Claudius Aelianus (; ), commonly Aelian (), born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

who flourished under

Septimius Severus Lucius Septimius Severus (; ; 11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through cursus honorum, the ...

and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222. He spoke Greek so fluently that he was called "honey-tongued" ( ); Roman-born, he preferred Greek authors, and wrote in a slightly archaizing Greek himself. This cites: * ''Editio princeps'' of complete works by Gesner, 1556; Hercher, 1864-1866. * English translation of the ''Various History'' only by Fleming, 1576, and Stanley, 1665 * Translation of the ''Letters'' by Quillard (French), 1895 His two chief works are valuable for the numerous quotations from the works of earlier authors, which are otherwise lost, and for the surprising lore, which offers unexpected glimpses into the Greco-Roman world-view. ''De Natura Animalium'' is also the only Greco-Roman work to mention Gilgamesh.

''De Natura Animalium''

''On the Nature of Animals'' (alternatively "On the Characteristics of Animals"; , '; usually cited by its

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

title ''De Natura Animalium'') is a collection, in seventeen books, of brief stories of natural history. Some are included for the moral lessons they convey; others because they are astonishing. The

Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a monographic series of books originally published by Heinemann and since 1934 by Harvard University Press. It has bilingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin literature, ...

introduction characterizes the book as "an appealing collection of facts and fables about the animal kingdom that invites the reader to ponder contrasts between human and animal behavior". Aelian's anecdotes on animals rarely depend on direct observation: they are almost entirely taken from written sources, not only

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

, Theopompus, and Lycus of Rhegium, but also other authors and works now lost, to whom he is thus a valuable witness. He is more attentive to marine life than might be expected, though, and this seems to reflect first-hand personal interest; he often quotes "fishermen". At times he strikes the modern reader as thoroughly credulous, but at others he specifically states that he is merely reporting what is told by others, and even that he does not believe them. Aelian's work is one of the sources of medieval natural history and of the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. The surviving portions of the text are badly mangled and garbled and replete with later interpolations. Conrad Gessner (or Gesner), the Swiss scientist and natural historian of the Renaissance, made a Latin translation of Aelian's work, to give it a wider European audience. An English translation by A. F. Scholfield has been published in the

, 3 vols. (1958–59).

''Varia Historia''

''Various History'' (, ')—for the most part preserved only in an abridged form—is Aelian's other well-known work, a miscellany of anecdotes and biographical sketches, lists, pithy maxims, and descriptions of natural wonders and strange local customs, in 14 books, with many surprises for the cultural historian and the mythographer, anecdotes about the famous Greek philosophers, poets, historians, and playwrights and myths instructively retold. The emphasis is on ''various'' moralizing tales about heroes and rulers, athletes and wise men; reports about food and drink, different styles in dress or lovers, local habits in giving gifts or entertainments, or in religious beliefs and death customs; and comments on Greek painting. Aelian gives accounts of, among other things, fly fishing using lures of red wool and feathers, lacquerwork, and serpent worship. Essentially, the ''Various History'' is a classical "magazine" in the original sense of that word. He is not perfectly trustworthy in details, and his writing was heavily influenced by Stoic opinions, perhaps so that his readers will not feel guilty, but Jane Ellen Harrison found survivals of archaic rites mentioned by Aelian very illuminating in her ''Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion'' (1903, 1922). ''Varia Historia'' was first printed in 1545. The standard modern text is that of Mervin R. Dilts (1974). Two English translations of the ''Various History,'' by Fleming (1576) and Stanley (1665) made Aelian's miscellany available to English readers, but after 1665 no English translation appeared, until three English translations appeared almost simultaneously: James G. DeVoto, ''Claudius Aelianus: Ποικίλης Ἱστορίας (''Varia Historia'')'' Chicago, 1995; Diane Ostrom Johnson, ''An English Translation of Claudius Aelianus' "Varia Historia"'', 1997; and N. G. Wilson, ''Aelian: Historical Miscellany'' in the

Other works

Considerable fragments of two other works, ''On Providence'' and ''Divine Manifestations'', are preserved in the early medieval encyclopedia, the ''

Suda The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; ; ) is a large 10th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine encyclopedia of the History of the Mediterranean region, ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas () or Souidas (). It is an ...

.'' Twenty "letters from a farmer" after the manner of Alciphron are also attributed to him. The letters are invented compositions to a fictitious correspondent, which are a device for vignettes of agricultural and rural life, set in Attica, though mellifluous Aelian once boasted that he had never been outside Italy, never been aboard a ship (which is at variance, though, with his own statement, ''de Natura Animalium'' XI.40, that he had seen the bull Serapis with his own eyes). Thus conclusions about actual agriculture in the ''Letters'' are as likely to evoke

Latium Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Definition Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil (Old Latium) on whic ...

as Attica. The fragments have been edited in 1998 by D. Domingo-Foraste, but are not available in English. The ''Letters'' are available in the Loeb Classical Library, translated by Allen Rogers Benner and Francis H. Fobes (1949).

References

External links

* *
Ποικίλη ἱστορία – bibliotheca Augustana
* Raw Greek OCR of Hercher's 1864 Teubner edition of Aelian's works at the Lace repository of Mount Allison University
vol. Ivol. 2

Various History
at James Eason's site (excerpts in English translation)

at ''attalus.org''

(English)

The Evidence for Aelian's Katêgoria tou gunnidos
regarding Aelian's presumed invective against Elagabalus

Aelian's ''Characteristics of Animals''

;Greek with English translation
Aelian on the Characteristics of Animals, Books I-V (Greek with English translation by A.F. Scholfield, 1950)Aelian on the Characteristics of Animals, Books VI-XI (Greek with English translation by A.F. Scholfield, 1950)Aelian on the Characteristics of Animals, Books XII-XVII (Greek with English translation by A.F. Scholfield, 1950)
at ''attalus.org'' ;Latin translation

(complete Latin translation) ;Greek * ''De natura animalium libri XVII, Varia historia, Epistolae fragmenta, ex recognitione Rudolphi Hercheri'', Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1864
vol. 1vol. 2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aelianus, Claudius 170s births 235 deaths People from Palestrina Claudii Ancient Roman rhetoricians 2nd-century Romans 3rd-century Romans 3rd-century writers 2nd-century Greek philosophers 3rd-century Greek philosophers