Attic Nights

he derived from Varro's Disciplines, which book is cited in the following chapter and others; so in VI 13 and 22, Gellius used as his guide Verrius's book On the Obscure [Words] of Cato, which is cited in XVII 6; and in X 8 and 9 he irrigated his own gardens from that same Catonian source which flows in VI 4, 5. Nowhere, however, does it happen—certainly nowhere can it be proven—that Gellius borrowed his material from a writer not once or repeatedly named by himself. Let the Cornelius Epicadus and Octavius Avitus certainly depart; let the book of Asconius against the detractors of Virgil also depart ¹), whose commentary on Cicero Gellius knows in XV 28, 4 only from Suetonius; let Pliny's On Doubtful Language depart. Although in these cases the matter is slightly different. For I doubt whether the rule just established can be transferred by writers even to their individual writings, such that not even the writings of a named author—but not the ones themselves named—are to be proposed as sources. Certainly, that norm does not apply to the contemporaries of Gellius, whose books he rarely cites but often uses. Thus, Favorinus’s books On the Pyrrhonean Modes, Praise of Thersites, and Fever are called upon; nowhere ²) do the more serious Memoirs and Miscellaneous History ³) appear, the resources of which, however, it is most certain were not disdained. Nor was he averse to the books of Fronto and Herodes Atticus ⁴), whom he introduces only as speakers. Likewise, he praises the commentaries of Calvisius Taurus and used his On the Stoic Apathy in XII 5—which book is perhaps covertly indicated in § 5—and On Bodies and Incorporeal Things in V 15; 16 IX 5. The same thing is true for the writers of an earlier age, but very few; for to whom shall I refer II 11 if not...