The scene is set in Athens, a mid-December in the mid-second century AD. A group of Roman students meet to celebrate the Saturnalia with dinner and conversation. The host sets a quiz: each man gets a problem - a rare word, a doubtful tense-form, a logical teaser, an antiquarian practice, a debated passage of Plato or some 'charmingly obscure' verses from an archaic poet. A knowledgeable answer wins two prizes - a laurel wreath, and a volume of the Classics. Thus Polite Learning joins hands with Whole-some Mirth. In the background of this edifying picture reclines our narrator, the lawyer and littérateur Aulus Gellius.

LRB 30 March 1989 | PDF Download