A younger contemporary and admirer of Fronto is AULUS GELLIUS (l25?-175 A.D.), author of the Noctes Atticae, in twenty books, a pleasant, gossiping work, written to occupy the leisure of his sons, and containing a vast amount of interesting details on literature and religious or antiquarian lore. Gellius is a man of small mind, but makes up by zeal for lack of power. He was trained in philosophy under Favorinus, in rhetoric under Antonius Julianus and, perhaps, Fronto, but his style and taste are, on the whole, purer than those of his preceptors. The title Noctes Atticae was chosen, primarily, because the book was written at Athens and during the lucubrations of the night; but its modesty was also a recommendation in his eyes. The subjects are very various, but grammar or topics connected with it preponderate. A large space is devoted to anecdotes, literary and historical, and among these are found both the most interesting and the best written passages. Another element of importance is found in the quotations, which are very numerous, from ancient authors. The reader will appreciate the value of these from the continual references to Gellius which have been made in this work. [32]
The style of Gellius abounds with archaisms and rare words, e.g., edulcare, recentari, aeruscator, adulescentes frugis, elegans verborum, and shows an unnecessary predilection for frequentatives. [33] It is obvious that in his day men had ceased to feel the full meaning of the words they used. As a depraved bodily condition requires larger and stronger doses of physic to affect it, so Gellius, when his subject is most trivial, strives most for overcharged vigour of language. [34] But these defects are less conspicuous in the later books, where his thought also rises not unfrequently into a higher region. The man's nature is amiable and social; he enlisted the help of his friends in the preparation of his little essays, [35] and seems to have been on kindly terms with most of the chief writers of the day. Among the ancients his admiration was chiefly bestowed on Virgil and Cicero as representatives of literature, on Varro and Nigidius Figulus, [36] as representatives of science. His power of criticism is narrowed by pedantry and small passions, but when these are absent he can use his judgment well. [37] He preserves many interesting points of etymology [38] and grammar, [39] and is a mine of archaic quotation. Among contemporary philosophers he admires most Plutarch, Favorinus, and Herodes Atticus the rival of Fronto. He smiles at the enthusiasm with which some regard all that is obsolete, and mentions the Ennianistae [40] with half-disapproval. But his own bias inclines the same way, only he brings more taste to it than they. On the whole he is a very interesting writer, and the last that can be called in anyway classical. He is well spoken of by Augustine; [41] and Macrobius, though he scarcely mentions him, pillages his works without reserve. His eighth book is lost, but the table of contents is fortunately preserved.
A great genius belonging to this time is the jurist GAIUS (110-180 A.D.). His nomen is not known; whence some have supposed that he never came to Rome. But this is both extremely unlikely in itself, and contradicted by at least one passage of his works. He was a professor of jurisprudence for many years, and from the style of his extant works Teuffel conjectures that they originated from oral lectures. It is astonishing how clear even the later Latin language becomes when it touches on congenial subjects, such as agriculture or law. The ancient legal phraseology had been seriously complained of as being so technical as to baffle all but experts in deciphering its meaning. Horace ridicules the cunning of the trained legal intellect in more than one place. But this reproach was no longer just. The series of able and thoughtful writers who had carried out a successive and systematic treatment of law since the Augustan age had brought into it such matchless clearness, that they have formed the model for all subsequent philosophic jurists. The amalgamation of the great Stoic principles of natural right, the equality of man, and the jus gentium, which last was gradually expanding into the conception of international law, contributed to make jurisprudence a complete exponent of the essential character of the Empire as the "polity of the human race." The works of Gaius included seven books Rerum Cotidianarum, which, like the work of Apuleius, were styled Aurei; and an introduction to the science of law, called Institutiones, or Instituta, in four books. These were published 161 A.D., and at once established themselves as the most popular exposition of the subject. Gaius was a native of the east, but of what country is uncertain. The names of several other jurists are preserved. They were divided into two classes, [42] the practicians, who pleaded or responded, and the regularly endowed professors of jurisprudence. Of the former class SEX. JULIUS AFRICANUS was the most celebrated for his acute intellect and the extreme difficulty of his definitions; ULPIUS MARCELLUS for his deep learning and the prudence of his decisions. He was an adviser of the emperor Aurelius. A third writer, one of whose treatises—that on the divisions of money, weights, and measures,—is still extant, was L. VOLUSIUS MAECIANUS. The reader is referred for information on this subject to Teuffel's work, and Poste's edition of the Institutes of Gaius.
Among minor authors we may mention C. SULPICIUS APOLLINARIS, a Carthaginian, who became a teacher of rhetoric and grammar, and numbered among his pupils Aulus Gellius. He and ARRUNTIUS CELSUS devoted their talents for the most part to subjects of archaic interest. Erudition of a certain kind had now become universal, and was discussed with all the formality and exuberance of public debate. The disputations of the mediaeval universities seem to have found their germ in these animated discussions on trivial subjects, such as are described in chapters of Gellius to which the reader has already been referred. [43]
Historical research flagged; epitomizers had possession of the field. We have the names of L. AMPELIUS, the author of an abridged "book of useful information on various subjects," history predominating, called Liber Memorialis, which still remains; and of GRANIUS LICINIANUS, short fragments of whose Roman history in forty books are left to us.
Poetry was even more meagrely represented. Aulus Gellius [44] has preserved a translation of one of Plato's epigrams, which he calls ouk amousos, by a contemporary author, whose name he does not give. It is written in dimeter iambics, an easier measure than the hexameter, and therefore more within the reduced capacity of the time. The loose metrical treatment proceeds not so much from ignorance of the laws of quantity as from imitation of Hadrian's lax style, [45] and perhaps from a tendency, now no longer possible to resist, to adopt the plebeian methods of speech and rhythm into the domain of recognised literature. As the fragment may interest our readers, we quote it:
"Dum semibiulco savio
Meum puellum savior,
Dulcemque florem spiritus
Duco ex aperto tramite;
Animula aegra et saucia
Cucurrit ad labias mihi,
Rictumque in oris pervium
Et labra pueri mollia,
Rimata itineri transitus
Ut transiliret, nititur.
Tum si morae quid plusculae
Fuisset in coetu osculi
Amoris igni percita
Transisset, et me linqueret:
Et mira prorsum res foret,
Ut ad me fierem mortuus,
Ad puerum intus viverem."
In the fifth and last lines we see a reversion to the ante-classical irregularities of scansion. The reader should refer to the remarks on this subject on page 20.
Perhaps the much-disputed poem called Pervigilium Veneris belongs to this epoch. [46] It is printed in Weber's Corpus Poetarum, [47] and is well worth reading from the melancholy despondency that breathes through its quiet inspiration. The metre is the trochaic tetrameter, which is always well suited to the Latin language, and which here appears treated with Greek strictness, except that in lines 55, 62, 91, a spondee is used in the fifth foot instead of a trochee. The refrain—
"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit, eras amet,"