Varro Sentence Examples

Taking Varro for his model, Fenestella was one of the chief representatives of the new style of historical writing which, in the place of the brilliant descriptive pictures of Livy, discussed curious and out-of-the-way incidents and customs of political and social life, including literary history.

Thus, Varro (De rustici) mentions a map of Italy engraved on marble, in the temple of Tellus, Pliny, a map of the seat of war in Armenia, of the time of the emperor Nero, and the more famous map of the Roman Empire which was ordered to be prepared for Julius Caesar (44 B.C.), but only completed in the reign of Augustus, who placed a copy of it, engraved in marble, in the Porticus of his sister Octavia (7 B.C.).

Columella regarded the gains from the births as a sufficient motive for encouraging these unions, and thought that mothers should be rewarded for their fecundity; Varro, too, seems to have taken this view.

Cato, Varro and Columella all agree that slave labour was to be preferred to free except in unhealthy regions and for large occasional operations, which probably transcended the capacity of the permanent familia rustica.

Varro and Dionysius Afer proposed to identify the Iberians of Spain with the Iberians of the Caucasus, the one regarding the eastern, and other the western, settlements as the earlier.

They may have contributed to the formation of the style of comedy which appears at the very outset much more mature than that of serious poetry, tragic or epic. They gave the name and some of the characteristics to that special literary product of the Roman soil, the satura, addressed to readers, not to spectators, which ultimately was developed into pure poetic satire in Lucilius, Horace, Persius and Juvenal, into the prose and verse miscellany of Varro, and into something approaching the prose novel in Petronius.

The works of other prose writers, Varro and Cornelius Nepos, have been partially preserved; but these writers have no claim to rank with those already mentioned as creators and masters of literary style.

Like Varro, he survived Cicero by some years, but the tone and spirit in which his works are written assign him to the republican era.

Terentius Varro,the most learned not only of the Romans but of the Greeks, as he has been called.

Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, who was the teacher of Varro and Cicero, much interest had been taken in literary and linguistic problems at Rome.

Varro speaks of its apple trees which gave fruit twice in the year and Pliny praises its wine also.

Some of the old cults passed away altogether, others survived in name and form, but were so wholly devoid of inner meaning that even the learning of a Varro could not tell their intention or the character of the deity with whom they were concerned.

The most generally adopted was that assigned by Varro, 753 B.C. It is noteworthy how nearly these three great epochs approach each other, - all lying near the middle of the 8th century B.C. But it is to be remembered that the beginning of an era and its adoption and use as such are not the same thing, nor are they necessarily synchronous.

The games in which Coroebus was victor, and which form the principal epoch of Greek history, were celebrated about the time of the summer solstice 776 years before the common era of the Incarnation, in the 3938th year of the Julian period, and twentythree years, according to the account of Varro, before the foundation of Rome.

For example, Varro refers the foundation of Rome to the 21st of April of the third year of the sixth Olympiad, and it is required to find the year before our era.

Since five Olympic periods have elapsed, the third year of the sixth Olympiad is 5X4+3=23; therefore, subtracting 23 from 776, we have 753, which is the year before Christ to which the foundation of Rome is referred by Varro.

Porcius Cato places it in the first year of the seventh Olympiad, that is, in 3963 of the Julian period, and 751 B.C. (4) Verrius Flaccus places it in the fourth year of the sixth Olympiad, that is, in the year 3962 of the Julian period, and 752 B.C. (5) Terentius Varro places it in the third year of the sixth Olympiad, that is, in the year 3961 of the Julian period, and 753 B.C. A knowledge of these different computations isnecessary, in order to reconcile the Roman historians with one another, and even any one writer with himself.

Cicero follows the account of Varro, which is also in general adopted by Pliny.

Modern chronologers for the most part adopt the account of Varro, which is supported by a passage in Censorinus, where it is stated that the 991st year of Rome commenced with the festival of the Palilia, in the consulship of Ulpius and Pontianus.

The statement of Porphyrion, the old commentator on Horace, that Florus himself wrote satires, is probably erroneous, but he may have edited selections from the earlier satirists (Ennius, Lucilius, Varro).

The chief authorities used were Varro and Suetonius.

His curious encyclopaedic work, entitled Satyricon, or De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii et de septem Artibus liberalibus libri novem, is an elaborate allegory in nine books, written in a mixture of prose and verse, after the manner of the Menippean satires of Varro.

The author's chief sources were Varro, Pliny, Solinus, Aquila Romanus, and Aristides Quintilianus.

The verse portions, which are on the whole correct and classically constructed, are in imitation of Varro and are less tiresome.

