Aeliānus
1.
The Tactician, a Greek writer on war, about 100 A.D., composed a
work dedicated to Trajan on the Greek order of battle, with special reference to Macedonian
tactics (
Τακτικὴ Θεωρία), which is extant both in its
original and in an enlarged form. The original used falsely to be attributed to Arrian. See
Köchly, De Libris Tacticis (1852).
2.
Claudius Aeliānus, called the
Sophist, a Roman of Praenesté, who wrote in Greek, lived at Rome in the
second century A.D. as a teacher of rhetoric. His surviving works are: (
a) Twenty insignificant
Peasants' Letters (
Ἀγροικικαὶ Ἐπιστολαί), so called because attributed to Attic peasants;
(b) Variae Historiae (
Ποικίλη Ἱστορία）
or miscellanies, in fourteen books, some preserved only in extracts; and
(c) De Natura
Animalium (
Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος). The two
last-mentioned are copious and valuable collections of all kinds of curiosities in human and
animal life. See
Lübbe, De Aeliani Varia Hist. (1888);
and the ed. of the last by Jacobs
(1832).
