Template:Short description Quintus Remmius Palaemon<ref>Template:Harvp.</ref> or Quintus Rhemnius Fannius Palaemon<ref name=burman>Template:Harvp.</ref> was a Roman grammarian and a native of Vicentia. He lived during the reigns of Emperors Tiberius and Claudius.
Life Edit
From Suetonius,<ref>Suetonius, De Grammaticis, 23.</ref> we learn that he was originally a slave who obtained his freedom and taught grammar at Rome.<ref name=EB1911>Template:Cite EB1911</ref> Suetonius preserves several anecdotes of his profligate and arrogant character.<ref name=EB1911/> 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;<ref name=EB1911/> Quintilian and Persius are said to have been his pupils.<ref name=EB1911/>
WorksEdit
His lost Ars,<ref>Juvenal, 7.215.</ref> 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.<ref name=EB1911/><ref>Juvenal, 6.452.</ref> 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.<ref name=EB1911/>
Among Palaemon's ascribed works is a Song on Weights and Measures ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}})<ref>PLM, 5.71–82.</ref><ref name=burman/> now dated to between the late 4th and early 6th centuries.<ref>F. Hultsch, Metrologicorum scriptorum reliquiae 2, 1866, 88-98.</ref><ref>J. Gruber, "Carmen de ponderibus et mensuris" in Der Neue Pauly (2006 [1964]).</ref> In this poem, first edited in 1528,<ref>Template:Citation. Template:In lang</ref> the term gramma is used for a weight equal to two oboli.<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> (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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