Censorinus

, a celebrated critic, chronologer, antiquary, and grammarian, for such Priscian calls him, | flourished at Rome in the time of Alexander Severus, and is supposed to have been of the Martian family. His talents as a grammarian appear only in his book “concerning Accents,” frequently cited by Sidonius Apollinaris, and other things, which are lost; and not in his “De die jiatali,” which is the only piece remaining of him. This treatise was written about the year 238, and dedicated to Quintus Cerellius, a Roman of the equestrian order, of whom he speaks very highly in his 15th chapter. Vossius, in one place, calls this “a little book of gold;” and, in another, declares it to be “a most learned work, and of the highest use and importance to chronologers, since it connects and determines with great exactness some principal aeras in history.” It is however a work of a miscellaneous nature, and treats of antiquities as well as chronology. It was printed at Hamburgh in 1614, with a commentary by Lindenbrog, whose notes were adopted afterwards in an edition printed at Cambridge, in 1695; and there is an edition by Havercamp, 1743, reprinted at Leyden, 1767, 8vo. Sir John Hawkins has translated Censorinus’s remarks on music, which are curious. ¹