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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

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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

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Epirota is best known as the first person to discuss his contemporary, Virgil, in public and in Latin.[3] As Suetonius 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

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References

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  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

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