PROBUS

Form: Marcus Valerius.

A famous Roman scholar and critic, born at Berytus in Syria. He flourished in the second half of the 1st century A.D. He devoted almost all attention to the archaic and classical literature of Rome, which had been previously neglected, and to the critical revision of the most important Roman poets, as Lucretius, Vergil, and Horace, after the manner of the Alexandrine scholars. Some of his criticisms on Vergil may possibly be preserved to us in a commentary to the Eclogues and Georgics, which bears his name. From a commentary, or criticism, on Persius we have his biography of that poet; and from his work De Notis we have an extract containing the abbreviations used for legal terms. Other grammatical writings bearing his name are the work of a grammarian of the 4th century.