INTRODUCTION

...instructed him in grammar, archaeology, and theology, such as Aelius Stilo and Nigidius Figulus, seemed small compared to his vast intellectual output. After his death, his reputation grew with each passing century, and he was regarded "by the common consent of all the learned as the most learned of all men." Throughout the Dark Ages, his figure remained visible among the shadows, and at the dawn of the Renaissance, Petrarch praised him as the third great light of Rome, placing him between Cicero and Vergil:

It is, indeed, difficult to understand why so little of his work escaped "the Venus of Death" A metaphorical reference to time or decay, having spared only one relatively short treatise produced when Varro was an elderly man, "packing up his luggage in readiness for a journey out of this life." One great work—perhaps his most significant, and certainly the one modern scholars would most wish to possess, his Antiquities Human and Divine in forty-one books—survived for nearly 1,400 years before vanishing into a pawnbroker’s shop, never to be seen again. Petrarch, in one of his "letters to the illustrious dead" addressed to Varro, mentions that he once owned these books and was tortured by eternal regret for their loss. He had lent them...