GELLIUS, AULUS (sometimes, though incorrectly, called AGELIUS), author of the Noctes Atticae, was born in the course of the second century of the Christian era, and died about A.D. 180. Little or nothing is known of his per-
sonal history beyond incidental notices in his own book. From these he seems to have been born of a good family at Rome; to have travelled much, especially in Greece; to have enjoyed the tuition and personal friendship of the most eminent philosophers of that day; and, being possessed of independent means, to have spent his life in a sort of literary dilettantism. His only work, the Noctes Atticae, takes its name from the fact of its having been composed during the long nights of a winter which the author spent in Attica. In the preface he states that he had no other object in view in writing it than to while away the time in amusing his children. He had been in the habit of keeping an "Adversaria," or commonplace-book, in which he jotted down everything of unusual interest that he heard in conversation or read in books. The contents of this scrap-book he redacted with some slight changes of form into the work through which his name has been preserved. This fact sufficiently accounts for the very miscellaneous nature of the topics embraced in the book, which comprise essays on grammar, geometry, and philosophy, besides scraps of history and poetry, anecdotes, and a good deal of discursive matter. The work, which is utterly devoid of sequence or arrangement, is divided into twenty books. All these have come down to us except the eighth, of which nothing remains but the index. The work is on the whole a very useful one, as it throws light on many subjects which must otherwise have remained for ever a mystery. The style, though for the most part sufficiently clear, is disfigured by that affectation of archaism which was carried to such ridiculous extremes by Apuleius. The editio princeps of Aulus Gellius appeared at Rome in 1469, and was speedily followed by many others in various cities of Italy, especially Venice. The best edition that has yet appeared is that of James Gronovius, Leyden, 1706; which is unquestionably superior to the recent edition of Lion, Gottingen, 1824-25. Aulus Gellius has been translated into English by Beloe, Lond., 1795; into French by the Abbé de Verteuil, Paris, 1776-89; and by Victor Verger, Paris, 1820-30; and partly into German by Walterstern, Lemg., 1785.