CENSORINIYS  ,

Roman grammarian and miscellaneous writer, flourished during the 3rd century A.D . He was the author of a lost work De Accentibus, and of an extant treatise De Die Natali; written in 238, and dedicated to his patron Quintus Caerellius as a birthday gift . The contents are of a varied character: the natural history of man, the influence of the stars and genii, music, religious rites, astronomy, the doctrines of the Greek philosophers . The second part deals with chronological and mathematical questions, and has been of great service in deter-mining the principal epochs of ancient history . The whole is full of curious and interesting information . The style is clear and concise, although somewhat rhetorical, and the Latinity, for the period, good . The chief authorities used were Varro and Suetonius . Some scholars, indeed, hold that the entire work is practically an adaptation of the lost Pratum of Suetonius . The fragments of a work De Natali Institutione, dealing with astronomy, geometry, music and versification, and usually printed with the De Die Natali of Censorinus, ate not by him: Part of the original MS., containing the end of the genuine work, and the title and name of the author of the fragment are lost . The only good edition with commentary is still that of H . Lindenbrog (1614) ; the most recent critical editions are by O . Jahn (1845), F .

Hultsch (1867), and J . Cholodniak (1889) . There is an

English translation of the De Die Natali (the first eleven chapters being omitted) with notes by W . Maude (New York, 1900) .