Claudius Aelianus, known as Aelian, was a Roman author and public speaker of the late second and early third centuries CE. Though born in the Italian town of Praeneste, he wrote exclusively in Greek and was a leading figure in the cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic, which celebrated classical Greek language and learning. He was a priest and a friend of the historian Cassius Dio, and he was renowned for his eloquent Attic Greek, earning the nickname "honey-tongued." Aelian famously claimed he never traveled beyond Italy, dedicating his life to study and writing in Rome.

His surviving works are compilations of stories and facts designed to entertain and educate. On the Nature of Animals is a 17-book collection of animal lore, blending natural history with moral fables. Various History is a 14-book miscellany of anecdotes about famous people, customs, and curiosities from the Greek world. He also wrote a surviving set of 20 fictional Rustic Letters about country life. Other works, including a speech Indictment of the Effeminate, are lost.

According to modern scholars, Aelian’s historical importance lies not in original analysis but in his role as a preserver. His writings are valuable repositories of excerpts from many earlier Greek texts that are now lost. They provide key insights into ancient beliefs, folklore, and the intellectual tastes of the educated, Greek-speaking elite within the Roman Empire.