Lucius Orbilius Pupillus

Statue at Benevento Cathedral, perhaps antique and representing Lucius Orbilius Pupillus.

Lucius Orbilius Pupillus (114 BC – c. 14 BC) was one of the most famous schoolmasters of the first century B.C. in Ancient Rome. He has become proverbial as a disciplinarian pedagogue. ^{[Source 1]}

Life

Orbilius came from Benevento in South Italy. He first taught in his own private school in Benevento, teaching grammar. In 63 BC, when he was 50, he moved to Rome and continued schooling there.

Orbilius lived a hard life in poverty and had increasingly hardened views. In his book Perialogos he complains about parents from a suffering teacher's point of view. He also assailed rival scholars at every opportunity, as well as his students.

When he was over 60, the poet Horace was one of his pupils. Horace criticizes his old schoolmaster (Epistles, ii) and describes him as plagosus (being fond of beating). Another of Orbilius's students, Domitius Marsus, wrote the line Si quos Orbilius ferula scuticaque cecidit ("Whomever Orbilius thrashed with rod or with whiplash of leather."), confirming this reputation.

Orbilius lived to be nearly a hundred. One of Orbilius's slaves, Scribonius Aphrodisius, went on to become a grammarian himself, and was purchased by Scribonia, wife of the emperor Augustus.