Attic Nights

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annis
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Attic Nights

Post by annis »

Anyone know of or have a favorite (student) edition of Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights?

Amazon seems to produce only a single student edition, and it goes for the absurd price if $193.71 (which cannot possibly be right).
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

Magistra
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Post by Magistra »

I've not read the Attic Nights, but I was able to search out something at considerably less than $193.71. That sounds like a collector's edition or a major mistake. Here's the info.

The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (Peggy Chambers)
Intermediate Reader/Grammar Review
5th Edition 2000 ISBN 0-9628450-3-5
Price: $17.95

It seems to have been edited by a Classics instructor at the University of Oklahoma. It sounds interesting. It's a 65 page Word document. I also saw that a teacher's key is available (only to teachers though).

I hope this can steer you to something reasonably priced, at any rate.

Magistra

adz000
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Post by adz000 »

By students edition do you mean annotated excerpts for light reading or an entire text with annotation aimed at the intermediate student?

The best introduction is Leofranc Holford-Strevens book, which was just republished (an unjustly frigid review can be found on Bryn Mawr).

For reference, translation, and annotation I use Rolfe's 3-volume Loeb. It's certainly out-of-date but there's nothing else like it in English. The text is likely to have been improved in the last 80 years, however.

annis
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Post by annis »

adz000 wrote:By students edition do you mean annotated excerpts for light reading or an entire text with annotation aimed at the intermediate student?
Full text with notes.

Loebs are good for last ditch "what does this mean?" panics, but I try to stay away from any hint of a translation for as long as possible.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

adz000
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Post by adz000 »

There's no such thing, intermediate or scholarly, as far as I know, of an edition with notes on Gellius (w/o facing page translation). There have been occasional articles published on Gellius' Latinity and there was just a big conference held at Cambridge on Gellius. But generally he doesn't get that much attention. The Loeb is judiciously annotated (perhaps more than most authors, given the kind of philological explanations Gellius often requires) and there is something to be said for translations when your author is erratic, fills two Teubner volumes, and is possessed by encyclopedic tendencies.

You might be able to outdo the Loeb with some more recent Italian editions, but they would have translations as well. So basically the Loeb is the student AND the scholarly edition and just about everything else (though the text has probably been slightly improved in the Teubner or OCT). The recent re-publication of Holford-Strevens book has an updated bibliography which might prove me wrong on any of this.

Let me know if anything turns up, because I do enjoy Gellius a lot but haven't read him all that often.

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