ASCONIUS PEDIANUS, QUINTUS (g B.C.—A.D. 76; or A.D. 3-88), Roman grammarian and historian, was probably a native of Patavium (Padua). In his later years he resided at Rome. During the reigns of Claudius and Nero he compiled for his sons, from various sources—e.g., "The Gazette" (Acta Publica), shorthand reports or "skeletons" (commentarii) of Cicero's un published speeches, Tiro's life of Cicero, speeches and letters of Cicero's contemporaries, various historical writers ; e.g., Varro, Atticus, Antias, Tuditanus, and Fenestella (a contemporary of Livy)—historical commentaries on Cicero's speeches, of which only five; viz., in Pisonem, pro Scauro, pro Milone, pro Cornelio and in toga candida, in a very mutilated condition, are preserved. These valuable notes, written in good Latin, relate chiefly to legal, historical and antiquarian matters. A commentary on Cicero's Verrine orations is universally regarded as spurious. Both works were found by Poggio in a ms. at St. Gallen in 1416. This ms. is lost, but three transcripts were made by Poggio Zomini (Sozomenus) of Pistoia and Bartolommeo da Montepulciano. That of Poggio is now at Madrid (Matritensis x. 81) and that of Zomini is in the Forteguerri library at Pistoia (no. 37) . A copy of Bartolom meo's transcript exists in Florence (Laur. liv. 5) . The later mss. are derived from Poggio's copy. Other works attributed to Asconius were: a life of Sallust, a defence of Virgil against his detractors, and a treatise (perhaps a symposium in imitation of Plato) on health and long life. Edition by Kiessling-Schoell (1875), and one by A. C. Clark (Oxford, 1906), which contains a previously unpublished collation of Poggio's transcript. See also Madvig, De Asconio Pediano (1828) . C. Lichtenfeldt, De Q. Asconii Pediani fontibus ac fide (Dissert, Breslau, 1888) ; J. Humbert, Contribution a l'etude des sources d'Asconius (Paris, 1925).