23. There is hardly anything more childish than Varro's scheme of all the philosophies, which in the first place summarily declares all systems that do not propose the happiness of man as their ultimate aim to be nonexistent, and then reckons the number of philosophies conceivable under this supposition as two hundred and eighty-eight. The vigorous man was unfortunately too much a scholar to confess that he neither could nor would be a philosopher, and accordingly as such throughout life he performed a blind dance- not altogether becoming—between the Stoa, Pythagoreanism, and Diogenism.
24. On one occasion he writes, "-Quintiforis Clodii foria ac poemata ejus gargaridians dices; O fortuna, O fors fortuna-!" And elsewhere, "-Cum Quintipor Clodius tot comoedias sine ulla fecerit Musa, ego unum libellum non 'edolem' ut ait Ennius?-" This not otherwise known Clodius must have been in all probability a wretched imitator of Terence, as those words sarcastically laid at his door "O fortuna, O fors fortuna!" are found occurring in a Terentian comedy.
The following description of himself by a poet in Varro's
—Onos Louras—,
-Pacuvi discipulus dicor, porro is fuit Enni,
Ennius Musarum; Pompilius clueor-
might aptly parody the introduction of Lucretius (p. 474), to whom Varro as a declared enemy of the Epicurean system cannot have been well disposed, and whom he never quotes.
25. He himself once aptly says, that he had no special fondness for antiquated words, but frequently used them, and that he was very fond of poetical words, but did not use them.
26. The following description is taken from the -Marcipor- ("Slave of Marcus"):—
-Repente noctis circiter meridie
Cum pictus aer fervidis late ignibus
Caeli chorean astricen ostenderet,
Nubes aquali, frigido velo leves
Caeli cavernas aureas subduxerant,
Aquam vomentes inferam mortalibus.
Ventique frigido se ab axe eruperant,
Phrenetici septentrionum filii,
Secum ferentes tegulas, ramos, syrus.
At nos caduci, naufragi, ut ciconiae
Quarum bipennis fulminis plumas vapor
Perussit, alte maesti in terram cecidimus-.
In the —'Anthropopolis— we find the lines:
-Non fit thesauris, non auro pectu' solutum;
Non demunt animis curas ac relligiones
Persarum montes, non atria diviti' Crassi-.