ABSTRACT
The first time, as far as we know, that the word “classic” was used with reference to a piece of literature was in the Attic Nights of the Roman writer Aulus Gellius, who lived in the second century of our era under the emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. When the word “classicus” occurs for the very first time, in chapter 13 of Book 6, its meaning is decidedly linked to the social sphere, in fact to census, that is to say to property. Gellius briefly discusses its use by Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor (or the Elder, c. 234–149 bce) in his speech In Support of the Voconian Law. For military purposes, Roman citizens were divided by the constitution attributed to Rome’s sixth king, Servius Tullius, into five classes based on property qualifications. “Not all those men who were enrolled in the five classes”, Gellius writes,
