author
Marcus Terentius Varro
-116–-27
A towering scholar of ancient Rome, he wrote across language, history, philosophy, satire, and farming with astonishing range. Even though most of his books are lost, the works that survive still offer a vivid window into Roman thought and daily life.
2 Audiobooks
Roman Farm Management: The Treatises of Cato and Varro
by Marcus Porcius Cato, Marcus Terentius Varro
De M. Terenti Varronis Libris Grammaticis
by Marcus Terentius Varro
About the author
Born in Reate in 116 BC and dying in 27 BC, Marcus Terentius Varro is often described as one of the greatest scholars of ancient Rome. He was a remarkably productive writer and thinker, and later generations treated his work as a storehouse of knowledge about Roman religion, language, customs, and literature.
Varro was not only a man of letters but also active in public life during the late Roman Republic. Ancient sources and modern reference works describe him as a polymath, and his writing ranged widely across subjects that would now belong to history, linguistics, philosophy, and agriculture.
Much of his enormous output has been lost, but a few works and many fragments remain influential. He is especially remembered for De Lingua Latina on the Latin language and Rerum Rusticarum on agriculture, which helps preserve details of everyday Roman life as well as the habits of educated Roman readers.