Page "Remmius Palaemon" Paragraph 1

From Suetonius ( De grammaticis, 23 ) we learn that he was originally a slave who obtained his freedom and taught grammar at Rome.

Suetonius preserves several anecdotes of his profligate and arrogant character.

He was so steeped in luxury that he bathed several times a day.

Tiberius and Claudius both felt he was too dissolute to allow boys and young men to be entrusted to him.

He referred to the great grammarian Varro as a " pig.

" However, he had a remarkable memory and wrote poetry in unusual meters, and he enjoyed a great reputation as a teacher ; Quintilian and Persius are said to have been his pupils.

His lost Ars ( Juvenal 7. 215 ), a system of grammar much used in his own time and largely drawn upon by later grammarians, contained rules for correct diction, illustrative quotations and discussed barbarisms and solecisms ( Juvenal 6. 452 ).

An extant Ars grammatica ( discovered by Jovianus Pontanus in the 15th century ) and other unimportant treatises on similar subjects have been wrongly ascribed to him.