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Updated: May 23, 2025
And ye begone, ye tinkling cymbals vain, That call the youths to drivelings insane. Epidius, to be sure, is not mentioned, but we happen to know that Varro if this be the erudite friend of Cicero was devoted to the Asianic principles. And Epidius, the teacher of the flowery Mark Antony, may well be concealed in Vergil's list of names even if mention of him was omitted for reasons of propriety.
It is possible that the two were together at school in Rome, studying rhetoric under Epidius, in the late fifties; and certainly Virgil had recently visited Rome and there interviewed the Triumvir Octavian; and had obtained from him an order for the restitution of his parental farm near Mantua, which had been given to one of the soldiers of Philippi after that battle.
IV. About this time, EPIDIUS having fallen into disgrace for bringing a false accusation, opened a school of instruction, in which he taught, among others, Mark Antony and Augustus.
Later, in 46, Cicero in several remarkable essays again took up the cudgels for an elaborate prose, but then his cause was already lost. Caesar's victory had demonstrated that Rome desired deeds, not words. When Virgil, therefore, turned to rhetoric, probably under Epidius, he received the training which was still considered orthodox.
A tradition, which the dates make improbable, was that Gaius Octavius, afterwards the Emperor Augustus, was for a time his fellow-scholar under the rhetorician Epidius. In the classroom of the Epicurean Siro he may have made his first acquaintance with the poetry of Lucretius. For the next ten years we know nothing of Virgil's life, which no doubt was that of a profound student.
Thus the two may have met in Epidius' lecture room in the year 50 B.C. Vergil could doubtless have afforded tuition under such a master since he presently engaged the no less distinguished Siro. We have the independent testimony of Suetonius that Epidius was Octavius' and Mark Antony's teacher.
This Epidius claimed to be descended from Epidius Nuncio, who, as ancient traditions assert, fell into the fountain of the river Sarnus 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.
Hence the teacher of literature at Rome must waste much time upon elucidating the text, telling the myths in full, and giving convenient compendia of metamorphoses, of Homeric heroes, of "trees and flowers of the poets," and the like. Epidius himself, a pedagogue of the progressive style, had doubtless proved an adept at this sort of thing.
The brief biography of Vergil contained in the Berne MS. a document of doubtful value mentions Epidius as Vergil's teacher in rhetoric, and adds that Octavius, the future emperor, was a fellow pupil. This is by no means unreasonable despite a difference of seven years in the ages of the two pupils.
Antony then had a statue of Cæsar adorned with the diadem; but two tribunes of the people, L. Caesetius Flavus and Epidius Marullus, took it away: and here Cæsar showed the real state of his feelings, for he treated the conduct of the tribunes as a personal insult toward himself. He had lost his self-possession and his fate carried him irresistibly onward.
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