INTRODUCTION

It is truly remarkable that out of the massive body of work Varro left behind—in the preface to his Hebdomades A work on the mystical properties of the number seven, he mentions that he was eighty-four years old and had already written 490 books—this treatise on farming is the only one that survives in a relatively complete state. Of his De Lingua Latina On the Latin Language, which originally spanned twenty-five books, we possess only six, and those are severely damaged. All his other works—covering poetry, satire, literary criticism, grammar, philology, science, history, education, philosophy, law, theology, geography, and antiquarian research—have perished, save for a few scattered fragments preserved by writers such as Dionysius, Pliny, Gellius, Macrobius, and the Christian apologists. It would be less surprising if his work had been of poor quality, but all ancient writers agree on its incomparable value. In many branches of science and literature, he remained the supreme authority during his lifetime and for many centuries after his death. The great men who...