AULUS

GELLIUS (c. A.D. 13o-I8o)  , Latin author and grammarian, probably born at Rome . He studied grammar and rhetoric at Rome and philosophy at Athens, after which he returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office . His teachers and friends included many distinguished men—Sulpicius Apollinaris, Herodes Atticus and Fronto . His only work, the Noctes Atticae, takes its name from having been begun during the long nights of a winter which he spent in Attica . He after-wards continued it at Rome . It is compiled out of an Adversaria, or commonplace book, in which he had jotted down everything of unusual interest that he heard in conversation or read in books, and it comprises notes on grammar, geometry, philosophy, history and almost every other branch of knowledge . 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 Noctes Atticae is valuable for the insight it affords into the nature of the society and pursuits of those times, and for the numerous excerpts it contains from the works of lost ancient authors . Editio princeps (Rome, 1469) ; the best editions are those of Gronovius (1706) and M . Hertz (1883-1885; editio minor, 1886, revised by C . Hosius, 1903, with bibliography) .

There is a

translation in English by W . Beloe (1795), and in French by various hands (1896) . See Sandys, Hist . Class . Schol. i . (1906), 210 . Berlin Academy . His best-known work is Pompeiana; the Topography, Edifices and Ornaments of Pompeii (1817–1832), in the first part of which he was assisted by J . P . Gandy . It was followed in 1834 by the Topography of Rome and its Vicinity (new ed. by E . H .

Banbury, . 1896) . He wrote also Topography of Troy and its Vicinity (1804); Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca (1807); Itinerary of Greece, with a Commentary on Pausanias and Strabo (181o, enlarged ed . 1827); Itinerary of the Morea (1816; republished as Narrative of a Journey in the Morea, 1823) . All these works have been superseded by later publications .