Varro, Marcus Terentius (116 BC–27 BC)

Roman author and scholar. He is known to have written about 70 works on a wide range of subjects and 150 Menippean satires (in the style of the Greek satirist Menippos). Of these, apart from numerous fragments, only the De Re Rustica and six of the 25 books of De Lingua Latina survive, but information attributed to his writings has been preserved in texts by other authors.

Material derived from Varro's Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum appears in works by Aulus Gellius and Macrobius, and by St Augustine in his De Civitate Dei.

Varro was born at Reate in the Sabine country and fought for Pompey in the Civil War, but was allowed by the Second Triumvirate to retire into private life in about 42 BC.