Qui caput ad laevam deicit, glossemata nobis
Praecipit; os nullum, vel potius pugilis.

Who ducked his head, to shun another's fist,
Though he expound old saws,--yet, well I wist,
With pummelled nose and face, he's but a pugilist.

XXIII. REMMIUS PALAEMON [898], of Vicentia [899], the offspring of a
bond-woman, acquired the rudiments of learning, first as the companion of
a weaver's, and then of his master's, son, at school. Being afterwards
made free, he taught at Rome, where he stood highest in the rank of the
grammarians; but he was so infamous for every sort of vice, that Tiberius
and his successor Claudius publicly denounced him as an improper person
to have the education of boys and young men entrusted to him. Still, his
powers of narrative and agreeable style of speaking made him very
popular; besides which, he had the gift of making extempore verses. He
also wrote a great many in (522) various and uncommon metres. His
insolence was such, that he called Marcus Varro "a hog;" and bragged that
"letters were born and would perish with him;" and that "his name was not
introduced inadvertently in the Bucolics [900], as Virgil divined that a
Palaemon would some day be the judge of all poets and poems." He also
boasted, that having once fallen into the hands of robbers, they spared
him on account of the celebrity his name had acquired.

He was so luxurious, that he took the bath many times in a day; nor did
his means suffice for his extravagance, although his school brought him
in forty thousand sesterces yearly, and he received not much less from
his private estate, which he managed with great care. He also kept a
broker's shop for the sale of old clothes; and it is well known that a