Varro varius

Rome produced no man more erudite, eclectic, and energetic than Marcus Terentius Varro (116-24 BC). Over a long and busy life, set against the backdrop of near-constant social and political upheaval, Varro studied and codified almost every conceivable topic for intellectual enquiry. His vast output – of at least seventy works in over 600 books – is breathtaking in its range and ambition: antiquity (in all its aspects), language, literary history, theology, philosophy, sociology, agriculture, geo