FIGULUS, PUBLIUS NIGIDIUS (c. B.c.), Roman savant, next to Varro the most learned Roman of the age. He was a friend of Cicero, to whom he gave his support at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy (Plutarch, Cicero, 2o; Cicero, Pro. Sulla, xiv. 42). In 58 he was praetor, sided with Pompey in the Civil War, and after his defeat was banished by Caesar, and died in exile. According to Cicero (Timaeus, i.), Figulus tried to revive the doctrines of Pythagoreanism, together with mathematics, astronomy and astrology, and even magic. Suetonius (Aug. 94) and Apuleius (Apol. 42) tell of his supernatural powers. Jerome (the authority for the date of his death) calls him Pythagoricus et magus. The indifference of the Romans to such abstruse and mystical subjects caused his works to be soon forgotten. They included De diis, an examination of cults and ceremonials; trea tises on divination and dreams; on the sphere, the winds and ani mals. His Commentarii grammatici in at least 29 books was an ill-arranged collection of linguistic, grammatical and antiquarian notes. He paid especial attention to orthography, and sought to differentiate the meanings of cases of like ending by distinctive marks. In etymology he tried to find a Roman explanation of words (according to him frater was=fere alter). Quintilian (In stit. orat. xi. 3. speaks of a rhetorical treatise De gestu by him.
See Cicero, Ad. Fam. iv. 13 ; scholiast on Lucan I, 639 ; several references in Aulus Gellius; Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Literature, 17o; M. Hertz, De N. F. studiis atque operibus (1845) ; Quaestiones Nigi dianae (189o) , and edition of the fragments (1889) by A. Swoboda.