10. POETA. In various collections of the minor Latin poets is a short Lyric poem, Alleyoria Orphei, in the same measure as Horace's ode "Solvitur acris hiems," &c. Wernsdorf, who has given it in his Poetue Latini Minores, vol. iii. p. 396, distinguishes (ibid. p. 342, &c.) the author of it from Palladius Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus, the writer on Agriculture; and is disposed to identify him with the rhetorician Palladius who lived in the reign of Theodosius the Great, and to whom many of the letters of Symmachus are addressed. He thinks that he may perhaps be the Palladins to whom his father, Julius Nicephorus, erected a monument, with the inscription, given by Gruter and others --
"Ut te, Palladi, raptum flevere Camoenae, Fleverunt populi, quos continet Ostia diam"
If these conjectures are well founded, it may be gathered that Palladius was the son of a rhetorician, or at least sprung from a family which had produced some rhetoricians of eminence; that he was originally himself a rhetorician, but had been called to engage in public life, and held the praefecture or some other office in the town and port of Ostia. He is perhaps also the Palladius mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris (lib. v. Epist. 10). Wernsdorf also identifies him with the Palladius "Poeta Scholasticus," several of whose verses are given in the Anthologia of Burmann: viz. Epitaphlium Ciceronis, lib. 5.2.161, Argumentum in Aeneidos 2.195, Epitaphia Virgilii, 2.197, 198, De Ratione Fabulae, 3.75, De Ortu Solis, 5.7, De ride, 5.25. De Signis Coelestibus, 5.31, De Quatuor Tempestatibus, 5.58, De Amne Glacie Concreto, 5.97. (Burmann, Antholog. Latina, ll. cc.; Wernsdorf, Poetae Latini Minores, ll. cc. ; Fabricius, Bibl. Med. et Infim. Latinit. vol. v. p. 191, ed. Mansi.)