Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius, born around AD 125, died after 180, was probably born in Rome, and spent most of his life there. He is one of those ancient Latin authors known as grammarians who each quoted many other authors, and whose works today are of less interest for what they have to say about grammar than for being a source of the texts of those other writers. Gellius is our only source of quotations of some other writers. In many more cases he is valuable for establishing the texts of known authors.

Gellius' family was wealthy, and he was sent to Athens for a part of his education. His family intended him to be a lawyer, and, unlike many people with literary interests whose families have intended them to become lawyers, Gellius actually became one. His only surviving work, the Noctes Atticae (Athenean Nights), is so called because it was begun during the long winter nights in Athens. Gellius continued to compile the work back in Rome, in the spare time he had left over from his job adjudicating civil cases. If its 20 books have some sort of overall plan or organization, it has eluded scholars so far. But Gellius quotes more than 275 authors, most Latin, some Greek, ensuring that Classical scholars will continue to study him with profit and pleasure.

The Noctes Attica was very popular among other ancient authors. Those who cite it include Lactantius, Nonius Marcellus, Ammianus Marcellinus, author of the Historia Augusta, Servius, Augustine, and above all, Macrobius, who, in his Saturnalia, written after AD 400, quotes from Gellius so extensively -- without, however, ever naming him as a source -- that no one who edits the text of Gellius can afford to ignore Macrobius as a source.

In contrast, we have very little evidence of Gellius having been known at all in the early Middle Ages; with one exception, our earliest surviving manuscripts of Gellius are from the 10th century. That one exception is the remarkable manuscript known as Vatican Pal Lat 24. It contains several books of the Old Testament written in the 8th century; however, early in the 19th century, palimpsests, indentations left by older writing on the parchment which had been scraped off, were discovered beneath the 8th-century Old Testament text. It turns out that parchment from several older books had been re-used in order to make the 8th-century volume; one of those older books was a 4th-century manuscript containing parts of books 1-4 of Gellius, now with large gaps. The conspectus siglorum of Hosius' 1903 Teubner edition, besides Pal lat 24 (mistakenly described as saec VII?) and the the 2 10th-century manuscripts, lists 5 from the 12th century, 3 from the 13th, and one each from the 14th and 15th centuries. A recent critical edition is by PK Marshall in Oxford Classical Texts, 1968, 2nd edition 1990.