Verrius Flaccus, Marcus

▪ Roman scholar

flourished 1st century BC

      Roman freedman who became a learned scholar and grammarian and the most famous teacher of his day. Verrius Flaccus introduced the principle of competition among his pupils and awarded old books, beautiful or rare, as prizes. Augustus entrusted the education of his two grandsons to him, and thenceforward his school was in the imperial house on the Palatine. He died at an advanced age during the reign of Tiberius.

      The works of Verrius Flaccus are lost, but he is known to have written fasti (a type of calendar) that were set up at Praeneste, where, in fact, fasti have been found that have been accepted as his. A work of his that was much used was De significatu verborum (“On the Meaning of Words”), a large lexicon that was the first of its kind and that was, moreover, a storehouse of antiquarian learning, in which Latin authors were quoted extensively. Some idea of its value is obtainable from what remains of the abridgment made by Festus in the 2nd or 3rd century and from the abridgment of that made by Paul the Deacon in the 8th century.

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