Marcus Terentius Varro (redirected from Marcus Terrentius Varro)

Varro, Marcus Terentius 

(cognomen, Reatinus— derived from his birthplace, Reate, in the land of the Sabines). Born 116 B.C.; died 27 B.C. Roman writer and scholar.

During his youth Varro lived in Rome, later in Athens. As a legate of G. Pompeius, he took part in the war against Caesar in Spain. After his reconciliation with Caesar, he organized a public library in Rome on the instructions of Caesar.

Varro was an encyclopedic scholar as shown by the broadness of his interests (poetry, history of literature, rhetorics, linguistics, philosophy, history, geography, mathematics, jurisprudence, and agriculture) and the abundance of his works (about 74, the majority of which did not come down to us). His main works are Human and Divine Antiquities (only fragments have been preserved); On the Latin Language (of the 25 books, books 5—10 survive; books 5 and 6 are intact, the others in fragments; Russian translation in the collection Ancient Theories of Language and Style, 1936); Images or Hebdomades, a collection of biographies of 700 famous Romans and Greeks with their portraits, regarded as the first illustrated work in Latin literature (not preserved); Encyclopedia, a presentation of various branches of knowledge (not preserved); On Agriculture (completely preserved; Russian translation with commentaries by M. E. Sergeenko, 1963), a guide to agriculture, animal husbandry, and smaller farm livestock (breeding of domestic fowl, bees, and fish), which is interesting for its abundance of cultural details and information on life in the Italic village; and The Satires of Menippus (Russian translation of fragments from The Satires of Menippus, in I. Pomialovskii, M. Terentius Varro and the Satires of Menippus, 1869), an imitation of the satiric dialogues of the Cynic philosopher Menippus (third century B.C.), in which prose and verse alternate. In The Satires of Menippus, Varro castigates the vices of his contemporaries and praises the old customs and the simple life of the ancient Romans. (Fragments of the work survive.)

WORKS

Rerum rusticarum libri tres. Leipzig, 1929.
De lingua Latina. Edited by J. Collart. Paris, 1954.

REFERENCE

Dahlmann, H. “M. T. Varro.” In Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, suppl. vol. 6. Stuttgart, 1935. Page 1172.

M. E. SERGEENKO