VALERIUS, VALERYE2. Valerius Maximus was a Roman historian during Tiberius's reign (A.D. 14-37), to whom he dedicated his handbook for rhetoricians, Factorum dictorumque memorabilium libri novem (Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings). Published after A.D. 31, it consisted mostly of moral and philosophical stories.
Dame Alys tells two stories found in Factorum dictorumque memorabilium, Liber VI.3: De severitate: the story of Metellius, who beat his wife because she drank wine, WBP 460-462, and that of Simplicius Gallus, who left his wife because she looked out the door bareheaded, WBP 643-646. She specifically mentions Valerius's story of Tullus Hostilius, WBT 1165-1167, from Liber III.4: De humili loco natis qui clari evaserunt, where the name is spelled Tullius. R.A. Pratt points out that these stories also appear in the thirteenth-century Communiloquium sive summa collationum of John of Wales, which Chaucer may have known.
Valerius is one of the Monk's authorities on Caesar, MkT 2720. Anecdotes about Caesar appear in Liber IV.4 and Liber VIII.5. Chauntecleer apparently puns on Maximus, "oon of the gretteste auctour that men rede," NPT 2984-3049, when he tells a story from Liber I.7.10 of the Factorum dictorumque memorabilium libri novem. The story also appears in Cicero's De divinatione I.27. The God of Love mentions Valerie as a writer of noble deeds of faithful wives, LGW G 280-281, an ambiguous reference, which could indicate Walter Map's Dissuasio Valerie ad Rufinum philosophum ne uxorem ducat (1181-1183), with its mention of Lucretia, Penelope, and the Sabine Women, as well as the work of Valerius Maximus. [Tullius Hostillius: Valerie]
Valerye, the English variant of Latin Valerius, appears once medially, LGW G 280; Valerius appears once in medial position, MkT 2720, and once in final rhyming position, WBT 1165.