This work, which is said to have chiefly contributed to the splendid reputation of Varro, was extant as late as the beginning of the fourteenth century. Petrarch, to whom the world has been under such infinite obligations for his ardent zeal in discovering the learned works of the Romans, had seen it in his youth. It continued ever after to be the object of his diligent search, and his bad success was a source to him of constant mortification. Of this we are informed in one of the letters, which that enthusiastic admirer of the ancients addressed to them as if they been alive, and his contemporaries. “Nullæ tamen exstant,” says he to Varro, “vel admodum laceræ, tuorum operum reliquiæ; licet divinarum et humanarum rerum libros, ex quibus sonantius nomen habes, puerum me vidisse meminerim, et recordatione torqueor, summis, ut aiunt, labiis gustatæ dulcedinis. Hos alicubi forsitan latitare suspicor, eaque, multos jam per annos, me fatigat cura, quoniam longâ quidem ac sollicitâ spe nihil est laboriosius in vitâ.”
Plutarch, in his life of Romulus, speaks of Varro as a man of all the Romans most versed in history. The historical and political works are the Annales Libri—Belli Punici Secundi Liber—De Initiis Urbis Romanæ—De Gente Populi Romani—Libri de Familiis Trojanis, which last treated of the families that followed Æneas into Italy. With this class we may rank the Hebdomadum, sive de Imaginibus Libri, containing the panegyrics of 700 illustrious men. There was a picture of each, with a legend or verse under it, like those in the children’s histories of the Kings of England. That annexed to the portrait of Demetrius Phalereus, who had upwards of 300 brazen statues erected to him by the Athenians, is still preserved:—
“Hic Demetrius æneis tot aptus est
Quot luces habet annus absolutus.”
There were seven pictures and panegyrics in each book, whence the whole work has been called Hebdomades. Varro had adopted the superstitious notions of the ancients concern[pg 43]ing particular numbers, and the number seven seems specially to have commanded his veneration. There were in the world seven wonders—there were seven wise men among the Greeks—there were seven chariots in the Circensian games—and seven chiefs were chosen to make war on Thebes: All which he sums up with remarking, that he himself had then entered his twelfth period of seven years, on which day he had written seventy times seven books, many of which, in consequence of his proscription, had been lost in the plunder of his library. It appears from Ausonius, that the tenth book of this work was occupied with pictures and panegyrics of distinguished architects, since, in his Eidyllium, entitled Mosella, he observes, that the buildings on the banks of that river would not have been despised by the most celebrated architects; and that those who planned them might well deserve a place in the tenth book of the Hebdomas of Varro:—
“Forsan et insignes hominumque operumque labores
Hic habuit decimo celebrata volumine Marci
Hebdomas.” ——
It is evident, however, from one of the letters of Symmachus, addressed to his father, that though this was a professed work of panegyric, Varro was very sparing and niggardly of his praise even to the greatest characters: “Ille Pythagoram qui animas in æternitatem primus asseruit; ille Platonem qui deos esse persuasit; ille Aristotelem qui naturam bene loquendi in artem redegit; ille pauperem Curium sed divitibus imperantem; ille severos Catones, gentem Fabiam, decora Scipionum, totumque illum triumphalem Senatum parca laude perstrinxit.” Varro also wrote an eulogy on Porcia, the wife of Brutus, which is alluded to by Cicero in one of his letters to Atticus. Among his notices of celebrated characters, it is much to be regretted that the Liber de Vita Sua, cited by Charisius, has shared the same fate as most of the other valuable works of Varro. The treatise entitled, Sisenna, sive de Historia, was a tract on the composition of history, inscribed to Sisenna, the Roman historian, who wrote an account of the civil wars of Marius and Sylla. It contained, it is said, many excellent precepts with regard to the appropriate style of history, and the accurate investigation of facts. But the greatest service rendered by Varro to history was his attempt to fix the chronology of the world. Censorinus informs us that he was the first who regulated chronology by eclipses. That learned grammarian has also mentioned the division of three great periods established by Varro. He did not determine whether the earliest [pg 44]of them had any beginning, but he fixed the end of it at the Ogygian deluge. To this period of absolute historical darkness, he supposed that a kind of twilight succeeded, which continued from that flood till the institution of the Olympic games, and this he called the fabulous age. From that date the Greeks pretend to digest their history with some degree of order and clearness. Varro, therefore, looked on it as the break of day, or commencement of the historical age. The chronology, however, of those events which occurred at the beginning of this second period, is as uncertain and confused as of those which immediately preceded it. Thus, the historical æra is evidently placed too high by Varro. The earliest writers of history did not live till long after the Olympian epoch, and they again long preceded the earliest chronologers. Timæus, about the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, was the first who digested the events recorded by these ancient historians, according to a computation of the Olympiads[75]. Preceding writers, indeed, mention these celebrated epochs, but the mode of reckoning by them was not brought into established use for many centuries after the Olympic æra. Arnobius farther informs us, that Varro calculated that not quite 2000 years had elapsed from the Ogygian flood to the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa. The building of Rome he placed two years higher than Cato had done in his Origines, founding his computation on the eclipse which had a short while preceded the birth of Romulus; but unfortunately this eclipse is not attested by contemporary authors, nor by any historian who could vouch for it with certainty. It was calculated a long time after the phænomenon was supposed to have appeared, by Tarrutius Firmanus, the judicial astrologer, who amused himself with drawing horoscopes. Varro requested him to discover the date of Romulus’s birth, by divining it from the known events of his life, as geometrical problems are solved by analysis; for Tarrutius considered it as belonging to the same art, (and doubtless the conclusions are equally certain,) when a child’s nativity is given to predict its future life, and when the incidents of life are given to cast up the nativity. Tarrutius, accordingly, having considered the actions of Romulus, and the manner of his death, and having combined all the incidents, pronounced that he was conceived in the first year of the second Olympiad, on the 23d of the Egyptian month Choiok, on which day there had been a total eclipse of the sun.
Pompey, when about to enter for the first time on the office of Consul, being ignorant of city manners and senatorial [pg 45]forms, requested Varro to frame for him a written commentary or manual, from which he might learn the duties to be discharged by him when he convened the Senate. This book, which was entitled Isagogicum de Officio Senatus habendi, Varro says, in the letters which he wrote to Oppianus, had been lost. But in these letters he repeated many things on the subject, as what he had written before had perished[76].