Valuing the Mediators of Antiquity in the Noctes Atticae

Aulus Gellius, author of the Noctes Atticae , had a fondness for the antique. His collection of nearly 400 essays on antiquities has long been valued by modern readers for its own overt valuing of Roman antiquity. The Noctes is about valuing the antique, but even more so is it about valuing those who mediate and communicate antiquity. This chapter offers a few glimpses of the narrative and rhetorical techniques by which Gellius represents antiquity as inherently mediated, and explores the choices every valuer of antiquity makes, knowingly or not, about which mediators he or she will trust to provide reliable access to the antique. Gellius shares with Pausanias an interest in adding, to a tour of antiquities in the present, an aura of uncertainty about their meaning. But he unpacks and analyzes the processes that cause that uncertainty, demonstrating how to navigate and master it. Keywords: Aulus Gellius; Gellius; Noctes Atticae ; Pausanias; rhetorical techniques; Roman antiquity

Ancient history · Late Antiquity · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Philosophy

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