herd or company, agaema; and Pan was the god of rustics,
and the inventor of the rude music of the reed.

[856] Oppius Cares is said by Macrobius to have written a book on Forest
Trees.

[857] Quintilian enumerates Bibaculus among the Roman poets in the same
line with Catullus and Horace, Institut. x. 1. Of Sigida we know
nothing; even the name is supposed to be incorrectly given. Apuleius
mentions a Ticida, who is also noticed by Suetonius hereafter in c. xi.,
where likewise he gives an account of Valerius Cato.

[858] Probably Suevius, of whom Macrobius informs us that he was the
learned author of an Idyll, which had the title of the Mulberry Grove;
observing, that "the peach which Suevius reckons as a species of the
nuts, rather belongs to the tribe of apples."

[859] Aurelius Opilius is mentioned by Symmachus and Gellius. His
cotemporary and friend, Rutilius Rufus, having been a military tribune
under Scipio in the Numantine war, wrote a history of it. He was consul
A.U.C. 648, and unjustly banished, to the general grief of the people,
A.U.C. 659.

[860] Quintilian mentions Gnipho, Instit. i. 6. We find that Cicero was
among his pupils. The date of his praetorship, given below, fixes the
time when Gnipho flourished.

[861] This strange cognomen is supposed to have been derived from a cork
arm, which supplied the place of one Dionysius had lost. He was a poet
of Mitylene.

[862] See before, JULIUS, c. xlvi.

[863] A.U.C. 687.

[864] Suetonius gives his life in c. x.

[865] A grade of inferior officers in the Roman armies, of which we have
no very exact idea.

[866] Horace speaks feelingly on the subject:

Memini quae plagosum mihi parvo
Orbilium tractare. Epist. xi. i. 70.

I remember well when I was young,
How old Orbilius thwacked me at my tasks.

[867] Domitius Marsus wrote epigrams. He is mentioned by Ovid and
Martial.

[868] This is not the only instance mentioned by Suetonius of statues
erected to learned men in the place of their birth or celebrity.
Orbilius, as a schoolmaster, was represented in a sitting posture, and
with the gown of the Greek philosophers.

[869] Tacitus [Annal. cxi. 75] gives the character of Atteius Capito.
He was consul A.U.C. 758.

[870] Asinius Pollio; see JULIUS, c. xxx.

[871] Whether Hermas was the son or scholar of Gnipho, does not appear,

[872] Eratosthenes, an Athenian philosopher, flourished in Egypt, under
t