taught and promoted (508) grammar in various branches, namely, Lucius
Aelius Lanuvinus, the son-in-law of Quintus Aelius, and Servius Claudius,
both of whom were Roman knights, and men who rendered great services both
to learning and the republic.

III. Lucius Aelius had a double cognomen, for he was called Praeconius,
because his father was a herald; Stilo, because he was in the habit of
composing orations for most of the speakers of highest rank; indeed, he
was so strong a partisan of the nobles, that he accompanied Quintus
Metellus Numidicus [853] in his exile. Servius [854] having
clandestinely obtained his father-in-law's book before it was published,
was disowned for the fraud, which he took so much to heart, that,
overwhelmed with shame and distress, he retired from Rome; and being
seized with a fit of the gout, in his impatience, he applied a poisonous
ointment to his feet, which half-killed him, so that his lower limbs
mortified while he was still alive. After this, more attention was paid
to the science of letters, and it grew in public estimation, insomuch,
that men of the highest rank did not hesitate in undertaking to write
something on the subject; and it is related that sometimes there were no
less than twenty celebrated scholars in Rome. So high was the value, and
so great were the rewards, of grammarians, that Lutatius Daphnides,
jocularly called "Pan's herd" [855] by Lenaeus Melissus, was purchased by
Quintus Catullus for two hundred thousand sesterces, and shortly
afterwards made a freedman; and that Lucius Apuleius, who was taken into
the pay of Epicius Calvinus, a wealthy Roman knight, at the annual salary
of ten thousand crowns, had many scholars. Grammar also penetrated into
the provinces, and some of the most eminent amongst the learned taught it
in foreign parts, particularly in Gallia Togata. In the number of these,
we may reckon Octavius (509) Teucer, Siscennius Jacchus, and Oppius Cares
[856], who persisted in teaching to a most advanced period of his life,