Varro
Varro names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Varro MARCUS TERENTIUS, a Roman author
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARCUS TERENTIUS, a Roman author; born probably of equestrian rank in the Sabine town of Reate, in 116 b. c. He studied under L. Ælius Stilo, and at Athens under Antiochus of Ascalon, whose philosophy Cicero makes him expound as an interlocutor in the "Posterior Academics." He saw some service under Pompey, and in the civil war was legate in Spain with Petreius and Afranius. He awaited the result of Pharsalia with Cicero and Cato at Dyrrachium, and was kindly treated by the conqueror, who appointed him to be librarian for his intended collection. The second triumvirate plunged him into danger, and Antony plundered his splendid Cacine villa, burned his beloved books, and placed his name in the list of the proscribed. But he was soon exempted, and Augustus even restored his property, so that he was able to spend his latest years in peace. He survived till 27 b. c. Varro was a man of upright and honorable character, a monument of the old-fashioned Roman virtues, even to their hard and unsympathetic side. His diction shows qualities of the same kind-it is pithy and vigorous, but harsh, abrupt, without flexibility or charm. The total number of his works amounted to about 620 books, belonging to 74 different works. Of the poetical works (satires, pseudo-tragedies and poems) nothing is known but the names. But of the 150 books of the "Satires of Menippus," a medley of prose and verse, imitated from the Cynic satirist Menippus enough fragments (ed. Riese, 1865; Bücheler, 1882) remain to prove the greatness of the loss. Here are in singular medley grotesque personifications of ideas, ridicule of the philosophers, mythology, erudition, proverbs, bitter satire at the social corruptions of the day, and praise of the homely virtues of the good old times, the whole spirited and rich in humor, if seldom artistic in form. Varro's prose writings embraced oratory, history both general and literary, jurisprudence, grammar, philosophy, geography, and husbandry. The most important of these were his "Human and Divine Antiquities," a work of vast learning in 41 books, a mine in which burrowed Pliny, Plutarch, Gellius, Festus, Macrobius, as well as the Christian fathers, especially St. Augustine; "The Latin Language," in 25 books, of which only v.-x. are extant (ed. C. O. Müller, 1833; L. Spengel, re-edited by his son, 1885), on the formation and inflection of words, and on syntax, married by arbitrary arrangement, and etymologies due to mere empirical word play; "Rustic Affairs, Part III.," almost entire (ed. Keil, Leip. 1884), in dialogue form, on agriculture, cattle, bird and fish breeding. His "Discipline, Part IX.," deserved to live, being an attempt at an encyclopædia of the liberal arts; his "Imagination, Part XV.," or "Hebdomades," was a series of 700 illustrated biographies of Greek and Roman celebrities with a metrical eulogium on each.
Varro A Latin author celebrated for his great learning
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A Latin author celebrated for his great learning. He wrote no less than five hundred volumes, but all his works are lost except a treatise De Re Rustica, and another De Lingua Latina. He died B. C. 28, in his eightyeighth year.
Varro CAIUS TERENTIUS
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CAIUS TERENTIUS, the Roman commander who was defeated at Cannæ by Hannibal in 216 b. c.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The bare facts in Collier's 1921 account still hold: Varro was born at Reate in 116 B.C., was proscribed by Antony, was spared, and died in 27 B.C. having written some 74 works in roughly 620 books, of which only the Res rusticae and Books V-X of De lingua Latina survive whole. (The 1900 'Classical Characters' date of 28 B.C. is the odd one out; 27 B.C., in his ninetieth year, is the standard reckoning.) What has moved is the editing and the estimate: Wolfgang de Melo's two-volume Oxford edition and commentary on De lingua Latina, published in 2019, replaced the nineteenth-century texts Collier's cites, and Varro is now read less as a curiosity of lost learning than as the main conduit through which Roman religion and antiquities reached Augustine and later writers. On the other Varro, the consul beaten at Cannae in 216 B.C., historians have grown sceptical of the ancient blame heaped on him, noting that Livy and Polybius wrote within a tradition friendly to his aristocratic colleague and that the Senate publicly thanked him for not despairing of the republic.
Written for this edition, 2026.