His style is not merely remarkable considering its author's difficulties; it is capable at need of pungency and of high expressiveness.

His Latin is not that of the Golden Age, but neither is it the common Latin of the Middle Ages.

There are traces of his having read Virgil and Cicero.

But two writers in particular left their mark on him.

The first and most influential is Valerius Maximus, the mannered author of the "Memorabilia", who lived in the first half of the first century, and was much relished in the Middle Ages.