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[p. xxix] attempt to imitate the witty captions which many other writers of both languages have devised for works of the kind. For since they had laboriously gathered varied, manifold, and as it were indiscriminate learning, they therefore invented ingenious titles also, to correspond with that idea. Thus some called their books “The Muses,” others “Woods”
1
one used the title “Athena's Mantle,” another “The Horn of Amaltheia,” still another “Honeycomb,” several “Meads,” one “Fruits of my Reading,” another “Gleanings from Early Writers,” another “The Nosegay,” still another “Discoveries.” Some have used the name “Torches,” others “Tapestry,” others “Repertory,” others “Helicon,” “Problems,” “Handbooks” and “Daggers.” One man called his book “Memorabilia,” one “Principia,” one “Incidentals,” another “Instructions.” Other titles are “Natural History,” “Universal History,” “The Field,” “The Fruit-basket,” or “Topics.” Many have termed their notes “Miscellanies,” some “Moral Epistles,” “Questions in Epistolary Form,” or “Miscellaneous Queries,” and there are some other titles that are exceedingly witty and redolent of extreme refinement.
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But I, bearing in mind my limitations, gave my work off-hand, without premeditation, and indeed almost in rustic fashion, the caption of Attic Nights, derived merely from the time and place of
1 Silva, and its Greek equivalent Hyle (Suet. Gramm. x), was used metaphorically of material in a rough form, and of hasty and more or less extempore productions; see Quint. x. 3. 17.
2 Of the thirty titles cited by Gellius about one-half can be assigned to their authors, many of whom Gellius himself mentions in various parts of his work; see the Index. There are others which he undoubtedly used, but does not cite, such as the “παντοδαπὴ ιστορία” of Favorinus. “The Muses” refers not to Herodotus, the books of whose “History” the grammarians named from the Muses, but to Aurelius Opilius, cited by Gellius in i. 25. 17. The “Silvae” belong either to Valerius Probus (Suet. Gramm. 24) or to Ateius Philologus (id. 10); the “Silvae” of Statius are of a different character. δειμών was used by Pamphilus, by Gellius himself, and by Cicero of a work of a different kind; the Latin equivalent “Pratum” was used by Suetonius For further information see the Index.
The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. With An English Translation. John C. Rolfe. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1927.
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