A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

22. Of PERGAMUS, a Greek rhetorician, was the author of a school of rhetoric called after him Ἀπολλοδωρειος αἵρεσις, which was subsequently opposed by the school established bv Theodorus of Gadara. (Θεοδώρειος αἵρεσις.) In his advanced age Apollodorus taught rhetoric at Apollonia, and here young Octavianus (Augustus) was one of his pupils and became his friend. (Strab. xiii. p.625; Sueton. Aug. 89.) Strabo ascribes to him scientific works (τέχνας) on rhetoric, but Quintilian (3.1.18, conmp. § 1) on the authority of Apollodorus himself declares only one of the works ascribed to him as genuine, and this he calls Ars (τέχνη) edita ad Matium, in which the author treated on oratory only in so far as speaking in the courts of justice was concerned. Apollodorus himself wrote little, and his whole theory could be gathered only from the works of his disciples, C. Valgius and Atticus. (Comp. Quint. Inst. 2.11.2, 15.12, 4.1.50 ; Tacit. De clar. Orat. 19; Seneca, Controv. 1.2, 2.9; Sext. Emapir. Adv. Math. 2.79.) Lucian (Macrob. 23) states, that Apollodorus died at the age of eighty-two. (C. W. Piderit, de Apollodoro Perqamneno et Theodoro Gadarensi, Rhetoribus. Marburg, 4to.)