Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Caesius Bassus

A Latin poet, a friend of Persius the satirist, whose book he edited. He is said to have perished during the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. He had a high reputation in his day as a lyric poet, and is said to have composed a didactic poem on metre. There is a considerable fragment in prose on the same subject which bears the name of Caesius Bassus, but this is perhaps from a prose version of the poetical treatise, which we know to have been largely used by later writers, especially Iuba and Terentianus Maurus.