Noctes Atticae
Rome · 180
A
Aulus Gellius
Aulus Gellius
125 CE–180 CE · Rome
Aulus Gellius (c. 125 - after 180 CE) was a Roman writer and antiquarian, active in the age of the Antonine emperors. He is remembered for a single surviving work, the "Attic Nights," a sprawling collection of short essays and notes on grammar, law, philosophy, history, and curious points of language that he gathered from his reading and conversations. Because it preserves many quotations from authors whose own works are now lost, it is a valued source for the literary and intellectual life of the ancient world.
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Stop 1 of 1125–180Lived
RomeרומאItaly
What they did here
Roman author of the Attic Nights.
About Rome
# Rome In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Rome lay within the Papal States, the territorial domain of the Catholic Church, though its temporal glory as an empire had long faded. The city sprawled across its famous hills along the Tiber River, a landscape of crumbling ancient monuments, medieval fortifications, and Romanesque churches that dominated the skyline. The Jewish community of Rome was among Europe's most ancient, tracing roots to the second century BCE, and it flourished in a precarious but resilient position under papal authority; while confined to restricted quarters and subject to discriminatory laws, Roman Jews maintained a sophisticated intellectual and commercial life, with Hebrew scholarship and biblical commentary flourishing despite—or perhaps because of—the community's isolation. The Jewish quarter itself, densely packed and vibrant, became a center of learning where skilled scribes copied manuscripts and rabbinical discussions drew on centuries of local tradition. What made Rome extraordinary for Torah study was not merely its learned scholars but the tangible presence of antiquity itself: the community lived amid the ruins of pagan temples and Roman law, giving their interpretations of Jewish law a unique resonance, as if they were rebuilding Jewish civilization in the very streets where Roman power had once reigned supreme.
In Rome at the same time
Epictetus, Juvenal, Polycarp of Smyrna, Florus, Lucius Annaeus, Soranus, Favorinus of Arelate