical arguments to the Aeneid and to the plays of Terence and (probably) Plautus.

Peregrinus Proteus

Peregrinus Proteus

Peregrinus Proteus was a Greek Cynic philosopher, from Parium in Mysia. Leaving home at a young age, he first lived with the Christians in Palestine, before eventually being expelled from that community and adopting the life of a Cynic philosopher and eventually settling in Greece. He is most remembered for committing suicide after giving his own funeral oration, cremating himself on a funeral pyre at the Olympic Games in 165. By 180 AD, a statue of Peregrinus had been erected in his home city of Parium; it was reputed to have oracular powers.

Favorinus

Favorinus

Favorinus was a Roman sophist and skeptic philosopher who flourished during the reign of Hadrian and the Second Sophistic.

Herodes Atticus

Herodes Atticus

Herodes Atticus was an Athenian rhetorician, as well as a Roman senator. A great philanthropic magnate, he and his wife Appia Annia Regilla, for whose murder he was potentially responsible, commissioned many Athenian public works, several of which stand to the present day. "[O]ne of the best-known figures of the Antonine Period", he taught rhetoric to the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and was advanced to the consulship in 143. His full name as a Roman citizen was Lucius Vibullius Hipparchus Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes.

Marcus Cornelius Fronto

Marcus Cornelius Fronto

Marcus Cornelius Fronto, best known as Fronto, was a Roman grammarian, rhetorician, and advocate. Of Berber origin, he was born at Cirta in Numidia. He was suffect consul for the nundinium of July-August 142 with Gaius Laberius Priscus as his colleague. Emperor Antoninus Pius appointed him tutor to his adopted sons and future emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

Praetor

Praetor

Praetor, also pretor, was the title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected magistratus (magistrate), assigned to discharge various duties. The functions of the magistracy, the praetura (praetorship), are described by the adjective: the praetoria potestas, the praetorium imperium, and the praetorium ius, the legal precedents established by the praetores (praetors). Praetorium, as a substantive, denoted the location from which the praetor exercised his authority, either the headquarters of his castra, the courthouse (tribunal) of his judiciary, or the city hall of his provincial governorship.

Attic Nights

Gellius' only known work is the Attic Nights (Latin: Noctes Atticae), 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.[5] One story is the fable of Androcles, which is often included in compilations of Aesop's fables, but was not originally from that source. Internal evidence led Leofranc Holford-Strevens to date its publication in or after AD 177.[3]

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.[5]

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".[6]

Editions

The editio princeps was published at Rome in 1469 by Giovanni Andrea Bussi, bishop-designate of Aleria.[7] 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 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).[5][8] A more recent English translation is by John Carew Rolfe (1927) for the Loeb Classical Library. More recently, Peter K. Marshall's edition (Oxford U. Press, 1968, 1990 (reissued with corrections) seems widespread both in print and digital (open access) formats.[9]

Translations

  • George Herbert Nall, ed. (1921). Stories from Aulus Gellius. Elementary classics. London: Macmillan.
  • John Carew Rolfe (1927), The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Loeb Classical Library. 3 Volumes. ISBN 0674992156, ISBN 0674992202, ISBN 0674992342

Discover more about Attic Nights related topics

Grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domains such as phonology, morphology, and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are currently two different approaches to the study of grammar: traditional grammar and theoretical grammar.

Geometry

Geometry

Geometry is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer.

History

History

History is the systematic study and documentation of human activity. The time period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries.

Androcles

Androcles

Androcles, is the main character of a common folktale about a man befriending a lion.

Aesop

Aesop

Aesop was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters.

Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Leofranc Holford-Strevens is an English classical scholar, an authority on the works of Aulus Gellius, and a former reader for the Oxford University Press.

Apuleius

Apuleius

Apuleius was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He lived in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern-day M'Daourouch, Algeria. He studied Platonism in Athens, travelled to Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the attentions of a wealthy widow. He declaimed and then distributed his own defense before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near ancient Tripoli, Libya. This is known as the Apologia.

