How Defeat a Bull? On Aulus Gellius' Noctes Atticae XVII 20

Abstrakt

In one of the chapters of the Attic Nights NA XVII 20 Aulus Gellius relates one of his encounters with his teacher, the Platonic philosopher Taurus, who accuses the writer of paying too much attention to the linguistic aspects of Platos dialogues. Gellius, hard-core philologist that he is, completely disregards the masters ironic criticism of his approach and oers his readers a Latin translation of a passage from Pausanias speech at Symposium 180e-181a. The paper will attempt to analyse and elucidate the literary context in which the translation is presented not only within this particular chapter, but also in a broader spectrum of the Attic Nights understood as a coherent work.