Career
He was "a typical man of letters in an Age of Archaism and a worthy successor to Fronto and Aulus Gellius, one whose social rank and position is intimately bound up with the prevailing passion for grammar and a mastery of ancient lore". According to Macrobius, who plundered his work for his Saturnalia, he was "the learned man of his age". Servius and Arnobius both employed his erudition to their own ends.He possessed a library of 60,000 volumes.
His most quoted work was Resident reconditae, in at least five books, of which fragments only are preserved in quotations.
The surviving work, De medicina praecepta, in 1115 hexameters, contains a number of popular remedies, borrowed from Pliny and Dioscorides, and various magic formulae, amongst others the famous Abracadabra, as a cure for fever and ague. lieutenant concludes with a description of the famous antidote of Mithradates VI of Pontus.
lieutenant was much used in the Middle Ages, and is of value for the ancient history of popular medicine. The syntax and metre are remarkably correct.
The first printed edition of De medicina praecepta was edited by Johannes Sulpitius Verulanus, before 1484.
