Quintus Caecilius Epirota
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]Further reading
[edit]- S F Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley 1977)
External links
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