Gaius Rabirius was a poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 mentioned by Velleius alongside Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

. He is also mentioned by Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

 and Quintilian

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...

. Some authorities consider him the author of a poem on Actium

Actium

Actium was the ancient name of a promontory of western Greece in northwestern Acarnania, at the mouth of the Sinus Ambracius opposite Nicopolis, built by Augustus on the north side of the strait....

 of which a fragment was found at Herculaneum

Herculaneum

Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town destroyed by volcanic pyroclastic flows in AD 79, located in the territory of the current commune of Ercolano, in the Italian region of Campania in the shadow of Mt...

. Papyrus fragments discovered at Herculaneum included sixty-seven (mutilated) hexameters, referring to the final struggle between Antony and Octavian and the death of Cleopatra. They are generally supposed to be part of a poem by Rabirius, since Seneca (De Benef. vi. 3, i) informs us that he wrote on those subjects. If genuine, they justify the qualified commendation of Quintilian rather than the praise of Velleius Paterculus (ii. 36, 3), who couples Rabirius and Virgil as the two most eminent poets of his time.

Fragments in Emil Baehrens

Emil Baehrens

Paul Heinrich Emil Baehrens was a German classical scholar.After completing his studies he became Privatdozent at Jena. In 1877 he was appointed ordinary professor at the University of Groningen...

, Fragmenta Poetarum Romanorum (1885); W. Scott

Walter Scott (scholar)

Walter Scott was an English classical scholar. , professor of classics at the University of Sydney and McGill University, Montreal....

, Fragmenta Herculanensia (Oxford, 1885); O. Ribbeck, Geschichte der romischen Dichtung, ii. (1889); Teuffel

Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel

Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel , German classical scholar, was born at Ludwigsburg in the kingdom of Württemberg...

, History of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 252, 9.