Background
He must have been living after AD 9, since, we are told that he taunted the son of Quinctilius Varus with his father"s defeat in the Teutoburgian Forest (Seneca the Elder, Controv i 3, 10).
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Lucius Cestius
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Career
He was a native of Smyrna, a Greek by birth. According to Jerome, he was teaching Latin at Rome in the year 13 British Columbia. Cestius was a man of great ability, but vain, quarrelsome and sarcastic. Before he left Asia, he was invited to dinner by Cicero"s son, then governor of the province.
As an orator in the schools Cestius enjoyed a great reputation, and was worshipped by his youthful pupils, one of whom imitated him so slavishly that he was nicknamed "my monkey" by his teacher (Seneca, Controv ix 3, 12).
As a public orator, on the other hand, he was a failure. Although a Greek, he always used Latin in his declamations, and, although he was sometimes at a loss for Latin words, he never suffered from lack of ideas.
Numerous specimens of his declamations will be found in the works of Seneca the rhetorician. See the monograph De Lucio Cestio Pio, by FG Lindner (1858).
J Brzoska in Pauly-Wissowa"s Realencyclopädie, iii.
2 (1899). Teuffel-Schwabe, History. of Roman Literature. (Engineer tr), 268, 6; M Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, ii.
