Pater'culus — Chambers's Encyclopaedia

Pater'culus, MARCUS VELLEIUS, lived from about 19 B.C. to 31 A.D., and served as legate in Germany. His Historic Romance is a compendium of universal, but more particularly of Roman history, in two books. The work, as we have it, is not complete, the beginning, and a portion following the 8th chapter, being wanting. The work is slovenly and superficial, marred moreover by inflated rhetoric as well as by ignorant errors, and by fulsome flatteries of Caesar, Augustus, and Tiberius. The editio princeps appeared at Basel in 1520. Good editions are those of J. C. Orelli (1835), F. Kritz (1840-48), and C. Haln (1876).