The Scholar-Statesman of the Late Republic

Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE) stands as one of the most extraordinary polymaths of the ancient world. Born into an equestrian family in Italy’s Sabine region, Varro combined an illustrious political career with staggering intellectual output across dozens of disciplines. His contemporaries hailed him as “Rome’s most learned man”—a title still used by modern historians. Though much of his work was lost to time, surviving fragments reveal a mind that sought to systematize all human knowledge, from agriculture to zoology, during Rome’s turbulent transition from Republic to Empire.

From Athens to the Battlefield: Varro’s Early Career

Varro’s education began traditionally for a Roman aristocrat, but took an unusual turn when he traveled to Athens to study philosophy under Antiochus of Ascalon, a follower of Plato. This Greek intellectual foundation would later distinguish his encyclopedic approach from purely practical Roman writers.

His political career followed the cursus honorum:

– Tribune (date uncertain)
– Aedile (responsible for public works)
– Praetor (judicial authority)

In 76 BCE, his service as quaestor under Pompey the Great launched a military partnership. During the 67 BCE campaign against Mediterranean pirates, Varro earned the corona navalis (naval crown) for valor—a rare honor suggesting unexpected combat prowess for a scholar.

Civil War and the Politics of Survival

The conflict between Pompey and Julius Caesar (49–45 BCE) tested Varro’s loyalties. As one of Pompey’s three lieutenants in Spain, he faced Caesar’s legions after crossing the Rubicon. Following Pompey’s defeat at Pharsalus (48 BCE) and subsequent murder in Egypt, most of his supporters faced execution.

Caesar’s clemency toward Varro reveals much about both men:

1. Immediate pardon despite Varro’s high-ranking opposition
2. Restoration of lands seized by Mark Antony
3. Commission to establish Rome’s first public library—a project cut short by Caesar’s assassination

The proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate (43 BCE) nearly ended Varro’s life when Antony added him to the infamous death lists. His survival—hidden in a villa owned by a friend who frequently hosted Antony himself—reads like a satirical plot from one of Varro’s lost works.

The Intellectual Legacy: A Lost Encyclopedia

Varro’s 74 works (620 scrolls total) constituted antiquity’s nearest attempt at a comprehensive encyclopedia:

| Subject | Notable Works | Survival Status |
|———|—————|——————|
| Linguistics | De Lingua Latina (25 vols) | Books 5–10 fragmentary |
| Agriculture | Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres | Complete |
| Biography | Hebdomades (700 portraits) | Lost |
| History | Antiquitates (human/divine) | Fragments quoted by others |

His De Re Rustica (37 BCE), written at age 80 for his wife, remains the most complete surviving Roman agricultural manual. Unlike Cato’s earlier work, Varro organizes farming knowledge systematically:

1. Arable Farming (soil, crops, tools)
2. Livestock (cattle, sheep, goats)
3. Villa Economy (poultry, fishponds, beekeeping)

The work captures a pivotal moment when Italian agriculture shifted from smallholdings to latifundia (massive slave-worked estates). Varro’s famous classification of tools—articulate (slaves), semi-articulate (oxen), and mute (carts)—reflects his pragmatic yet progressive views on slave management, advocating better treatment to increase productivity.

Cultural Impact: The Roman Renaissance Man

Varro’s influence permeated multiple spheres:

Language
His etymological studies in De Lingua Latina became foundational for later grammarians. The surviving books analyze:
– Word declensions
– Origins of Latin terms
– Poetic meter

Historical Method
By dividing Antiquitates into human and divine categories, he established a template for analyzing religion as a social phenomenon rather than mere theology.

Biographical Tradition
The lost Hebdomades, with its portraits and verses, predated Plutarch’s Parallel Lives by a century, suggesting an early Roman interest in character-driven history.

Modern Rediscovery and Relevance

Renaissance humanists mourned Varro’s lost works more than any classical author except Aristotle. Petrarch famously lamented having seen just fragments of the Antiquitates. Today, scholars recognize:

– His tripartite division of knowledge (grammar, history, philosophy) foreshadowed medieval universities
– Agricultural techniques described in De Re Rustica still inform organic farming movements
– The library commission under Caesar inspired later imperial collections

The 18th-century German scholar Ritschl argued that understanding Rome without Varro was like “studying Renaissance Florence without Leonardo”—a testament to this polymath’s enduring significance as Rome’s last great systematizer of knowledge before the imperial age narrowed intellectual horizons.

Though time reduced his 620 scrolls to fragments, Marcus Terentius Varro’s legacy endures as proof that even in an era of civil wars and collapsing republics, the human drive to comprehend and catalog the world persists. His life—spanning from Sulla to Augustus—embodies both the tragic losses and stubborn survival of classical learning through antiquity’s darkest hours.