Aelian

Aelian's Historical Miscellany is a pleasurable example of light reading for Romans of the early third century. Offering engaging anecdotes about historical figures, retellings of legendary events, and descriptive pieces - in sum: amusement, information, and variety - Aelian's collection of nuggets and narratives could be enjoyed by a wide reading public. A rather similar book had been published in Latin in the previous century by Aulus Gellius; Aelian is a late, perhaps the last, representative of what had been a very popular genre. Here then are anecdotes about the famous Greek philosophers, poets, historians, and playwrights; myths instructively retold; moralizing tales about heroes and rulers, athletes and wise men; reports about styles in dress, foods and drink, lovers, gift-giving practices, entertainments, religious beliefs and death customs; and comments on Greek painting. Some of the information is not preserved in any other source. Underlying it all are Aelian's Stoic ideals as well as this Roman's great admiration for the culture of the Greeks (whose language he borrowed for his writings).

"More than 140 years have gone by since R. Hercher's 1864 Teubner edition, a book with serious editorial shortcomings which have been often underlined in recent publications. This new text offers an accurate and new critical edition as a result of an extensive and detailed work undertook by a team of scholars of the University of Oviedo (Spain), under the direction of the Professor Manuela García Valdés. The text has been established on the basis of a complete collation of all the most significant manuscripts of Aelians' textual tradition. This is the first edition with an accurate and scientific critical apparatus by applying the scope of textual criticism and ecdotics. The edition also takes into account the literary koiné of II-III centuries AD and the authors' own style. This edition offers to all scholars a reliable text as a starting point for future research on Aelians' Language and Stoic thought. It will be also useful for studies on zoology, on animals' habits and behaviour, medieval bestiaries, and on the concepts of Science and Technique in Late Antiquity. Confronted with his wealth of materials, the author writes each chapter as a finished unit, as a short story. He uses a wide variety of both literary and linguistic expedients, resorting to formal and content resources."--Publisher's website.

"Selections from Aelian's De Natura Animalium, translated and edited by Gregory McNamee, are a mostly randomly ordered collection of stories that constitute an early encyclopedia of animal behavior, affording insight into what ancient Romans knew about and thought about animals--and, of particular interest to modern scholars, about animal minds"--Provided by publisher.