Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part One. Constructing Authority: Gellius' Roman Cultural Programme -- Chapter One. Gellius the Roman Educationalist -- The Praefatio: Protocols of Authority -- The Roman life of learning: Gellius versus 'the Greeks' -- Vindicating elite authority: Gellius against the grammatici -- Imagery of education: breastfeeding and pure Latinity -- Chapter Two. Memory and Authority -- Commentarii and chreiai: the utility of commemoration -- The instability of Fronto's charismatic authority -- Playful authority (1): Menippean lists and imperial memory -- Playful authority (2): Frontonian trifles and imperial education -- 'Gellius Menippeus': emulating Fronto as arbiter of taste -- Chapter Three. Saturnalian Licence and Socratic Irony -- Legitimate space for jest: Gellius as sectator -- Scrutinising Socratic exposure -- Instructive role-reversals: obnoxius (6, 17) -- The definition of penus (4, 1): Gellius' authoritative platform -- Part Two. Playing with Reputations: 'Rehabilitation' as Political Satire -- Chapter Four. Favorinus as a 'Comic Authority Figure' -- The chreia and the rhetoric of humour -- Favorinus and Socrates: ambiguous physiognomies -- Socratic self-exposure -- Gellius' politics of rehabilitation -- Chapter Five. Exposing his Own Infamy: Avarice and Unmanliness -- The 'double bind' of Roman manhood -- Avarice as disloyalty towards the state -- Philology as a vehicle of satire (3, 1 -- 3, 19) -- Ambiguous gender (penus), ambiguous amicus (4, 1) -- Chapter Six. Demonstration and Refutation: 'Investigational Rhetoric' -- Authorising humour: enthymeme and antithesis -- Exposing demagogy and deception: Gellius on contio (18, 7) -- Chapter Seven. Favorinus' Controversial Authority -- Favorinus' programmatic role -- Things without honour: the paradox of praising a sophist.

The controversiality of Academic Scepticism -- Stereotyping the polymath rival (20, 1 -- 14, 6) -- The manly advice of a eunuch (14, 2) -- Subversive authority: Favorinus and Socrates -- Part Three. Gellius' Ideological Authority: The Charisma of Antiquitas in a Sophistic Context -- Chapter Eight. The Imperial Context of Gellius' Authority -- Modesty and caution in addressing the powerful -- Ideal reader, existimator: the emperor's omnipresence -- (1) taedium: 'ranking disgust' -- (2) the ambiguous rhetoric of philological topics -- (3) existimatio: canonisation and elite formation -- Chapter Nine. Gellius' Symbouleutic Authority -- The amicus minor and the amicus maior -- Noctes Atticae as 'praecepta generalia' for a 'iudex' (14, 2) -- The twilight zone between friendship and politics (1, 3) -- Gellius' consilium as a 'politics of candour' -- Chapter Ten. Comparative Judgments in Roman Sites of Memory -- Shaping perceptions: space, comparison, and the gaze -- Imperial monuments and texts as 'transmitters of memory' -- Monumental writers under imperial scrutiny -- Imperial education: Cato the Elder as a political exemplum -- The best of both worlds: Cato the Elder as the better sophist -- Cato the Elder, the eloquent philosopher-statesman (6, 3) -- Gellius' political consilium in an Antonine context -- Chapter Eleven. Comparative Judgments in Greek Sites of Memory -- Herodes Atticus' controversial personality -- Herodes' villa, symbol of seduction and conflict -- The uncontrolled statesman under imperial control -- The ambitious sophist and the subversive philosopher (9, 2) -- Herodes the tyrant and the liberators of Athens -- Gellius' political satire as a sign of the times -- Conclusion: Constructing Cultural and Political Continuity -- Bibliography -- Index Locorum -- Index Nominum et Rerum -- Index Verborum Latinorum et Graecorum.