Si quos Orbilius ferula scuticaque cecidit.
If those Orbilius with rod or ferule thrashed.
(513) And not even men of rank escaped his sarcasms; for, before he became noticed, happening to be examined as a witness in a crowded court, Varro, the advocate on the other side, put the question to him, “What he did and by what profession he gained his livelihood?” He replied, “That he lived by removing hunchbacks from the sunshine into the shade,” alluding to Muraena’s deformity. He lived till he was near a hundred years old; but he had long lost his memory, as the verse of Bibaculus informs us:
Orbilius ubinam est, literarum oblivio?
Where is Orbilius now, that wreck of learning lost?
His statue is shown in the Capitol at Beneventum. It stands on the left hand, and is sculptured in marble 868, representing him in a sitting posture, wearing the pallium, with two writing-cases in his hand. He left a son, named also Orbilius, who, like his father, was a professor of grammar.
X. ATTEIUS, THE PHILOLOGIST, a freedman, was born at Athens. Of him, Capito Atteius 869, the well-known jurisconsult, says that he was a rhetorician among the grammarians, and a grammarian among the rhetoricians. Asinius Pollio 870, in the book in which he finds fault with the writings of Sallust for his great affectation of obsolete words, speaks thus: “In this work his chief assistant was a certain Atteius, a man of