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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.)

Varro, Marcus Terentius (var’rō). The most universally learned of ancient Roman scholars; born in 116 B.C. at Reate in the Sabine Territory, and hence surnamed Reatinus; died about 27 B.C. His special object of research was Roman antiquity,—language, usages, laws, public institutions, etc. Among his poetical writings were 150 books of joco-serious ‘Menippean Satires,’ in prose and verse, after the style of Menippus the Cynic. He wrote among others, 76 books of ‘Logistorics,’ or notes on the education of children; 41 books on ‘Roman Antiquities’; 15 books of ‘Portraits’ of 700 notabilities, with a prose biography and a metrical eulogium of each; 9 books of ‘Sciences,’ an encyclopædic work; treatises ‘On the Latin Language,’ and ‘On Farming.’ Of all his writings there now remain only the treatise ‘On Farming’; six books of the ‘Latin Language,’ in an imperfect state; and numerous other fragments.