Lactantius

Lactantius

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus signo Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutiones Divinae, an apologetic treatise intended to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity to pagan critics.

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity. His work, known as the Res Gestae, chronicled in Latin the history of Rome from the accession of the Emperor Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, although only the sections covering the period 353 to 378 survive.

Historia Augusta

Historia Augusta

The Historia Augusta is a late Roman collection of biographies, written in Latin, of the Roman emperors, their junior colleagues, designated heirs and usurpers from 117 to 284. Supposedly modeled on the similar work of Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, it presents itself as a compilation of works by six different authors, written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I and addressed to those emperors or other important personages in Ancient Rome. The collection, as extant, comprises thirty biographies, most of which contain the life of a single emperor, but some include a group of two or more, grouped together merely because these emperors were either similar or contemporaneous.

Editio princeps

Editio princeps

In classical scholarship, the editio princeps of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand.

Giovanni Andrea Bussi

Giovanni Andrea Bussi

Giovanni Andrea Bussi (1417–1475), also Giovan de' Bussi or Joannes Andreae, was an Italian Renaissance humanist and the Bishop of Aleria. He was a major editor of classical texts and produced many incunabular editiones principes. In his hands the preface was expanded from its former role as a private letter to a patron, to become a public lecture, and at times a bully pulpit.

Source: "Aulus Gellius", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2022, April 25th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulus_Gellius.

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Further Reading

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Antia gens
See also
Notes
  1. ^ René Marache (1967). "Introduction". Aulu-Gelle, Les nuits attiques. Livres I–IV. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. p. VII.
  2. ^ a b c d Ramsay, William (1867), "A. Gellius", in Smith, William (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 2, Boston, p. 235, archived from the original on 2010-01-18, retrieved 2010-12-21
  3. ^ a b c Leofranc Holford-Strevens, "Towards a Chronology of Aulus Gellius", Latomus, 36 (1977), pp. 93-109
  4. ^ Leofranc Holford-Strevens (2003), Aulus Gellius: an Antonine scholar and his achievement, pages 13–15
  5. ^ a b c d  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gellius, Aulus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 558.
  6. ^ P. K. Marshall, "Aulus Gellius" in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 176
  7. ^ Unless otherwise indicated, this section is based on Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1988), pp.241-244
  8. ^ Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Gellius, Aulus" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
  9. ^ Marshall, Peter K. (1990). A. Gellii Noctes Atticae. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-814651-5.
References
Further reading
  • 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.
  • Beall, S. (1997). "Translation in Aulus Gellius." The Classical Quarterly, 47(1), 215–226.
  • Ceaicovschi, K. (2009). "Cato the Elder in Aulus Gellius." Illinois Classical Studies, (33-34), 25–39.
  • Lakmann, Marie-Luise. (1995). Der Platoniker Tauros in der Darstellung des Aulus Gellius. Leiden, The Netherlands, and New York: Brill.
  • Garcea, Alessandro. (2003). "Paradoxes in Aulus Gellius." Argumentation 17:87–98.
  • Gunderson, Eric. (2009). Nox Philologiae: Aulus Gellius and the Fantasy of the Roman Library. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
  • Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. (2003). Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and his Achievement. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  • Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. (1982). "Fact and fiction in Aulus Gellius." Liverpool Classical Monthly 7:65–68.
  • Holford-Strevens, Leofranc, and Amiel Vardi, eds. (2004). The Worlds of Aulus Gellius. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  • 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.
  • Howley, Joseph A. (2018). Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture. Text, Presence, and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 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.
  • Ker, James (2004). "Nocturnal Writers in Imperial Rome: The Culture of Lucubratio." Classical Philology, 99(3), 209–242.
  • Keulen, Wytse. (2009). "Gellius the Satirist: Roman Cultural Authority in Attic Nights." Mnemosyne Supplements 297. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
  • 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.
  • 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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