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The small landowners in Illyricum, Asia, and Egypt managed their estates even in Varro's time in great part practically as the debtor-slaves of their Roman or non-Roman creditors, just as the plebeians in former days for their patrician lords. Cases occurred of capital being lent even to urban communities at four per cent per month.
Ferraro calls Varro's work one of the most important for the history of ancient Italy and says historians have made a mistake in not reading it. Of this land, at least a third, and sometimes a half, was left uncultivated each year.
The next day, however, it being Varro's turn to command, he, without asking his colleague's concurrence, gave the signal for battle: and passing the river Au'fidus, that lay between both armies, put his forces in array. 28.
To consider Varro's labours as undirected to any practical object would be to misinterpret them altogether. No man was less of the mere savant or the mere litterateur than he. Besides this larger work Varro seems to have written smaller ones, as introductions or pendants to it.
This last work was written by him at the age of eighty. It is in the form of a dialogue, and is not without descriptive and dramatic power. The tediousness which characterised all Varro's writing is less felt where the subject is one of which he had a thorough practical knowledge, and which gave ample scope for the vein of rough but not ungenial humour which he inherited from Cato.
Once he bade his bearers set him down, near where one Quintus Baebius Herennius, a plebeian tribune and a relative of Varro's, was holding forth to a sympathetic crowd. "Do you not know, ye foolish Romans," cried the orator, alternately slapping his thigh, waving his arms, and casting up his eyes, "that this Hannibal was brought into Italy by these very nobles, who are always desiring war?
On the 13th of August I received four letters from you: one in which you urge me in a tone of reproof to be less weak; a second, in which you say that Crassus's freedman has told you about my anxiety and leanness; a third, in which you describe the proceedings in the senate; a fourth on the subject of Varro's assurances to you as to the friendly feelings of Pompey.
In the opening chapters Cicero extols Varro's learning with that warmth of heart and total absence of jealousy which form so pleasing a trait in his character. Their diffuseness amusingly contrasts with Varro's brevity in his dedication. When it appeared, there occurred not a word of compliment, nothing beyond the bare announcement In his ad te scribam. Truly Varro was no "mutual admirationist."
In Varro's time the Roman fever had begun to sap the vitality of the Roman people, and the "animalia minuta" in this passage suggests that Varro had a curious appreciation of what we call the modern science of the subject. Not the least profitable chapters in this book are those devoted to the preparation of manure in composts, to be ripened in pits as Varro advises in the text.
As numerous probably were the writers of the school of Cato, on husbandry, domestic economy, and other practical subjects, and the grammarians and philologists, whose works formed two other large sections in Varro's library.
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