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Quintus Remmius Palaemon[1] or Quintus Rhemnius Fannius Palaemon[2] was a Roman grammarian and a native of Vicentia. He lived during the reigns of Emperors Tiberius and Claudius.
From Suetonius,[3] we learn that he was originally a slave who obtained his freedom and taught grammar at Rome.[4] Suetonius preserves several anecdotes of his profligate and arrogant character.[4] He was said to be so steeped in luxury that he bathed several times a day. Tiberius and Claudius both felt he was too dissolute to allow boys and young men to be entrusted to him. He referred to the great grammarian Varro as a "pig". However, he had a remarkable memory and wrote poetry in unusual meters, and he enjoyed a great reputation as a teacher;[4] Quintilian and Persius are said to have been his pupils.[4]
His lost Ars,[5] a system of grammar much used in his own time and largely drawn upon by later grammarians, contained rules for correct diction, illustrative quotations and discussed barbarisms and solecisms.[4][6] An extant Ars grammatica (discovered by Jovianus Pontanus in the 15th century) and other unimportant treatises on similar subjects have been wrongly ascribed to him.[4]
Among Palaemon's ascribed works is a Song on Weights and Measures (Carmen de Ponderibus et Mensuris)[7][2] now dated to between the late 4th and early 6th centuries.[8][9] In this poem, first edited in 1528,[10] the term gramma is used for a weight equal to two oboli.[11] (Two oboli—a diobol—corresponds to 1/24th of a Roman ounce or about 1.14 grams.) This eventually led to the adoption of the term gram as a unit of weight (poids, later of mass) by the French National Convention in 1795.
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