A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

VARTUS RUFUS. VARIUS RUFUS. 1221
quickly put the law into execution. Bestia and 2. He enjoyed the friendship of Maecenas from
Cotta went voluntarily into exile, and other dis- a very early period, since it was to the recommend.
tiaguished men were condemned. Varius even ation of Varius in conjunction with that of Virgil.
accused M. Scaurus, the princeps senatus, who that Horace was indebted for an introduction to the
was then seventy-two years of age, but was minister, an event which took place not later than
obliged to drop this accusation. [ScAuRUS, p. B. C. 39, for we know that the three poets accom736, b.] Varius himself was condemned under panied the great man upon his mission to Brlmdihis own law in the following year, and was put to sium B. C. 38.
death. (Appian, B. C. i. 37; Val. Max. viii. 6. 3. He was alive subsequent to B. C. 19. This
~ 4; Cic. de Orat. i. 25, Brit. 62; Val. Max. iii. cannot be questioned, if we believe the joint testi7. ~ 8; Cic. pro Scaur. i; Ascon. in Scaur. p. 22,, mony of Hieronymus (Citron. Euseb. Olymp. cxc. 4)
ed. Orelli; Cic. Brut. 56, de Nat. Deor. iii. 33.) and Donatus (Vit. Viiry. xiv. ~ 53, 57), who asCicero in the passage last quoted accuses Varius sert that Virgil on his death bed appointed Plotils
of the murder of Drusus and Metellus. Tucca and Varius his literary executors, and that
2. M. VARIUS, or M. MARIJS, as he is called they revised the Aeneid, but in obedience to the
by Plutarch and Orosius, a Roman senator, was strict injunctions of its author made no additions.
sent by Sertorius to Mithridates in B. c. 75, when It has been supposed from a passage of Horace
he made a treaty with him, in order that Varius in the Epistle to Augustus (Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 247),
might command the forces of the king. Varius that Varius was dead at the time when it was
is afterwards mentioned as one of the generals of published, that is, about B. c. 10, but the words do
Mithridates in the war with Lucullus. (Appian, not warrant the conclusion.
ATitlr. 68, 76, foll.; Plut. Sert. 24, Lucull. 8; The only works by Varius of which any record
Oros. vi. 2.) has been preserved are:3. P. VARIUS, defrauded Caecilius, the uncle I. De AvMorte. Macrobius (Sat. vi. 2) informs us
of Atticus, of a large sum of money. (Cic. ad Att. that the eighty-eighth line of Virgil's eighth eclogue
i. 1.) w- was borrowed from a poem by Varius, bearing the
4. Q. VARIUS, one of the witnesses against singular title De Morte. Hence this production
Verres. (Cic. Verr. ii. 48.) must have been written in heroic verse, and it
5. P. VARHITS, a judex at the trial of Milo, had seems highly probable that the chief subject was a
been ill-treated by P. Clodius. (Cic. pro J1il. 27.) lamentation for the death of Julius Caesar on
VA'RIUS CO'TYLA. [COTYLA.] whose glories, John of Salisbury assures us (PoliVA'RIUS LIGUR. [LIGUR.] crat. viii. 14), the muse of Varius shed a brilliant
VA'RIUS MARCELLUS. [MARCELTUS.] lustre. Four fragments have been preserved by
L. VA'RIUS RUFUS, one of the most dis- Macrobius (Sat. vi. 1, 2), in all of which Varius
tinguished poets of the Augustan age, the com- had been copied or imitated by Virgil. The
panion and friend of Virgil and Horace. By the longest, extending to six lines, contains a descriplatter he is placed in the foremost rank among the tion of a hound couched in highly spirited and
epic bards, and Quintilian has pronounced that his sonorous language.
tragedy of Thyestes might stand a comparison with II. Paneoyricus in Caesarean Octaviannum, from
any production of the Grecian stage. But notwith- which Horace, according to the Scholiasts, borstanding the high fame which he enjoyed among rowed the lines inserted by him in the sixteenth
his contemporaries, and which was confirmed by Epistle of his first book (27, foll.).
the deliberate judgment of succeeding ages, therelus velit, an pop
is scarcely any ancient author of celebrity concern- Servet in abiguo, qui consulit et tibi et urbi
ing whose personal history we are more completely Jupiter"
ignorant. We cannot determine the date of his
birth, nor of his death, nor are we acquainted with No other specimen has been preserved.
any of the leading events of his career. This has III. Tltyestes. The admiration excited by this
arisen partly from the absolute silence of those drama, the last probably of the works of Varius,
from whom we might reasonably have hoped to was so intense that it seems to have overshadowed
glean some information, partly from the circum- the renown which he had previously acquired in
stance that he upon no occasion mingled in the epic poetry, and this may account for the omission
business of public life, and partly from the confu- of his name by Quintilian when enumerating those
sion which prevails in MSS. between the names who had excelled in this department. A strange
Varius, Varro, and Varus, the last especially story grew up and was circulated among the mebeing an appellation borne by several remarkable diaeval scholiasts, that Varius was not really the
personages both political and literary towards the author of the Thyestes, but that he stole it, ac.downfal of the republic, and under the early em- cording to one account (Schol. ad 1-lor. Ep. i. 4. 4),
perors. If we dismiss mere fanciful conjectures from Cassius of Parma, according to another from
the sum total of our actual knowledge may be ex- Virgil. (Serv. ad Tirg. Ecl. iii. 20; comp. Schol.
pressed in a very few words. cad Visg. Ecl. vi. 3; Donat. Vit. Virg. xx. ~ 31.)
1. We may conclude with certainty that he was Weichert has with much ingenuity devised a
senior to Virgil. This seems to be proved by the theory to account for the manner in which the
well-known lines of Horace (Sat. i. 10. 44), mistake arose, but it is scarcely worth while to re" forte epos acer fute a fable which has ever been regarded as ridiUt nenmo Varius ducit: molle atque facetum. culous. No portion of the tragedy has descended
Virgilio adnuerunt gaudentes rure Camoenae," to us except a few words, and one sentence quoted
by Marius Victorinus (A. G. p. 2503, ed. Putsch.),
for from these we may at once infer that Varius had which critics have in vain endeavoured to mould
already established his reputation in heroic song into verse. It appears from a Codex rescriptus in
while Virgil was known only as a pastoral -bard. the royal library of Paris, of which Schneidewin
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