His literary activity was astonishing: he wrote at least six hundred
books covering a wide range of antiquarian research. St. Augustine,
who dearly loved to turn a balanced phrase, says that Varro had read
so much that it is difficult to understand when he found time to
write, while on the other hand he wrote so much that one can scarcely
read all his books. Cicero, who claimed him as an intimate friend,
describes (_Acad_. Ill) what Varro had written before B.C. 46, but he
went on producing to the end of his long life, eighteen years later:
"For," says Cicero, "while we are sojourners, so to speak, in our own
city and wandering about like strangers, your books have conducted us,
as it were, home again, so as to enable us at last to recognize who
and whence we are. You have discussed the antiquities of our country
and the variety of dates and chronology relating to it. You have
explained the laws which regulate sacrifices and priests: you have
unfolded the customs of the city both in war and peace: you have
described the various quarters and districts: you have omitted
mentioning none of the names, or kinds, or functions, or causes of
divine or human things: you have thrown a flood of light on our poets
and altogether on Latin literature and the Latin language: you have
yourself composed a poem of varied beauties and elegant in almost
every part: and you have in many places touched upon philosophy in
a manner sufficient to excite our curiosity, though inadequate to
instruct us."

Of Varro's works, beside the _Rerum Rusticarum_, there have survived
only fragments, including a considerable portion of the treatise
on the Latin language: the story is that most of his books were
deliberately destroyed at the procurement of the Church (something
not impossible, as witness the Emperor Theodosius in _Corpus Juris