The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius (ca. 123-170 CE ) is known almost wholly from his Noctes Atticae, 'Attic Nights', so called because it was begun during the nights of an Attic winter. The work collects in twenty books (of Book VIII only the index is extant) interesting notes covering philosophy, history, biography, all sorts of antiquities, points of law, literary criticism, and lexicographic matters, explanations of old words and questions of grammar. The work is valuable because of its many excerpts from other authors whose works are lost; and because of its evidence for people's manners and occupations. Some at least of the dramatic settings may be genuine occasions. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Attic Nights is in three volumes.

An engaging writer of the Antonine period, Aulus Gellius was a man of wide interests and great admiration for Greek culture. His Attic Nights is a collection of absorbing short chapters about notable events, words and questions of literary style, lives of historical figures, points of law, and philosophical issues that served as instructive light reading for the cultivated Roman. The work's title derives simply from the fact that Gellius began to write these pieces during stays in Athens. Variety adds to the charm of the miscellany: the author makes use of reminiscence as a literary form, dramatizations, character sketches, dialogues, extensive quotations from other writers (many from works now lost). He was long considered a model of the perennial humanist.