shrewd common sense and agricultural experience than it is possible to
pack into the same number of English words. It remains today of much
more than antiquarian interest.

MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO (B.C. 116-28) whom Quintilian called "the most
learned of the Romans," and Petrarch "il terzo gran lume Romano,"
ranking him with Cicero and Virgil, probably studied agriculture
before he studied any thing else, for he was born on a Sabine farm,
and although of a well to do family, was bred in the habits of
simplicity and rural industry with which the poets have made that
name synonymous. All his life he amused the leisure snatched from his
studies with intelligent supervision of the farming of his several
estates: and he wrote his treatise _Rerum Rusticarum_ in his eightieth
year.[3]

He had his share of active life, but it was as a scholar that he
distinguished himself.[4] Belonging to the aristocratic party, he
became a friend and supporter of Pompey, and, after holding a naval
command under him in the war against the Pirates in B.C. 67, was
his legatus in Spain at the beginning of the civil wars and there
surrendered to Caesar. He was again on the losing side at the battle
of Pharsalia, but was pardoned by Caesar, who selected him to be
librarian of the public library he proposed to establish at Rome.[5]
From this time Varro eschewed politics and devoted himself to letters,
although his troubles were not yet at an end: after the death of
Caesar, the ruthless Antony despoiled his villa at Casinum (where
Varro had built the aviary described in book Three), and like Cicero
he was included in the proscriptions which followed the compact of the
triumvirs, but in the end unlike Cicero he escaped and spent his last
years peacefully at his villas at Cumae and Tusculum.