GELLIUS

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Aulus. A Roman writer of the age of the Antonines, about 130-170 A.D. After receiving his education in rhetoric at Rome, he went to Athens, in his thirtieth year or thereabouts, to study philosophy. Here he saw much of Herodes Atticus. Besides studying philosophy, he spent the long winter nights in wide and various reading, which he took up again with ardour after his return to Italy. From the material thus collected he composed the twenty books of his Noctes Atticoe, written in remembrance of his days at Athens. One book, the eighth, is lost, and only the headings of the chapters remain. The remaining nineteen are a series of excerpts, loosely strung together, from all kinds of Greek and Latin authors, especially the ante-classical writers. They also contain a mass of information, and a number of opinions orally delivered by contemporary scholars. The whole forms a valuable storehouse of notes on questions of historical, antiquarian, and literary interest. Gellius' style is sober, and, like that of an admirer of Fronto (see FRONTO), full of archaic expressions.