Varro, Terentius.
1.
Gaius, consul B.C. 216 with L. Aemilius Paulus.
Varro is said to have been the son of a butcher, to have carried on business himself as a
factor in his early years, and to have risen to eminence by pleading the causes of the lower
classes against the opposition of the nobility (
Livy, xxii. 25;
Val. Max. iii. 4, 4). Notwithstanding the strong influence of the aristocracy, he was raised
to the consulship by the people, who thought that it only needed a man of energy at the head
of an overwhelming force to bring the war against Hannibal to a close, and who, moreover, had
an excessive mistrust of the aims and motives of the Senate. His colleague was L. Aemilius
Paulus, one of the leaders of the aristocratic party. The two consuls were defeated by
Hannibal at the memorable battle of Cannae. (See
Hannibal.) The battle was fought by Varro against the advice of Paulus. The Roman
army was all but annihilated. Paulus and almost all the officers perished. Varro was one of
the few who escaped and reached Venusia in safety, with about seventy horsemen. His conduct
after the battle seems to have deserved praise. He proceeded to Canusium, where the remnant
of the Roman army had taken refuge, and there adopted every precaution which the exigencies
of the case required. His defeat was forgotten in the services he had lately rendered. On his
return to the city all classes went out to meet him, and the Senate
returned him thanks because he had not despaired of the commonwealth. This marked the
determination of patricians and plebeians to work heartily together against the foreign enemy
(
Livy, xxii. 35-61; Polyb. iii. 106-116;
Plut. Fab. 14-18;
App. Ann.
17-26). Varro continued to be employed in Italy for several successive years in
important military commands till nearly the close of the Punic War.
2.
M. Terentius Varro Reatīnus, a celebrated writer, whose
vast and varied erudition in almost every department of literature earned for him the title
of the “most learned of the Romans” (
Quint.x.
i. 95;
Dionys. ii. 21;
C. D. vi. 2). He was
born at Reaté B.C. 116, and was trained under L. Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, and
afterwards by Antiochus, a philosopher of the Academy. Varro held a high naval command in the
wars against the pirates and Mithridates, and afterwards served as the
legatus of Pompeius in Spain in the Civil War, but was compelled to surrender his
forces to Caesar (
Flor. ii. 13, 29;
B.C. i. 38,
ii. 17-20). He then passed over into Greece, and shared the fortunes of the Pompeian party
till after the battle of Pharsalia, when he obtained the forgiveness of Caesar, who employed
him in superintending the collection and arrangement of the great library designed for public
use (
Iul. 44;
Orig. vi. 5). For some years after this period Varro remained in
literary seclusion, passing his time chiefly at his country seats near Cumae and Tusculum,
occupied with study and composition. Caesar had forced Antony to restore to Varro an estate
which he had seized (
Cic. Phil. ii. 40, 103),
and, perhaps in consequence, upon the formation of the Second Triumvirate his name appeared
upon the list of the proscribed; but he succeeded in making his escape, and, after having
remained for some time concealed, he obtained the protection of Octavian. His life is said to
have been saved by Fufius Calenus (
B. C. iv. 47), and it is probable that he
recovered a great portion of his estates; but most of his magnificent library had been
destroyed (
Gell. iii. 10). The remainder of his career was passed
in tranquillity, and he continued to labour in his favourite studies. His death took place
B.C. 28, when he was in his eighty-ninth year.
Not only was Varro the most learned of Roman scholars, but he was likewise the most
voluminous of Roman authors. Gellius (l. c.) states that Varro claimed to have written 490
books before he was seventy-seven: Ausonius gives in round numbers 600 as the total number of
books written by Varro (
Prof. Burd. xx. 10); and this agrees with a list given
by St. Jerome which makes out the writings of Varro to consist of seventy-four different
works, containing altogether 620 books. (Cf. also Augustin.
De Civ. Dei, vi.
