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Updated: May 23, 2025
This unravelling has been the tedious occupation of the last half century in the study of Roman religion; and so patiently and successfully has it been accomplished that, although we would give almost anything for a few books of Varro's Divine Antiquities, it is tolerably certain that the possession of these books would not change in the least the fundamental concepts underlying the modern reconstruction of ancient Roman religion; though it is equally certain that these books would emphasise just so much more strongly, what we already realise, that this modern reconstruction is in distinct contradiction to many of Varro's favourite theories.
In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines," he sarcastically set forth how the primitive men had not been content with the God who alone is recognized by thought, but had longed after puppets and effigies. III. XI. Interference of The Community in War and Administration IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius IV. X. Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges IV. VI. The Equestrian Party
We should not judge as to the prose style of these aesthetic writings of Varro's earlier period by the standard of his work on Language written in his old age and probably published in an unfinished state, in which certainly the clauses of the sentence are arranged on the thread of the relative like thrushes on a string; but we have already observed that Varro rejected on principle the effort after a chaste style and Attic periods, and his aesthetic essays, while destitute of the mean bombast and the spurious tinsel of vulgarism, were yet written after an unclassic and even slovenly fashion, in sentences rather directly joined on to each other than regularly subdivided.
Varro makes no exception to this rule, but Virgil was here, as in other instances, induced to depart from Varro's wisdom, with the result that he imposed upon Roman agriculture several thoroughly bad practices. Again, Virgil recommends, what Varro does not, cross-ploughing and burning the stubble and Virgil's advice was generally followed.
This is perhaps the most interesting thing about Varro's treatise: instructive and entertaining as it is to the farmer, in the large sense of the effect of literature on mankind, Virgil gave it wings the useful cart horse became Pegasus. As a consequence of the chorus of praise of the Georgics, there have been those, in all ages, who have sneered at Virgil's farming.
Fabius told him, if he would profitably serve his country, he must no less oppose Varro's ignorant eagerness than Hannibal's conscious readiness, since both alike conspired to decide the fate of Rome by a battle.
He argues partly from the words politius a me limantur, put into Varro's mouth by Cicero, partly from the civil troubles and the perils into which Varro's life was placed, partly from the loose unpolished character of the work, that it represents a first draught intended, but not ready for, publication.
It formed the model for another Βίος Ἑλλαδος by a certain Jason, and for Varro's Vita Populi Romani. It was evidently appreciative. A more speculative work was his Tripoliticus, arguing that the best constitution ought to be compounded of the three species, monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic, as in Sparta. Only then would it be sure to last.
Varro's book appeared in B.C. 37 and during that year Maecenas commissioned Virgil to put into verse the spirit of the times; just as, under similar circumstances, Cromwell pensioned Samuel Hartlib. Such is the co-incidence of the dates that it is not impossible that the Rerum Rusticarum suggested the subject of the Georgics, either to Virgil or to Maecenas.
Of the one hundred and thirty comedies attributed to him, two-thirds were rejected as spurious by Varro, and only twenty-one ranked as certainly genuine. These last are extant, with the exception of one, called Vidularia, or The Carpet-Bag, which was lost in the Middle Ages; some of them, however, exist, and probably existed in Varro's time, only in abridged or mutilated stage copies.
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