Accordingly to Jerome, Varro did not begin to study Greek literature until his thirty-fifth year.

Although not vigorous enough to excel in the historical epic or in the serious work of the Roman satura, Varro yet possessed in considerable measure the lighter gifts which we admire in Catullus.

The age was prolific of epics, both historical and mythological, and that of Varro seems to have held a high rank among them.

Varro was also the author of a Cosmographia, or Chorographia, a geographical poem imitated from the Greek of Eratosthenes or of Alexander of Ephesus, surnamed Lychnus; and of an Ephemeris, a hexameter poem on weather-signs after Aratus, from which Virgil has borrowed.

He has been called the African Varro.

It is a free imitation and in parts a translation of the work of Apollonius of Rhodes, already familiar to the Romans in the popular version of Varro Atacinus.

His most famous pupil was Varro (116-27), the six surviving books of whose great work on the Latin language are mainly concerned with the great grammatical controversy on analogy and anomaly - a controversy which also engaged the attention of Cicero and Caesar, and of the elder Pliny and Quintilian.

The twenty-one plays of Plautus accepted by Varro are doubtless the twenty now extant, together with the lost Vidularia.

The influence of Varro's last work on the nine disciplinae, or branches of study, long survived in the seven " liberal arts " recognized by St Augustine and Martianus Capella, and in the trivium and quadrivium of the middle ages.

In his survey of the " liberal arts " St Augustine imitates (as we have seen) the Disciplinae of Varro, and in the greatest of his works, the De Civitate Dei (426), he has preserved large portions of the Antiquitates of Varro and the De Republica of Cicero.

Boccaccio had discovered Martial and Ausonius, and had been the first of the human'sts to be familiar with Varro and Tacitus, while Salutati had recovered Cicero's letters Ad Familiares (1389).

Not a little of the laborious erudition of Varro and other ancient scholars has survived in his pages.

The speech therefore of the Sabines by Varro's time had become too Latinized to give us more than scanty indications of what it had once been.

Pliny's principal authority is Varro.

Varro probably dealt with the history of art in connexion with architecture, which was included in his Disciplinae.

Terentius Varro Lucullus, who was consul in 73 B.C. Under the empire Praeneste, from its elevated situation and cool salubrious air, became a favourite summer resort of the wealthy Romans, whose villas studded the neighbourhood.

The modern cathedral, just below the level of this temple, occupies the civil basilica of the town, upon the façade of which was a sun-dial, described by Varro (traces of which may still be seen).

He then rewrote his treatise in four books, making himself, Varro and Atticus the speakers.

Muller also published an admirable translation of the Eumenides of Aeschylus with introductory essays (1833), and new editions of Varro (1833) and Festus (1839).

Varro also studied at Athens, especially under the philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon, whose aim it was to lead back the Academic school from the scepticism of Arcesilaus and Carneades to the tenets of the early Platonists, as he understood them.

He was really a stoicizing Platonist; and this has led to the error of supposing Varro to have been a professed Stoic. The influence of Antiochus is clearly to be seen in many remains of Varro's writings.

Despite the difference between them in politics, Varro and Caesar had literary tastes in common, and were friends in private life.

In the conflict between Caesar and the Pompeian party Varro was more than once actively engaged.

Caesar curiously intimates that, though Varro did his best for Pompey from a sense of duty, his heart was really with the other leader.

Like Cicero, Varro received harsh treatment from Mark Antony after the Pompeian defeat.

Some of his property was actually plundered, but restored at the bidding of Caesar, to whom Varro in gratitude immediately dedicated one of his most important writings.

We have glimpses of Varro at this time in the Letters of Cicero.

The formation of the second triumvirate again plunged Varro into danger.

Antony took possession anew of the property he had been compelled to surrender, and inserted Varro's name on the list of the proscribed.

Varro was not surpassed in the compass of his writings by any ancient, not even by any one of the later Greek philosophers, to some of whom tradition ascribes a fabulous number of separate works.

In a passage quoted by Gellius, Varro himself, when over seventy years of age, estimated the number of " books " he had written at 490; but " book " here means, not merely such a work as was not subdivided into portions, but also a portion of a subdivided work.

For example, the Menippean Satires numbered 150, and are all counted separately in Varro's estimate.

Jerome made or copied a catalogue of Varro's works which has come down to us in a mutilated form.

The first of these three classes no doubt mainly belonged to Varro's earlier life.

It is doubtful whether, as has often been supposed, Varro wrote a philosophical poem somewhat in the style of Lucretius; if so, it should rather be classed with the prose technical treatises.

But the lighter works of Varro have perished almost to the last line, with the exception of numerous fragments of the Menippean Satires.

