, usually styled the most learned of all the Romans, was born in the year
, usually styled the most
learned of all the Romans, was born in the year of Rome
638, or 28 B.C. His immense learning made him the admiration of his time; which yet was the most flourishing
for arts and glory that Rome ever knew. He was an intimate friend of Cicero; and his friendship was confirmed
and immortalized by a mutual dedication of their learned
works to each other. Thus Cicero dedicated his “Academic Questions
” to Varro; and Varro dedicated his “Treatise on the Latin tongue
” to Cicero, who, in a letter in
which he recommends him as questor to Brutus, assures the
commander, that he would find him perfectly qualified for
the post, and particularly insists upon his good sense, his
indifference to pleasure, and his patient perseverance in
business. To these virtues he added uncommon abilities,
and large stores of knowledge, which qualified him for the
highest offices of the state. He attached himself to the
party of Pompey, and in the time of the triumvirate was
proscribed with Cicero: and, though he escaped with his
life, he suffered the loss of his library, and of his own writings; a loss which would be severely felt by one who had
devoted a great part of his hfe to letters. Returning, at
length, to Rome, he spent his last years in literary leisure.
He died in the 727th year of the city. His prose writings
were exceedingly numerous, and treated of various topics
in antiquities, chronology, geography, natural and civil
history, philosophy, and criticism. He was, besides, a poet
of some distinction, and wrote in almost every kind of verse.
He is said to have been eighty when he wrote his three
books “De Re Rustica,
” which are still extant. Five of
his books “De Lingua Latina,
” which he addressed to Cicero, are also extant, and some fragments of his works, particularly of his “Menippean Satires,
” which are medleys
of prose and verse. Scaliger has likewise collected some of
his epigrams from among the “Catalecta Virgilii. The
first edition of Varro
” De Lingua Latina“is a quarto,
without date or place, but supposed to be Rome, 1471.
There is a second, at Venice, 1474, 4to, and a third at
Rome, 1474, fol. His whole works, with the notes of Scaliger, Turnebus, &c. were printed by Henry Stephens,
1573, 8vo, reprinted 1581; but the former edition is in
greatest request among the curious, on account of a note
of Scaliger' s, p. 212, of the second part, which was omitted
in the subsequent editions. Varro
” De Re Rustica“is
inserted among the
” Auctores de Re Rustica." The use
which Virgil makes of this work in his Georgics entitles it
*o some respect; and it is amusing as giving us a notion of
the agriculture of his time, and the method of laying out
gardens, and providing the luxuries of the table, in which
the Romans were particularly extravagant. It contains
many absurdities, however, and many of those remarks and
pieces of information which would now be thought a disgrace to the meanest writer on agriculture. The rev. T.
Owen, of Queen’s college, Oxford, and rector of Upper
Scudamore, in Wiltshire, published a good translation of
this work in 1800, 8vo.