Cet obscur objet du désir: a text tracking of an educational triangle at the time of the Second Sophistic

Abstract

In Attic Nights (Noctes Atticae) Aulus Gellius puts next to the other impressions and experiences of his, everything he had lived close to some of the most eminent personalities of Late Antiquity, as Fauorinus and Fronto. But what kind of relationship had Gellius with those two, how had this relationship with those two shaped up during Gellius’ life, and how could we date his experiences? Who of those two men had influenced the later judge in the Antonine Rome of the 3rd century AD? This article tries to show the way of making some convincing assumptions on all these questions.