xviii INTRODUCTION 



instructed him in grammar, archaeology, and theo- 

 logy, Aelius Stilo and Nigidius Figulus, became 

 pigmies beside the vast bulk of him alive, and when 

 he died his reputation grew greater from century to 

 century and he was regarded '' by the common con- 

 sent of all the learned as the most learned of all 

 men." In the dark ages his great figure is seen 

 among the shadows, and at the dawn of the Re- 

 naissance Petrarch sings of him as the third great 

 light of Rome, placing him between Cicero and 

 Vergil : 



Varrone il terzo gran lume Romano. 



It is, indeed, hard to understand why so small a 

 part of him should have escaped the Venus of Death, 

 who has spared only one comparatively small treat- 

 ise, produced when Varro was a very old man '^ pack- 

 ing up his luggage in readiness for a journey out 

 of this life." One great work, perhaps his greatest, 

 certainly that which the moderns would choose of 

 all others to possess — the Antiquities Human and 

 Divine, in forty-one books — survived for nearly 

 1,400 years, then vanished into a pawnbroker's shop, 

 never to re-appear. Petrarch, in one of his *' letters 

 to the illustrious dead," which was addressed to 

 Varro, says that he had once had these books in his 

 possession, and that he was tortured with eternal 

 longing and regret for their loss. He had lent them 



