a Roman grammarian and schoolmaster, best known to us from his having been the teacher of
Horace, who gives him the epithet of plagosus from the severe floggings
which his pupils received when they were poring over the crabbed verses of Livius Andronicus.
(Hor. Ep. 2.1. 71.) Orbilius was a native of Beneventum, and
had from his earliest years paid considerable attention to the study of literature; but in
consequence of the death of his parents, who were both destroyed by their enemies on the same
day, he was left destitute, and in order to obtain a living, first became an apparitor, or
servant of the magistrates, and next served as a soldier in Macedonia. On returning to his
native town he resumed his literary studies, and after teaching there for a long while, he
removed to Rome in the fiftieth year of his age, in the consulship of Cicero, B. C. 63. Here he opened a school; but although he obtained a considerable
reputation, his profits were small, and he was obliged to live in his old age in a sorry
garret. His want of success would not contribute to the improvement of his temper as he grew
older, and since he must have been upwards of sixty when Horace became his pupil, we can
easily imagine that the young poet found him rather a crabbed and cross-grained master. His
flogging propensities were recorded by other poets besides Horace, as for instance in the
following line of Domitius Marsus: --
"Si quos Orbilius ferula scuticaque cecidit."
But Orbilius did not, like some schoolmasters, vent all his ill temper upon his pupils, and
exhibit a bland deportment to the rest of the world. He attacked his rival grammarians in the
bitterest terms, and did not spare the most distinguished men in the state, of which an
instance is given by Suetonius and Macrobius (2.6), though they differ in the name of the
Roman noble whom he made game of, the former calling him Varro Murena, and the latter Galba.
Orbilius lived nearly a hundred years, but had lost his memory long before his death. As he
was fifty in B. C. 63, he must have been born in B.
C. 1 13, and have died shortly before B. C. 13. A statue was
erected to him at Beneventum in the Capitol. He left a son Orbilius, who followed the
profession of his father; and a slave and pupil of his, of the name of Scribonius, also
attained some celebrity as a grammarian. Orbilius was the author of a work cited by Suetonius
under the title of
Perialogos, but the name is evidently corrupt.
Oudendorp proposed to read Paedagogus, and Ernesti Periautologos. (Suet. de Illustr. Gramm. 9, 19; comp. 4.)