VARRO, MARCUS TERENTIUS

(b. Reate, Italy, 116 B.C.; d. Rome, 27 B.c.)

encyclopdism, polymathy, biology.

Varro, whom Quintilian dubbed “the most learned of he Romans,” came from an obscure equestrian family at Reate in the Sabine country. He studied under the Stoic grammarian L. Aelius Stilo at Rome and with the Academic philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon at Athens. Varro devoted most of his life to public service. From 86 b.c. to 43 b.c., he proceeded through the ranks of the cursus honorum until he reached the office of praetor. During the Civil War he led Pompeian forces in Spain; after the death of Pompey he was pardoned by Caesar. In 47 b.c. Caesar appointed him director of the proposed public library at Rome. Proscribed by Antony in 43 b.c., Varro’s villa and library were seized. Having escaped the death sentence, he devoted the remainder of his life to scholarship.

Varro was the most prolific of all Roman authors, writing more than 620 books under seventy–four different titles. Of these works, only the three books of De re rustica are substantially complete. Books V to X are extant from the twenty–five–book study De lingua Latina. For Varro’s other writings, only fragments are extant. His lost works include the 150 books of the popular Saturae Menippeae, the treatises of the Logistoricon libri LXXVI, the 700 illustrated biographies of famous Greeks and Romans in the Imagines, the Antiquitatum rerum humanarum et divinarum libri XLI, and the highly influential Discipliarum libri IX.

Varro began his agricultural treatise De re rustica when he was eighty years ole. Written in the form of a dialogue, this handbook on husbandry discusses general agricultural practices, domestic cattle, and small livestock–poultry, game birds, bees, and fish. The three books of this study were based on Greek and Latin sources and on Varro’s own agricultural experiences. It presents a comprehensive view of Roam farming techniques.

De lingua Latina is a philological study of the Latin language. In its entirety it contained an examination of etymology, inflections, and syntax. While its etymology is often fanciful, it does contain perceptive comments on early Latin words. The extant portions of this treatise include approximately half of the books on etymology and inflections.

Varro’s most lasting scientific legacy was the orientation he gave to later scholarship. In his lost Disciplinarum libri IX, Varro introduced the Greek encyclopedic tradition into Roman thought. The Disciplinae was an encyclopedia of the liberal arts based on Greek sources. Containing chapters on the traditional Greek trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), along with sections on medicine and architecture, it was designed to provide a survey of the knowledge needed by a free man. Later scholars deleted medicine and architecture, which became professional studies, and retained the subjects of Varro’s trivium and quadrivium as the basis for medieval education.

Varro’s work popularized both the encyclopedic tradition and the liberal arts. Ultimately, handbook and encyclopedias based on excerpts from the writings of earlier authorities became a fundamental part of Roman scientific thought.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. From antiquity to the present, Varro’s De re rustica has usually appeared with Cato’s agricultural treatise, The editio princeps of Varro’s study was published by Nicolas Jenson at Venice in 1472. Other editions soon followed at Bologna in 1494 and Venice in 1514. Modern editions include those published at Leipzig in 1884 and 1929, and at Cambridge in 1935.

De lingua Latina has also appeared in a number of editions. The date and place of publication of the editio princepts by Pomponius Laetus in unknown. There were a number of fifteenth– and sixteenth–century editions: Rome, 1474; Venice, 1475, 1483, 1492, 1498, 1513; Milan, 1510; and Paris, 1529. There have also been a number of modern editions: Berlin, 1826; Leipzig, 1910; and Cambridge, 1938.

II. Secondary Literature. Accounts of Varro’s life and works may be found in Conrad Cichorius, HistorischeStudien zu Varro (Bonn, 1922), 189–241; Gaston Boissier, Etude sur la vie et ouvrags de M. T. Varron (Paris, 1861); Hellfried Dahlmann, “M. Terentius Varro” in Pauly–Wissowa, Real–Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, supp. vol. VI (1935), 1172–1277; Jens Erik Skydsgaard, Varro the Scholar (Copenhagen, 1968); and William H. Stahl, Roman Science (Madison, Wis., 1962).

Numerous bibliographical references may be found in L’année philologique.

Phillip Drennon Thomas