2; and
Acad. i. 9.) Hence it would appear that 130 of the books were written
in the last twelve years of his life. Of these works only two have survived:
Extant works of Varro
- De Re Rustica Libri III, still extant, written when the author was
eighty years old, and the most important of all the treatises upon ancient agriculture now
extant, being far superior to the more voluminous production of Columella, with which alone
it can be compared. It is edited by Keil (Halle, 1884 foll.), and in the Scriptores
Rei Rusticae Veteres Latini, by Schneider (Leipzig, 1764-1797).
- De Lingua Latina, a grammatical treatise which extended to twenty-four
books; but six only (v.-x.) have been preserved, and these in a mutilated condition.
The remains of this treatise are particularly valuable, since they have been the means of
preserving many terms and forms which would otherwise have been altogether lost, and much
curious information is here treasured up connected with the ancient usages, both civil and
religious, of the Romans. Editions by Spengel (Berlin, 1826, reëdited
1885); in Didot's collection (Paris, 1875); and by O. Müller
(last ed. Leipzig, 1883). The remains of Varro's other grammatical treatises
are discussed by Wilmanns (1864). The work entitled Antiquitatum
Libri was divided into two sections: Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum,
in twenty-five books, and Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, in sixteen books. It
described the political and religious institutions of Rome, and was Varro's greatest work,
upon which chiefly his reputation for profound learning was based; but unfortunately only a
few fragments of it have come down to us, printed in Merkel's edition of Ovid's
Fasti, pp. cvi.-ccxlvii. (1841). With the second section of
the work we are, comparatively speaking, familiar, since St. Augustine drew very largely
from this source in his De Civitate Dei.
Varro wrote also a collection of biographies called
Imagines or
Hebdomades in fifteen books, which contain 700 lives or sketches of famous
Greeks and Romans, arranged in groups of seven. It is said to have been illustrated with
portraits and afterwards to have appeared in a cheaper edition without pictures. Another
work,
Disciplinae, in nine books, described the “liberal
arts,” viz., grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, music,
medicine, and architecture (see
Liberales
Artes); and he wrote other works on philosophy (
Logistorici in
seventy-six books), geography, and law. Among his poetical works were the
Saturae, which were composed in a variety of metres and with an admixture of
prose. Varro in these pieces copied to a certain extent the productions of Menippus the
Gadarene (see
Menippus), and hence designated them
as
Saturae Menippeae s. Cynicae. They appear to have been a series of
disquisitions on a vast variety of subjects, frequently, if not uniformly, couched in the
shape of dialogue, the object proposed being the inculcation of moral lessons and serious
truths in a familiar, playful, and even jocular style. The best editions of the fragments of
these
Saturae are by Riese
(Leipzig, 1865), and Bücheler
(with Petronius)
(Berlin, 1882). The
Sententiae Varronis, a
collection of pithy sayings, may possibly have been gathered from the writings of Varro
Reatinus, but this is wholly uncertain. They are edited by Devit
(Padua, 1843).
See Boissier,
Études sur M. T. Varron (Paris, 1861);
and Ritschl,
Die Schriftstellerei des Varro in his
Opuscula,
iii. 419-505; id.
Parerga, pp. 70 foll.
3.
P., a Latin poet of considerable celebrity, surnamed
Atacīnus, from the Atax, a river of Gallia Narbonensis, his native
province, was born B.C. 32. Of his personal history nothing further is known. He seems to
have written, first, an epic on one of Caesar's Gallic wars, called
Bellum
Sequanicum (
Gr. Lat. ii. 497), and
Saturae in imitation
of Lucilius (
Sat. i. 10, 46); and also at a later time to have written
Argonautica, perhaps a free translation of the like work of Apollonius
Rhodius;
Chorographia, a sort of metrical system of geography and astronomy;
and
Libri Navales, perhaps a poem on navigation. Only fragments of these
productions have survived to the present time.
