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 vine 901, he planted himself, yielded three hundred and fifty bottles of wine. But the greatest of all his vices was his unbridled licentiousness in his commerce with women, which he carried to the utmost pitch of foul indecency 902.
They tell a droll story of some one who met him in a crowd, and upon his offering to kiss him, could not escape the salute, “Master,” said he, “do you want to mouth every one you meet with in a hurry?”
XXIV. MARCUS VALERIUS PROBUS, of Berytus 903, after long aspiring to the rank of centurion, being at last tired of waiting, devoted himself to study. He had met with some old authors at a bookseller’s shop in the provinces, where the memory of ancient times still lingers, and is not quite forgotten, as it is at Rome. Being anxious carefully to reperuse these, and afterwards to make acquaintance with other works of the same kind, he found himself an object of contempt, and was laughed (523) at for his lectures, instead of their gaining him fame or profit.