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"We humbly wait your commands," said Vergilius, kissing his hand. "Now tell me, handsome son of Varro, have you found no pretty girl to your liking? Know you not, boy, 'tis time you married?" He held the hand of the young knight and spoke kindly, his cunning eyes aglow, and smiled upon him, showing his teeth, set well apart. "Such an one I have found, good sire.
The brightly fullered gown of a candidate flashed before his eyes, and then he recognized Varro standing upon a silversmith's counter, smiling this way and that, grasping the hands of those nearest, kissing his own to the very outskirts of the mob, and all the while crying out, to the promptings of his nomenclator: "Greeting to you, Marcus!" "Health, Quintus!"
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."
We cannot tell how far Varro himself followed out this line of thought, for the fragments of his great work are few and far between.
The judges were chosen from members of the bar, as well as in later times the senators. The great lawyers were not only learned in the law, but possessed great accomplishments. Varro was a lawyer, and was the most learned man that Rome ever produced. But under the emperors the lawyers were chiefly distinguished for their legal attainments, like Paulus and Ulpian.
In the times of Varro the philosopher, a man deeply read in Roman history, lived one Tarrutius, his familiar acquaintance, a good philosopher and mathematician, and one, too, that out of curiosity had studied the way of drawing schemes and tables, and was thought to be a proficient in the art; to him Varro propounded to cast Romulus's nativity, even to the first day and hour, making his deductions from the several events of the man's life which he should be informed of, exactly as in working back a geometrical problem; for it belonged, he said, to the same science both to foretell a man's life by knowing the time of his birth, and also to find out his birth by the knowledge of his life.
In the constitutional struggle Varro did what seemed to him the duty of a citizen; but his heart was not in such party-doings "why," he complains on one occasion, "do ye call me from my pure life into the filth of your senate-house?" He belonged to the good old time, when the talk savoured of onions and garlic, but the heart was sound.
You have not told me that you love me." "I told all who were at the palace of the great father." "But you have not told me, son of Varro." "I do love you." He was approaching. "Hush! Not now," she answered, taking his hand in hers temporizing. "Come, I will race with you." She ran, leading him, with quick, pattering feet through an inner hall and up the long triclinium.
Varro was ordered to hand over his command to Marcellus, and to return to Rome to answer before the senate for his conduct. Varro doubted not that his sentence would be death, for the Romans, like the Carthaginians, had but little mercy for a defeated general. His colleague and his army had undoubtedly been sacrificed by his rashness.
"About eighteen centuries ago Columella and Varro speak of the necessity of keeping ducks in netted enclosures like other wild fowl, so that at this period there was danger of their flying away." Is it not probable that the best fliers would escape most frequently, or would pine most if kept confined?
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