VARRO.
Born at Reate, in the Sabine territory, which was the nurse of all manly virtues, Varro was brought up in the good old-fashioned way. ‘For me when a boy,’ he says, ‘there sufficed a single rough coat and a single under-garment, shoes without stockings, a horse without a saddle.’ Bold, frank, and sarcastic, he had all the qualities of the country gentleman of the best days of the Republic. On account of his personal valour he obtained in the war with the Pirates, 67 B.C., where he commanded a division of the fleet, the naval crown. In politics he belonged, as was natural, to the constitutional party, and bore an honourable and energetic part in its doings and sufferings. On the outbreak of the Civil War he served as the legatus of Pompeius in command of Further Spain, but was compelled to surrender his forces to Caesar, 69 B.C. When the cause of the Republic was lost Caesar, who knew Varro’s worth, employed him in superintending the collection and arrangement of the great library at Rome designed for public use. After Caesar’s death Varro was exposed to the persecution of Antonius, whose drunken revels and excesses at Varro’s villa at Casinum are vividly described by Cicero (Phil. ii. 103 sqq.) Through the influence of his many friends Varro obtained the protection of Octavianus, and was enabled to live at Rome in peace until his death, 27 B.C., in his ninetieth year.
2. Works.
Of all the works of Varro, embracing almost all branches of knowledge and literature, only two have come down to us:
(1) The De Re Rustica, in three Books, in the form of a dialogue, written in his eightieth year. It was a subject of which he had a thorough practical knowledge, and is the most important of all the treatises upon ancient agriculture now extant. Book I treats of agriculture; Book II of stock-raising; Book III of poultry, game, and fish.
(2) De Lingua Latina, in twenty-five Books, of which only V-X have been preserved. These contain much valuable information not found elsewhere, but Varro’s notions of etymology are extremely crude.
Of his other works, we have much cause to regret the loss of his Antiquities of Things Human and Divine, the standard work on the religious and secular antiquities of Rome down to the time of Augustus, and his Imagines, biographical sketches, with portraits, of seven hundred famous Greeks and Romans, the first instance in history of the publication of an illustrated book.
‘Varro belongs to the genuine type of old Roman, improved but not altered by Greek learning, with his heart fixed in the past, deeply conservative of everything national, and even in his style of speech protesting against the innovations of the day.’—Cruttwell.
Omnium facile acutissimus, et sine ulla dubitatione doctissimus.—Cicero.
Studiosum rerum tantum docet, quantum studiosum verborum Cicero delectat.—St. Augustine.