Caecilius of Calacte

Caecilius of Calacte (Ancient Greek: Κεκίλιος) was a rhetorician and literary critic active in Rome during the reign of Augustus.¹ Caecilius was an early proponent of the rhetorical school of Atticism. As well as his works on rhetoric and literary criticism, he apparently wrote historical treatises, including a history of the Servile Wars in his native Sicily.

Life

The main source of information about Caecilius' life is the Suda, which says that he was from Sicily, originally called Archagathus (Αρχάγαθος), possibly of slave origins, and Jewish.¹ He was born about 50 BC in Calacte on the north coast of Sicily, and was probably a student of Apollodorus of Pergamon.² Both the Suda and Hermagoras say that he taught in Rome during the reign of Augustus.³ The Suda reports that he lived until the reign of Hadrian, more than a century after the death of Augustus; this is possibly due to confusion with the quaestor Quintus Caecilius Niger.⁴ A mention of Caecilius by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who describes him as a friend in his Epistle to Pompey,⁵ may have been written as early as 30 BC and suggests that he may already have been an established critic by then.³

Works

He apparently wrote works of both history and literary criticism,⁶ but only a few fragments of his writings are extant. , the main source of information about Caecilius' historical works, reports that he wrote a history of the (slave revolts) in Sicily, and refers to a work in which Caecilius mentioned the Sicilian tyrant . He also apparently wrote about the literary merits of historians, praising but criticising and .