III. LUCIUS OCTACILIUS PILITUS is said to have been a slave, and, according to the old custom, chained to the door like a watch-dog 911; until, having been presented with his freedom for his genius and devotion to learning, he drew up for his patron the act of accusation in a cause he was prosecuting.
After that, becoming a professor of rhetoric, he gave instructions to Cneius Pompey the Great, and composed an account of his actions, as well as of those of his father, being the first freedman, according to the opinion of Cornelius Nepos 912, who ventured to write history, which before his time had not been done by any one who was not of the highest ranks in society.
IV. About this time, EPIDIUS 913 having fallen into disgrace for bringing a false accusation, opened a school of instruction, in which he taught, among others, Mark Antony and Augustus. On one occasion Caius Canutius jeered them for presuming to belong to the party of the consul Isauricus 914 in his administration of the republic; upon which he replied, that he would rather be the disciple of Isauricus, than of Epidius, the false accuser. This Epidius claimed to be descended from Epidius Nuncio, who, as (528) ancient traditions assert, fell into the fountain of the river Sarnus 915 when the streams were overflown, and not being afterwards found, was reckoned among the number of the gods.
V. SEXTUS CLODIUS, a native of Sicily, a professor both of Greek and Latin eloquence, had bad eyes and a facetious tongue. It was a saying of his, that he lost a pair of eyes from his intimacy with Mark Antony, the triumvir 916. Of his wife, Fulvia, when there was a swelling in one of her cheeks, he said that “she tempted the point of his style;” 917 nor did Antony think any the worse of him for the joke, but quite enjoyed it; and soon