Aelianus Tacticus, a Greek military writer of the 2nd century, who lived in Rome
Claudius Aelianus, a Roman teacher and historian of the 3rd century, who wrote in Greek
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Aelian's Historical Miscellany is a pleasurable example of light reading for Romans of the early third century.
Here then are anecdotes about the famous Greek philosophers, poets, historians, and playwrights; myths instructively retold; moralizing tales about heroes and rulers, athletes and wise men; reports about food and drink, different styles in dress, lovers, gift giving, entertainments, religious beliefs, and death customs; and comments on Greek painting.
Underlying it all are Aelian's Stoic ideals as well as this Roman's great admiration for the culture of the Greeks (whose language he borrowed for his writings).
Aelian's anecdotes on animals rarely depend on direct observation: they are almost entirely taken from written sources, often Pliny the Elder, but also other authors and works now lost, to whom he is thus a valuable witness.
Aelian's work is one of the sources of medieval natural history and of the bestiaries of the Middle Ages; in some ways an allegory of the moral world, an Emblem Book.
Aelian gives an account of fly fishing, using lures of red wool and feathers, of lacquerwork, serpent worship — Essentially the Various History is a Classical "magazine" in the original senses of that word.
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