Carlo Santini, “La figura di T. Pomponio Attico nelle Notti Romane di Alessandro Verri,” IJCT 7 (2000-2001), pp. 325-343.

The late-XVIII century novel Notti Romane by Alessandro Verri relates on author’s meetings for a period of six nights with the ghosts of the most important personages of the Roman history - the occasion for this imaginary device was the discovery of Scipions’s graves at Rome. Beside Cicero, also Pomponius Atticus acts as a guide of the author in the underworld and his statements on Roman history are sometimes sharp, sometimes bizarre, but always subversive of the rhetorical pattern of the grandeur of Rome. An inquiry on Atticus’s role is able to detect both the echos of the classical sources (Cornelius Nepos, Plutarch) as also of the patristic works (Augustin’s De civitate dei) on his opinions and the relevance of XVIII century philosophes (Voltaire, Condillac) in order to shape Verri’s sight.