We meet Varro as Pompey's intimate in Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough, the subject our current book chat.
Marcus Terentius Varro, "whose vast and varied erudition in almost every department of
literature earned for him the title of the " most learned of the
Romans" (Quintil. x. 1. § 95 ; Cic. Acad. i. 2, 3 ; Augustin. de Civ. Dei, vi. 2), was born b. c. 116, being exactly ten years senior to Cicero, with whom he lived for a long period on terms of close intimacy and warm friendship. (Cic. ad Fam. ix. 1—8.) He was trained under the superintendence of L. Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, a member of the equestrian order, a man, we are told (Cic. Brut. 56),
of high character, familiarly acquainted with the Greek and Latin
writers in general, and especially deeply versed in the antiquities of
his own country, some of which, such as the hymns of the Salii and the
Laws of the Twelve Tables, he illustrated by commentaries. Varro, having imbibed from
this preceptor a taste for these pursuits, which he cultivated in after
life with so much devotion and success, completed his education by
attending the lectures of Antiochus (Acad. iii. 12), a philosopher of the Academy, with a leaning perhaps towards the Stoic school, and then embarked in public life ..."
Recent Comments