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Updated: May 26, 2025


Gall about twenty miles distant from Constance for the purpose of finding new manuscripts; his companions found Lactantius, "De Utroque Homine," Vitruvius on Architecture and the Grammar of Priscian, while he himself found, in addition to the Commentaries of Asconius Pedianus on eight of Cicero's Orations, the three first books, and half of the fourth of the Argonauticon of Valerius Flaccus.

Even Martial, it has been noted, hardly ever alludes to Greek authors, while he is full of references to those of his own country. The eminent grammarians of the age, Aemilius Asper, Marcus Valerius Probus, Quintus Asconius Pedianus, show the same tendency; their main work was in commenting on the great Latin writers.

We have only some hardly intelligible fragments of them, which were preserved by Asconius, a commentator on certain of Cicero's orations; but there is ground for supposing that these Cornelian orations were at the time matter of as great moment as those spoken against Verres, or almost as those spoken against Catiline.

Asconius Pedianus, a grammarian of the first century; Didyme, the celebrated doctor of Alexandria; the Florentine, Bandolini, so well versed in Latin poetry; the celebrated Italian grammarian, Pontanus; the German, Griesinger, who spoke seven languages; the philologist, Grassi, who died in 1831, and many others have become blind at an age more or less advanced in their working lives.

We are indebted for this interesting fact to a fragment of Asconius Pedianus, who flourished under the reign of Tiberius. The loss of his Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero has deprived us of a valuable fund of historical and legal knowledge. The extension of the Empire and city of Rome obliged the exile to seek a more distant place of retirement.

As I must do so too, I shall probably not diverge far from them. Asconius wrote as early as in the reign of Claudius, and had in his possession the annals of the time which have not come to us. Among other writings he could refer to those books of Livy which have since been lost.

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