Quintus Remmius Palaemon or Quintus Rhemnius Fannius Palaemon. was a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

grammarian and a native of

Vicentia Vicenza ( , ; ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region at the northern base of the ''Monte Berico'', where it straddles the Bacchiglione River. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. Vicenza is a thr ...

. He lived during the reigns of

Emperors An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother (em ...

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father ...

and Claudius.

Life

From

Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies ...

, we learn that he was originally a

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

who obtained his freedom and taught grammar at

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. 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 Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes calle ...

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 Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (; 35 – 100 AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintili ...

and

Persius Aulus Persius Flaccus (; 4 December 3424 November 62 AD) was a Roman poet and satirist of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and satires, he shows a Stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for what he considered to be the stylistic abuses of his po ...

are said to have been his pupils.

Works

His lost ''Ars'', a system of

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

much used in his own time and largely drawn upon by later grammarians, contained rules for correct

diction Diction ( la, dictionem (nom. ), "a saying, expression, word"), in its original meaning, is a writer's or speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story.Crannell (1997) ''Glossary'', p. 406 In its common meanin ...

, illustrative quotations and discussed barbarisms and

solecism A solecism is a phrase that transgresses the rules of grammar. The term is often used in the context of linguistic prescription; it also occurs descriptively in the context of a lack of idiomaticness. Etymology The word originally was used by ...

s. An extant ''

Ars grammatica An ''ars grammatica'' ( en, italic=yes, art of grammar) is a generic or proper title for surveys of Latin grammar. The first ''ars grammatica'' seems to have been composed by Remmius Palaemon (first century CE), but is now lost. The most famous ' ...

'' (discovered by Jovianus Pontanus in the 15th century) and other unimportant treatises on similar subjects have been wrongly ascribed to him. Among Palaemon's ascribed works is a ''Song on Weights and Measures'' (') now dated to between the late 4th and early 6th centuries. In this poem, first edited in 1528, the term ''gramma'' is used for a weight equal to two

oboli The obol ( grc-gre, , ''obolos'', also ὀβελός (''obelós''), ὀβελλός (''obellós''), ὀδελός (''odelós''). "nail, metal spit"; la, obolus) was a form of ancient Greek currency and weight. Currency Obols were u ...

.. (Two oboli—a ''diobol''—corresponds to 1/24th of a

Roman ounce The (plural: ) was a Roman unit of length, weight, and volume. It survived as the Byzantine liquid ounce ( grc-gre, οὐγγία, ''oungía'') and the origin of the English inch, ounce, and fluid ounce. The Roman inch was equal to of a Roma ...

or about 1.14 grams.) This eventually led to the adoption of the term ''

gram The gram (originally gramme; SI unit symbol g) is a unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one one thousandth of a kilogram. Originally defined as of 1795 as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to ...

'' as a unit of weight (''poids'', later of mass) by the French

National Convention The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year National ...

in 1795.

References

Citation

Bibliography

* . * . * . * . * . * .

External links

Bibliography on Palaemon at ''Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum''
{{Authority control Imperial Roman slaves and freedmen Grammarians of Latin Ancient linguists 1st-century Romans