Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/1237

Rh VARRO. fashion of many of his contemporaries in all cases of difficulty and doubt, is in itself sound ; and if not pushed to extravagant excess ought to have led to most important results. But when he proceeds to the actual work of determining roots, that spirit of folly which seems to have taken possession of his countrymen whenever they approached the subject of etymology, asserts its dominion over him, and we find a farrago of absurd derivations. Thus, within the compass of a few lines, we are told that canis is taken from cano because dogs give signals at night and in the chase, as horns and trumpets give signals (cammt) in the field of battle ; that agnus is so called because it is agnatus to a sheep ; that cervi comes from gero (changing g into c) be- cause stags carry (gerunt) great horns ; that vir- gultum is from viridis and viridis from vis^ because if the strength (vis) of the sap is dried up the green leaf perishes ; that dives is from divus because the rich man, like a god, is in want of nothing — and examples equally ridiculous abound in every page. The Editio Princeps of the books De Lingua Latina appeared in quarto without date or name of place ; but bibliographers have determined that it . was printed at Rome in 1471. The editor was Pomponius Laetus, and the MS. which he em- ployed was full of interpolations. The text how- ever retained some semblance of its true form until Antonius Augustinus, following a MS. which em- bodied the innumerable changes foisted in by the Italians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, presented Varro under an aspect totally fictitious (8vo. Rom. 1557). This edition, however, re- mained the standard until Spengel (8vo. Berol. 1826) and Ottfried Muller (8vo. Lips. 1833) by a careful examination of the most ancient and trust- worthy codices laboriously separated the genuine matter from the spurious, and gave the scholar safe access to the treasures stored up in this curious re- pository. III. Sententiae. Vincentius of Beauvais, who flourished during the first half of the thirteenth century, quotes several pithy sayings which he as- cribes to Varro ; and in his Speculum Historiale (vii. 58) introduces a collection of these with the words " Exstant igitur sententiae Varronis ad Atheniensem auditorem morales atque notabiles de quibus has paucas quae sequuntur excerpsi." Bar- thiiis, who seems to have been altogether unac- quainted with the previous researches of Vin- centius, published in his Adversaria (xv. 19) eighteen " sententiae " which he found ascribed to Varro in a MS. of no very ancient date, but written before the invention of printing, and these were re- printed by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Latina^ lib. i. c. vii. § 4. Schneider picked out forty-seven of these sententiae from the works of Vincentius, of which sixteen coincided with those of Barthius, and appended the whole to the life of Varro con- tained in the first volume of the Scriptores Rei Rusticae Latini vetcres (8vo. Lips. 1794). Finally, Professor Devit of Padua greatly increased the number from two MSS. in the library of the semi- nar}' to which he belongs, and gave them to the world, together with those formerly known, and some others derived from different sources, making up in all one hundred and sixty -five, in a little volume entitled Sententias M. Terentii Varronis muiori ex parte ineditas, <i-c. edidit, <i:c. Vincentius Devit, 8vo'. Patav. 1 843. Notwithstanding the ex- pression of Vincentius of Beauvais, Sententiae Var- VARRO. 1225 ronis ad Atheniensem attditvrem, and the inscription of one of the Paduan codices, Proverhia Varronis ad Paonanum (or rather P. Aadanum, as Devit in- geniously conjectures), it is manifest that these proverbs were not strung together by Varro him- self, but are scraps gleaned out of various works, probably at different times and by different hands. They appear, however, to have been gathered to- gether and divided into regular sections at an early period, for we find a sixth and a seventh book quoted in the Liber Moralitaium of Matthias Farinator, 2 vols. fol. Aug. Vindel. 1477. There is no ground whatever for the theory maintained by Orelli and others that they are fabrications of the fifth or sixth century — all internal evidence is against this supposition — we know that the style of Varro was distinguished by its sententious gravity (Augustin. de Civ. Dei^ vi. 2), and his vo- luminous works would in all probability supply ample stores to those who desired to make a col- lection of apophthegms. (See the preface and commentary attached to the publication of Devit ; also Spangenberg in the Bihliotlieca Critica, vol. i. p. 89, Hildes. 1819 ; and Oehler, M. Terentii Varronis S-xiurarum Menippearum Reliquiae, p. 5, foil. 8vo. Quedling. 1844.) IV. AntiquitatumLihri, divided into two sections, Antiquitates Rerum humanarum, in twenty-five books, and Antiquitates Rerum divinarum in sixteen books. This was the magnum opus of Varro ; and upon this chiefly his reputation for profound learning was based. In the Human Antiquities he discussed the cre- ation of man, his bodily frame, and all matters connected with his physical constitution. He then passed on to take a survey of ancient Italy, the geographical distribution of the country, the dif- ferent tribes by which it was inhabited, their origin and fortunes. The legends regarding the arrival of Aeneas served as an introduction to the early history and chronology of Rome, in which he determined the era for the foundation of the city (B.C. 753), which usually passes by his name, and as he advanced gave a view of the political institutions and social habits of his countrymen from the earliest times. The Divine Antiquities, with whose general plan and contents we are, comparatively speaking, fa- miliar, since Augustine drew very largely from this source in his " City of God," comprehended a com- plete account of the mythology and rites of the inhabitants of Italy from the most remote epoch, including a description of the ministers of things holy, of temples, victims, offerings of every kind, festivals, and all other matters appertaining to the worship of the gods. Of all the didactic treatises of the classical ages there is not one whose loss excites more lively re- gret, and our sorrow is increased the more we reflect upon the deep interest attached to the topics of which it treated, the impossibility of obtaining satisfactory information from any works now ac- cessible, the remarkable taste evinced by Varro for these pursuits, and the singular facilities and ad- vantages which he enjoyed for prosecuting such researches. It has been concluded from some expressions in one of Petrarch's letters, expressions which appear under different forms in different editions, that the Antiquities were extant in his youth, and that he had actually seen them, al-