He wrote a compendium of Roman history in two books dedicated to Μ. Vinicius, from the dispersion of the Greeks after the siege of Troy down to the death of Livia in 29 A.D. The first book brings the history down to the destruction of Carthage, 146 B.c.; portions of it are wanting, including the beginning. The later history, especially the period from the death of Caesar, 44 b.c., to the death of Augustus, 14 A.D., is treated in much greater detail. Brief notices are given of Greek and Roman literature, but, strange to say, no mention is made of Plautus, Horace, and Propertius. The author is a vain and shallow courtier; “full of wise saws,” he is nevertheless entirely destitute of true historical insight. His knowledge is superficial, his blunders numerous, his chronology inconsistent. He labours at portrait-painting, but his portraits are daubs. On Caesar, Augustus, and above all on his patron Tiberius, he lavishes praise or flattery. The repetitions, redundancies, and slovenliness of expression which disfigure the work may be partly due to the haste with which (as the author frequently reminds us) it was written. Some blemishes of style, particularly the clumsy and involved structure of his sentences, may perhaps be ascribed to insufficient literary training. The inflated rhetoric, the straining after effect by means of hyperbole, antithesis, and epigram, mark the degenerate taste of the Silver Age, of which Paterculus is the earliest example. He purposed to write a fuller history of the later period, which should include the civil war between Caesar and Pompey and the wars of Tiberius; but there is no evidence that he carried out this intention.

Paterculus was little known in antiquity. He seems to have been read by Lucan and imitated by Sulpicius Severus, but he is mentioned only by the scholiast on Lucan, and once by Priscian. All we know of his life is derived from his own statements. The text of his work, preserved in a single badly-written MS. (now lost), is very corrupt, and its restoration has tasked the ingenuity of many learned men. The editio princeps appeared at Basel in 1520; subsequent editors have been J. Lipsius, Leyden, 1591; J. Gruter, Frankfort, 1607; N. Heinsius, Amsterdam, 1678; P. Burmann, Leyden (2d ed.), 1744; D. Ruhnken, Leyden, 1779; J. C. Orelli, Leipsic, 1835; F. Kritz, Leipsic, 1840 and 1848; F. Haase, Leipsic (2d ed.) 1858; 0. Halm, Leipsic, 1876.

Besides the literary histories of Bernhardy and Teuffel, see the prolegomena to Kritz’s edition; H. Sauppe, in Schweiz. Museum, i. p. 133; A. Pernice, De Vellei fide historica, Leipsic, 1862; contributions to the criticism of the text by J. C. Μ. Laurent, Loci Velleianι, Altona, 1836; J. Jeep, Emendationes Vellei-an∕e, Wolfenbüttel, 1839; N. Madvig, Adversaria, ii. p. 297 sq. ; English translations by Newcomb, Paterson, and Watson; German by Jacobs, Walther, and Eyssenhardt; French by Desprès and Gréard; Italian by Manzi, Boccanera, and Spiridione Petrettini.