A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

a celebrated grammarian in the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius, is placed by Jerome (ad Euseb.) in the eighth year of the reign of Claudius, A. D. 48. He was a native of Vicentia (Vicenza), in the north of Italy, and was originally a slave; but having been manumitted, he opened a school at Rome, where he became the most celebrated grammarian of his time, and obtained great numbers of pupils, though his moral character was so infamous that Tiberius and Claudius used to say that there was no one to whom the training of youths ought so little to be entrusted. Suetonius gives rather a long account of him (de Illustr. Gramm. 23), and he is also mentioned by Juvenal on two occasions (6.451, 7.251-219). From the scholiast on Juvenal (6.451) we learn that Palaemon was the master of Quintilian.