The Attic Nights
The Attic Nights by Aulus Gellius is a revised edition published by Harvard University Press in 1927, comprising 463 pages in English. This work is a collection of notes that Gellius compiled during the nights of an Attic winter, covering a wide range of topics including philosophy, history, biography, and literary criticism. The text is particularly notable for its excerpts from lost works of other authors and its insights into the customs and occupations of the time.
Readers will find that The Attic Nights presents a rich tapestry of antiquities and discussions on various subjects, including points of law and grammar. The collection is organized into twenty books, although only the index of Book VIII remains. This edition is part of the Loeb Classical Library, which emphasizes the significance of Gellius’s work in preserving fragments of ancient literature and providing a glimpse into the intellectual life of his era.
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Refined midnight oil.
Aulus Gellius (ca. AD 123–170) 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. At least some of the dramatic settings may be genuine occasions.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Attic Nights is in three volumes.
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