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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.

Aulus Gellius

c. 125 AD

c. 180 AD

Name[edit]

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[edit]

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,[4] and 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]

George Herbert Nall, ed. (1921). . Elementary classics. London: Macmillan.

Stories from Aulus Gellius

. Vol. 1. Translated by Rolfe, John Carew. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann. 1927 – via Internet Archive.; volume 2; volume 3

The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (Loeb Classical Library)

Ex pede Herculem

Gellia gens

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the : Wm Ramsay (1870). "A.Gellius". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 2. p. 235.

public domain

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

Works by Aulus Gellius at Perseus Digital Library

at Project Gutenberg

Works by Aulus Gellius

Works by or about Aulus Gellius

Vol. I

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by Aulus Gellius

(Latin text: complete; English translation: Preface thru Book 13)

Attic Nights

(Latin text)

Attic Nights

at Somni

Noctes atticae