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RHETORIC AND SCHOLARSHIP
boyance such as Apuleius', who continued more boldly with experiments
which Fronto, amongst others, had begun.
The correspondence reflects, albeit incompletely, a society humane and
refined, brittle and decadent. The Romans were forever looking back to their
past, but in the second century A.D. this retrospection became obsessive.
Fronto was accounted the prime ornament of his age because he embodied
its ideal of culture and learning, and, Janus-like, sponsored both tradition
and novelty. Since his speeches are lost, we had best refrain from further
assessment.
3. AULUS GELLIUS
In his miscellany Noctes Atticae, 'Attic nights', 1 so called since it originated
from his lucubrations in Attica (praef. 4), Gellius ranges haphazardly in many
fields, including language, literature, history, law, and philosophy, looking
out for topics of antiquarian interest and problems subtle and recondite in
flavour. He explains in his preface that he has based his work on notes taken
from reading and lectures, that the arrangement of this material is fortuitous,
that he makes no pretence to laboured elegance, and that he aims to improve
his readers' leisure rather than to instruct serious enquirers. We are not obliged
to accept what he says, and may smile at his feigned modesty where style is
concerned, but his prefatory statements are largely borne out by examination
of his writing.
Miscellanies were much in favour in antiquity, amongst Greeks and Romans.
They naturally differed considerably in size, range, and intention. Athenaeus'
Deipnosophistae 'Connoisseurs at dinner' affords a fair analogy with the
Noctes Atticae, and we may also recall Pliny's Natural history, though that is
as much encyclopaedia as miscellany, and Valerius Maximus' collection of
memorable deeds and sayings, though Valerius' scope is appreciably different.
And perhaps Suetonius attempted a comparable mixture in his Pratum. There
were also more remote Roman precedents, in works of Cato and Varro.
Gellius is particularly notable because of his kaleidoscopic variety: the average
space he accords to any single topic can hardly exceed two standard pages.
Being both abundantly diverse and unpredictable, he well serves the needs of
those who desire only an occasional dip into culture.
A 'perpetual student', not a professional teacher, Gellius venerated learning
and retained an adolescent's awe for scholarly tours de force. In this we see
the child of an age when few thought it strange that a rhetorician should
become consul. He specially loved linguistic minutiae, and here too, perhaps,
he reflects current fashion. But his modest deference to learned authorities
1 Ancient anthologists and miscellanists commonly affected fanciful titles, as Gellius attests (praef.
5-10). He followed the fashion which he there elegantly deprecated.
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