(_c_) In reckoning, according to his system of dates, events dated by one of the many confusing systems of chronology current in ancient times, many openings for error presented themselves; _e.g._ he sometimes erred through confusing consuls of the same or similar names, as in the case of Lucilius (p. 59); or through confusing similar events, as in the case of Livius Andronicus, although the mistake about the latter was of long standing (p. 2). Once at least he seems to have confused the date of an author's _floruit_ and that of his death, making Plautus die in B.C. 200 instead of B.C. 184 (p. 8). 2. AULUS GELLIUS[118] was born probably about A.D. 123, and studied under the most eminent teachers both at Rome and at Athens. Of his subsequent life nothing is known except that he held some judicial post at Rome. His work, the _Noctes Atticae_ in twenty Books (of Book viii. only the headings of chapters are preserved), is a miscellany of information on philology, philosophy, rhetoric, history, biography, literary criticism, natural science, and antiquities. The title is due to the fact that the book was commenced in the winter evenings during the author's residence at Athens. The arrangement of the contents simply follows the haphazard order of the notes which Gellius made in the course of his reading of Greek and Roman authors. Those authors, and the conversation of contemporaries, are Gellius' professed sources, but in some cases the author he names is evidently quoted at second-hand, and many of the conversations are doubtless quite imaginary. Our obligations to Gellius are twofold. (_a_) Innumerable extracts from ancient authors are preserved by him alone. (No quotations are given from post-Augustan writers--a fact which accords with the affected archaism of his style.) (_b_) His remarks on incidents in the lives of the Roman poets are in the main derived from Varro, whose work _De Poetis_ is quoted for the epitaph of Plautus (see p. 9); elsewhere his source is indicated either vaguely or not at all, e.g. iii. 3, 15, 'accepimus'; xii. 4, 5, 'ferunt.' For literary criticism Varro is quoted: iii. 3, 9, _sqq._; vi. 14, 6 (see pp. 10, 51).