I know you did something with libraries. I’ve found hints of it in History of Libraries in the Western World and Encyclopedia Britannica (micropedia only).
Dammit, if what you did for libraries was sooooo important that I have to be given your name to report on (why couldn’t I have gotten St Jerome or someone?), HOW COME I CAN’T FIND SQUAT??
I have been to the stacks, to the periodicals, to the online journals. I have snippets of information, and I’ve been working on this for almost two freakin’ weeks. I want to know more than the fact that Julius Caesar appointed you librarian and then got offed before you could finish.
I think it’s sweet that you wrote a book on farming for your wife, so she could keep the homestead going after you died. But that’s still not what I need to know about you.
Screw you buddy. If your name ever comes up in my research again after this assignment, I’m changing topics, putting the book down and walking away. Bite me.
I hope Varro would reply with a resounding pedica te, canicula. Knock Varro and you knock the whole lingua latina.
But since I am in a kindly mood, here you go. This will definitely give you a place to start. My hint is not to bother with Varro’s surviving literary works, as neither his de re rustica nor de lingua latina nor his Menippean Satires will help you. Go to contemporary historical sources for further information.
Well, Varro wrote a lot of books. He fought under Pompey in the Civil War (and if you check out Caesar’s “Civil War”, he’s mentioned a few times)
He does a lot in book 2 of the Civil War, where he first sucks up to Caesar, then says he’s a tyrant, then is defeated in battle and sucks up to him. And he fought at Pharasis. Then there was that library thing, which you already know. Then Antony proscribed him and he wrote more.
Maeglin, Many thanks for the link. I did get to contemporary historical resources pretty quickly in this - the struggle has been to extract library information as opposed to just historical info about his life. Your link is a help…and since I posted, I found some more information via online information through the library here.
And I didn’t mean to diss 'ol MTV…just a serious moment of frustration up here in the stacks.
It isn’t so much what he did for libraries, but rather what he did for structuring western thought, with libraries and curricula being part of the structuring.
Try digging about for info on the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and dialectics) and the quadrivium (math, geometry, astronomy, and music).
Once you have a basic handle on this, then go way back. Keep going past Varro all the way back to Plato and his academy, the learning circle enkuklios paideia.
Then move forward again, and see how Varro fits in with his nine disciplines.
Then slowly creep forward through the later Roman medaeval Latin scholars, and keep moving forward until you find yourself back into the trivium and quadrivium.
Once you’ve done this, ask yourself what role such categorization played in the development of western curricula and western thought, and where Varro fit into the picture. Then start writing, for you’ll have lots to say and lots of material with which to work.
