Quintus Caecilius Epirota

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Quintus Caecilius Epirota (1st Century BC) was a freeman of Atticus, a grammarian, and the first person to initiate the public teaching of Virgil’s poetry.

Life[edit]

Atticus had employed Epirota to teach his daughter, but he became suspicious about the tutor’s attitude towards her, and dismissed him.[1] Epirota then found a patron in Gaius Cornelius Gallus, and after the latter’s fall set up his own independent teaching school.[2]

Works[edit]

Epirota is best known as the first person to discuss his contemporary, Virgil, in public and in Latin.[3] As Suetonius Tranquillus records, he was “the first to hold extempore discussions in Latin, and the first to begin the practice of reading Vergil and other recent poets”.[4]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ H J Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature (London 1966) p. 444
  2. ^ A de Cassagnac, History of the Working and Burgher Classes (1871) p. 48
  3. ^ D Matz, Famous Firsts in the Ancient Greek and Roman World (2000) p.93-6
  4. ^ A Wallace, Virgil’s Schoolboys (Oxford 2013) p.4

Further reading[edit]

  • S F Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley 1977)

External links[edit]

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