Marcus Terentius Varro (c. 116-27
BCE)
Satirist,
historian,
author of six or seven hundred volumes, nearly all lost. Surviving are six books on the
Latin language (
De Lingua Latina) and one treatise,
On Country Matters (
De Re Rustica). These works are
tedious and lacking in descriptive and dramatic power, but
valuable as
source material. The lost
Portraits (
Imagines) (of famous
Greeks and
Romans) is said to be the world's first
illustrated volume. About six hundred lines of
Menippean Satire (
Saturae Menippeae) survive.
Varro was born at
Reate in the
Sabine country. His chief teacher was
L. Aelius Stilo, the first systematic student, critic and teacher of
Latin philology and
literature, and of the
antiquities of Rome and Italy. Varro also studied at
Athens under the philosopher
Antiochus of Ascalon, whose influence is clearly to be seen in many remains of Varro’s writings. After a
praetorship, he served as
Pompey’s legate in
Spain and fought at
Pharsalus, but was later reconciled with
Caesar who made him director of the proposed
public library. In his
Civil War, Caesar curiously intimates that, though Varro did his best for Pompey from a
sense of duty, his
heart was really with the other leader. At the time of the
Second Triumvirate his villa was plundered by
Antony's men and Antony put Varro on the list of those to be
proscribed. He fled, but was pardoned by
Augustus.
St. Augustine, in
Civitas Dei (The City of G-d) examines and counters the
existentialism of
paganism and studies Varro's assertion that before "divine things" can exist, first "human things" must. Augustine provides much of our
knowledge of Varro in
Civitas, including Varro's idea that in matters of
religion much is true that the people ought not to know and much
false that the people ought not to suspect. Much of Augustine's work revolves around Varro's quote that
"As the painter is prior to the painting, and the architect prior to the building, so are the cities prior to the institutions of the cities {religion}."
http://85.1911encyclopedia.org/V/VA/VARRO_MARCUS_TERENTIUS.htm
My Lecture Notes
http://www.qn.net/~fwagner/ev/rome1_and_christians.html