[Sidenote: Varro.] One of the most productive and learned writers of the age of Cicero was Marcus Terentius Varro, who was born in 116 B. C. at Reate, in the Sabine country. He studied at Rome under Lucius Ælius Stilo, and at Athens under Antiochus of Ascalon. In 76 B. C. he was in the army in Spain, in 67 B. C. he distinguished himself in the war against the pirates. Perhaps he continued to serve under Pompey in the war with Mithridates. In the civil war he was on the side of Pompey, and was forced to surrender to Cæsar the legion under his command. He was afterward in Epirus, at Corcyra, and at Dyrrhachium. After Cæsar’s victory, Varro accepted the new government and was placed in charge of the public libraries. He was proscribed by Antony after Cæsar’s death, but his life was saved through the devotion of his friends, and he spent his remaining years in peace, continuing his literary activity until the end. He died in his ninetieth year, 27 B. C. [Sidenote: Varro’s works.] Varro’s works were many and varied. Some seventy-four titles are known, and the total number of single books amounted to about six hundred and twenty. These included poems, works on grammar, history, geography, law, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, literary history and education, miscellaneous essays, orations, and letters. Of all these there remain one complete work, _On Agriculture_ (_De Re Rustica_), in three books, six (v-x) of the original twenty-five books of the treatise _On the Latin Language_ (_De Lingua Latino_), numerous short fragments of the _Menippean Satires_ (_Saturæ Menippeæ_), and a few fragments of some of the other works. The collection of maxims that passes under Varro’s name is probably spurious.