M. Terentius Varro
Rome's most learned man
116 BC – 27 BC
Marcus Terentius Varro was born in 116 BC in Reate, in the Sabine country. He served under Pompey in the civil war, was proscribed by Antony but saved by the intervention of friends, and spent his long retirement writing — and writing, and writing. He was, by common consent, the most learned Roman who ever lived.
He is said to have written over 600 volumes — or, by another count, 490 books — on subjects including grammar, history, geography, philosophy, agriculture, religion, law, music, medicine, architecture, and literary criticism. He compiled the first public library catalogue in Rome and was chosen by Caesar to organise the city's first public libraries.
Almost everything is lost. The De Re Rustica (On Farming), in three books, survives complete — a charming, digressive work written when Varro was eighty. Six books of the De Lingua Latina (On the Latin Language), originally in twenty-five books, survive. The rest — including the Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum, the Menippean Satires, the Imagines, and the Disciplinae — are known only from fragments and references in later authors.
The loss of Varro's works is one of the great catastrophes of Western intellectual history. He was the bridge between Greek learning and Roman culture, and much of what we do not know about Roman religion, institutions, and daily life we do not know because Varro's books did not survive.
An encyclopaedic study of the Latin language in twenty-five books, dedicated to Cicero. Varro divided the work into three groups: etymology (Books II–...
Written when Varro was eighty years old, this charming treatise on agriculture in three books covers farming, livestock, and the keeping of smaller an...
A monumental study of Roman institutions, customs, and religion in 41 books. The primary source for Roman religious practice in the Republic.
Originally: 41 books. Surviving: Fragments preserved mainly by Augustine (City of God) and Gellius.
Cardauns, M. Terentius Varro: Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum (Wiesbaden, 1976)
A chronological history of the Roman people set within a framework of world history, synchronising Roman events with Greek, Egyptian, and Assyrian chronology. Dedicated to Atticus, it attempted to establish Rome's place in universal time — a project of breathtaking scholarly ambition.
Originally: 4 books. Surviving: Fragments in Augustine, Censorinus, and others.
Fragments in Augustine, Censorinus, and Lactantius
A social and cultural history of the Roman people, tracing their customs, dress, food, entertainment, and daily life from the kings to the late Republic. An irreplaceable source for Roman social history, now lost except for tantalising fragments.
Originally: 4 books. Surviving: Fragments preserved by Nonius Marcellus.
Fragments in Nonius Marcellus
An encyclopaedia of the nine liberal arts (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine, architecture). The model for all subsequent encyclopaedic works.
Originally: 9 books. Surviving: Known from references; structure preserved in later encyclopaedists.
Ritschl, "De M. Terentii Varronis Disciplinarum Libris," Opuscula 3 (1877)
An alternative title or companion work to the Imagines, organised around the mystical number seven. Varro's Pythagorean interests led him to structure knowledge around numerical patterns — a characteristically Roman fusion of Greek philosophy and practical encyclopaedism.
Originally: 15 books. Surviving: Brief references only.
Gellius, NA 3.10
Seven hundred portraits of famous Greeks and Romans, each accompanied by an epigram and a biographical sketch — effectively a Roman Wikipedia. The first illustrated book in Western literature. Each portrait was accompanied by verses summarising the subject's achievements. The loss of this work means we have lost not only Varro's biographical judgements but also his visual record of how Romans imagined their heroes.
Originally: 15 books (700 portraits). Surviving: A handful of quotations by Pliny and Gellius.
Pliny, NH 35.11; Gellius, NA 3.11
Seventy-six dialogues, each named after a historical character and treating a philosophical or practical topic. Titles include "Marius, On Fortune", "Cato, On Raising Children", and "Tubero, On Human Origins". A monumental contribution to Roman philosophical literature, completely lost.
Originally: 76 dialogues. Surviving: Titles and brief quotations only.
Titles known from Gellius and other grammarians
Satirical works mixing prose and verse in the manner of the Cynic philosopher Menippus. About 150 titles are known, suggesting enormous range and invention.
Originally: 150 books. Surviving: ~600 lines in fragments.
Cèbe, Varron, Satires Ménippées (Rome, 1972-99)