Pedro Mexía and the humanistic reading of the Attic Nights

Abstract

This essay focuses on the way Pedro Mexía has read Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights in terms of a humanist reading, according to the first decades of the 16^th century. We analyze this reading from six heuristic criteria: a) intermediaries between Gelio and Mexía, b) material evidence of a bibliographic nature, which accounts for the use of a Renaissance edition of the Nights by Mexía, c) broad correlations between paragraphs of both works, d) punctual correlates, no less important than the previous ones, e) use of expressions from Gellius shared by other authors such as Thomas More, Guevara, Cervantes or Montaigne and, finally, f) an explicit consciousness of the miscellaneous genre itself, of which both Gelio and Mexía are the reference authors in Latin and Spanish, respectively. Based on this analysis, it can be seen that Gellius’ work is a living part of the humanistic interdiscourse during the 16^th century and, above all, a very inspiring author for Mexía.