Claudius Aelianus (c. 170-235), Roman author and teacher of rhetoric at Rome, was born at Praeneste, offspring of freedmen, and flourished under the reign of Septimius Severus (192-211). He wrote in Greek and was admired for it; according to Philostratus, (Lives of the Sophists 624-5), “he wrote Attic as correctly as the Athenians in the interior of Attica” (trans. by Wright). Aelian’s major works are De natura animalium, a collection, in 17 books, of brief and curious stories of natural history, and Varia Historia, a miscellany of anecdotes, lists, maxims and descriptions, in 14 books. Aelian is quoted on no fewer than 247 occasions in the Suda; these quotations include references to two other works, *Peri\ *Pronoi/as and *Peri\ qei/wn e)nargei/wn. Also attributed to him is a collection of fictitious letters, the so-called Epistulae Rusticae, purportedly addressed to and by Attic farmers.
RE Aelianus (11); NP Ailianos (2); OCD4 Aelian; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.31.
[1] pi 2235 Prainestos.
[2] 117-138.