Palaemon
（
Παλαίμων), Quintus Remmius. A
Latin grammarian of Vicetia (Vicenza), the son of a female slave. He acquired a learned
education while accompanying his master's son to school, and, after he had been set free,
taught at Rome in the first half of the first century after Christ, under Tiberius and
Claudius, with extraordinary success in spite of his thoroughly disreputable character. The
earlier scholars, and especially Varro, had made the older literature the centre of their
linguistic studies. Palaemon, as head of a new school, devoted himself especially to Vergil,
just as Greek literary criticism had concentrated itself on Homer. He seems to have treated
grammar in the practical spirit of a clever schoolmaster, and to have done his best to deride
the scientific labours of Varro. His grammar (
ars,
Juv.vii. 251) was doubtless much consulted by later grammarians. It is now lost. The
grammar that bears his name is wrongly attributed to him. (See Prof. Nettleship in the
[English]
Journal of Philology, xv. 192). Palaemon is to be remembered for
having first introduced Vergil as a text-book into the Roman schools.
