Epidius (1st century BC) was an

Ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

rhetorician Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or write ...

who taught the art of oratory towards the close of the

republic A republic, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...

, numbering

Marcus Antonius Marcus Antonius (14 January 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the ...

and

Octavianus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...

among his scholars. His skill, however, was not sufficient to save him from a conviction for malicious accusation ('' calumnia''). We are told that he claimed descent from ''Epidius Nuncionus'' (the name is probably corrupted), a rural deity, who appears to have been worshipped upon the banks of the Sarnus (modern Sarno) in

Campania Campania is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy located in Southern Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian Peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islan ...

Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is ''De vita Caesarum'', common ...

, ''De Claris Rhetoribus''
4

Footnotes

References

* {{DGRBM, author=WR, title=Epidius, volume=1, page=36, url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ACL3129.0002.001/46 Ancient Roman rhetoricians 1st-century BC Romans Epidii

See also

Footnotes

References