A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

28 AELIANUS.
Under the empire the Aelian name became still
more celebrated. It was the name of the emperor
Hadrian, and consequently of the Antonines, whom
he adopted.
It is doubtful to which family P. Aelius belonged who was one of the first plebeian quaestors.
B. c. 409. (Liv. iv. 54.)
AELIA'NUS was together with Amandus the
leader of an insurrection of Gallic peasants, called
Bagaudae, in the reign of Diocletian. It was put
down by the Caesar Maximianus Hercilius. (Eutrop. ix. 13; Aurel. Vict. de Cao. 39.
AELIA'NUS, CASPE'PIUS, prefect of the
Praetorian guards under Domitian and Nerva.
He excited an insurrection of the guards against
Nerva, in order to obtain the punishment of some
obnoxious persons, but was killed by Trajan with
his accomplices. (Dion Cass. Ixviii. 3, 5.)
AELIA'NUS, CLAU'DIUS (KAndltos AlM/av6s), was born according to Suidas (s. v. Albiavo's)
at Praeneste in Italy, and lived at Rome. He
calls himself a Roman ( V. H. xii. 25), as possessing the rights of Roman citizenship. He was
particularly fond of the Greeks and of Greek literature and oratory. (V. H. ix. 32, xii. 25.)
He studied under Pausanias the rhetorician, and
imitated the eloquence of Nicostratus and the style
of Dion Chrysostom; but especially admired
Herodes Atticus more than all. He taught rhetoric at Rome in the time of Hadrian, and hence was
called 4d copzTo-ns. So complete was the command
he acquired over the Greek language that he could
speak as well as a native Athenian, and hence was
called d p eAiyAwrros or peid(pooyyos. (Philost. Vit.
Soph. ii. 31.) That rhetoric, however, was not his
forte may easily be believed from the style of his
works; and he appears to have given up teaching
for writing. Suidas calls him 'ApXiepevs (Pontifex).
He lived to above sixty years of age, and had no
children. He did not marry, because he would
not have any. There are two considerable works
of his remaining: one a collection of miscellaneous
history (nouciA) 'Io-ropia) in fourteen books, commonly called his " Varia Historia," and the other
a work on the peculiarities of animals (lHep? ZMwv
iSldirrros) in seventeen books, commonly called his
"De Animalium Natura." The former work contains short narrations and anecdotes, historical,
biographical, antiquarian, &c., selected from various
authors, generally without their names being given,
and on a great variety of subjects. Its chief value
arises from its containing many passages from
works of older authors which are now lost. It is
to be regretted that in selecting from Thucydides,
Herodotus, and other writers, he has sometimes
given himself the trouble of altering their language.
But he tells us he liked to have his own way and
to follow his own taste, and so he would seem to
have altered for the mere sake of putting something different. The latter work is of the same
kind, scrappy and gossiping. It is partly collected
from older writers, and partly the result of his own
observations both in Italy and abroad. According
to Philostratus (in Vit.) he was scarcely ever out
of Italy; but he tells us himself that he travelled
as far as Aegypt; and that he saw at Alexandria
an ox with five feet. (De Anim. xi. 40; comp. xi.
11.) This book would appear to have become a
popular and standard work on zoology, since in the
fourteenth century Manuel Philes, a Byzantine
poet, founded upon it a poem on animals. At the

AELIANUS.
end of the work is a concluding chapter (eriAhoyos),
where he states the general principles on which he
has composed his work:-that he has spent great
labour, care, and thought in writing it;-that he
has preferred the pursuit of knowledge to the parsuit of wealth; and that, for his part, he found
much more pleasure in observing the habits of the
lion, the panther, and the fox, in listening to the
song of the nightingale, and in studying the migrations of cranes, than in mere heaping up riches
and being numbered among the great: - that
throughout his work he has sought to adhere to
the truth, Nothing can be imagined more deficient
in arrangement than this work: he goes from one
subject to another without the least link of association; as (e. g.) from elephants (xi. 15) to dragons
(xi. 16), from the liver of mice (ii. 56) to the uses
of oxen (ii. 57). But this absence of arrangement,
treating things roud'Aa 7rTO1K iAWS, he says, is intentional; he adopted this plan to give variety to
the work, and to avoid tedium to the reader. His
style, which he commends to the indulgence of
critics, though free from any great fault, has no
particular merit. The similarity of plan in the two
works, with other internal evidences, seems to
shew that they were both written by the same
Aelian, and not, as Voss and Valckenaer conjecture, by two different persons.
In both works he seems desirous to inculcate
moral and religious principles (see. II. vii. 44;
De Anim. vi. 2, vii. 10, 11, ix. 7, and Epilog.);
and he wrote some treatises expressly on philosophical and religious subjects, especially one on
Providence (TIEl UIpovoias) in three books (Suidas,
s. v. 'Afaeavieoros), and one on the Divine Manifestations (lSEPI OsiWn 'EVepyEtsI'), directed against
the Epicureans, whom he alludes to elsewhere.
(De Anim. vii. 44.) There are also attributed to
Aelian twenty letters on husbandry and such-like
matters ('Aypolcucal 'E7rtoToAlo), which are by
feigned characters, are written in a rhetorical unreal style, and are of no value. The first edition
of all his works was by Conrad Gesner, 1556, fol.,
containing also the works of Heraclides, Polemo,
Adamantius and Melampus. The "' Varia Historia"
was first edited by Camillus Peruscus, Rome,
1545, 4to.; the principal editions since are by
Perizonius, Leyden, 1701, 8vo., by Gronovius,
Leyden, 1731, 2 vols. 4to., and by Kiihn, Leipzig, 1780, 2 vols. 8vo. The De Animalium
Natura was edited by Gronovius, Lond. 1744,
2 vols. 4to., and by J. G. Schneider, Leipzig,
1784, 2 vols. 8vo. The last edition is that by
Fr. Jacobs, Jena, 1832, 2 vols. 8vo. This contains
the valuable materials which Schneider had collected and left for a new edition. The Letters
were published apart from the other works by
Aldus Manutius in his " Collectio Epistolatumn
Graecarum," Venice, 1499, 4to.
The Varia Historia has been translated into
Latin by C. Gesner, and into English by A. Fleming, Lond. 1576, and by Stanley, 1665; this
last has been reprinted more than once. The De
Animaliam Natura has been translated into Latin
by Peter Gillius (a Frenchman) and by Conrad
Gesner. It does not appear to have been translated
into English.
There has also been attributed to Aelian a work
called KaTrsyopia TOV TFvnia0os, an attack on an
effeminate man, probably meant for Elagabalus.
(Suidas, s. v. "Apper.) [A. A.]