Quintus Caecilius Epirota (1st Century BC) was a freedman of Atticus, a grammarian, and the first person to initiate the public teaching of Virgil’s poetry.
Life Atticus had employed Epirota to teach his daughter, but he became suspicious about the tutor’s attitude towards her, and dismissed him.H J Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature (London 1966) p. 444 Epirota then found a patron in Gaius Cornelius Gallus, and after the latter’s fall set up his own independent teaching school.A de Cassagnac, History of the Working and Burgher Classes (1871) p. 48
Works Epirota is best known as the first person to discuss his contemporary, Virgil, in public and in Latin.D Matz, Famous Firsts in the Ancient Greek and Roman World (2000) p.93-6 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”.A Wallace, Virgil’s Schoolboys (Oxford 2013) p.4
See also Abelard Cornelius Epicadus Parthenius of Nicaea Verrius Flaccus
References
Further reading S F Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley 1977)
External links Epirota, Nurse of Baby Bards Lives of Eminent Grammarians:16