The Menippus whom Varro imitated lived in the first half of the 3rd century B.C., and was born a Phoenician slave.

No doubt Varro contemned the Hellenizing innovations by which the hard and rude Latin of his youth was transformed into the polished literary language of the late republican and the Augustan age.

From the numerous citations in later authors it is clear that the Menippean Satires were the most popular of Varro's writings.

The second section of Varro's works, those on history and antiquities, form to the present day the basis on which a Iarge part of our knowledge of the earlier Roman history, and in particular of Roman constitutional history, ultimately rests.

Judging from what has been casually preserved, if any considerable portion of Varro's labours as antiquarian and historian were to be now discovered, scholars might find themselves compelled to reconstruct the earlier history of the Roman republic from its very foundations.

Varro's greatest predecessor in this field of inquiry, the man who turned over the virgin soil, was Cato the Censor.

His example, however, seems to have remained unfruitful till the time of Varro's master, Lucius Aelius Stilo Praeconinus.

From his age to the decay of Roman civilization there were never altogether wanting men devoted to the study of their nation's past; but none ever pursued the task with the advantages of Varro's comprehensive learning, his indefatigable industry and his reverent yet discriminating regard for the men and the institutions of the earlier ages.

The book was the fruit of Varro's later years, in which he gathered together the material laboriously amassed through the period of an ordinary lifetime.

Most of the other historical and antiquarian writings of Varro were special elaborations of topics which he could not treat with sufficient fulness and minuteness in the larger book.

Dates were assigned even to mythological occurrences, because Varro believed in the theory of Euhemerus, that all the beings worshipped as gods had once lived as men.

Nor must the labour expended by Varro in the study of literary history be forgotten.

The fifth, sixth and seventh books give Varro's views on the etymology of Latin words.

The study of language as it existed in Varro's day was thoroughly dominated by Stoic influences.

Varro's etymologies could be only a priori guesses, but he was well aware of their character, and very clearly states at the outset of the fifth book the hindrances that barred the way to sound knowledge.

These Varro classes all under the head of " declinatio," which implies a swerving aside from a type.

Varro adopts a compromise between the two opposing schools of grammarians, those who held that nature intended the declinationes of all words of the same class to proceed uniformly (which uniformity was called analogic) and those who deemed that nature aimed at irregularity (anomalia).

But the facts incidentally cited concerning old Latin, and the statements of what had been written and thought about language by Varro's predecessors, are of extreme value to the student of Latin.

Of modern scholars Ritschl has deserved best of Varro.

Several papers in his Opuscula treat of the nature of Varro's works which have not come down to us.

Varron (1861), though superficial, is still useful; but a comprehensive work on Varro, on the present level of scholarship, is greatly needed.

There is no sign that he had ever read Varro; and he never alludes to Verrius Flaccus.

His brother, Marcus Licinius Lucullus, was adopted by Marcus Terentius Varro, and was hence known as Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus.

For him the authors of the Greek and Latin world were living men - more real, in fact, than those with whom he corresponded; and the rhetorical epistles he addressed to Cicero, Seneca and Varro prove that he dwelt with them on terms of sympathetic intimacy.

Mention may here be made of an old Italian deity Furina (or Furrina), whose worship fell early into disuse, and who was almost forgotten in the time of Varro.

To Merula we are indebted for the editio princeps of Plautus (1472), of the Scriptores rei rusticae, Cato, Varro, Columella, Palladius (1472) and possibly of Martial (1471).

Varro's statement, repeated by Pliny, that papyrus was first made in Alexander's time, should probably be taken to mean that its manufacture, which till then had been a government monopoly, was relieved from all restrictions.

The list of Varro's writings includes over seventy treatises and more than six hundred books dealing with topics of every conceivable kind.

Part of Varro's treatise on Latin was dedicated to Cicero (10643), who as an interpreter of Greek philosophy to his fellowcountrymen enlarged the vocabulary of Latin by his admirable renderings of Greek philosophical terms, and thus ultimately gave us such indispensable words as " species," "quality " and " quantity."

The modern cathedral, just below the level of this temple, occupies the civil basilica of the town, upon the façade of which was a sun-dial, described by Varro (traces of which may still be seen).

The preface treats of Greek sciences, geometry, the discovery of specific gravity by Archimedes, and other discoveries of the Greeks, and of Romans of his time who have vied with the Greeks -- Lucretius in his poem De Rerum Natura, Cicero in rhetoric, and Varro in philology, as shown by his De Lingua Latina.

The political career of Varro seems to have been late and slow; but he arrived at the praetorship, after having been tribune of the people, quaestor and curule aedile.