poetical, philosophical, and political, or as mythical, physical, and civil. [24] Against the first of these Varro fulminated forth all the shafts of his satire: _In eo multa sunt contra dignitatem et naturam immortalium ficta ... quae non modo in hominem, sed etiam quae in contemptissimum hominem cadere possunt_. About the second he did not say much, except guardedly to imply that it was not fitted for a popular ceremonial. The third, which it was his strong desire to keep alive, as it was afterwards that of Virgil, seemed to him the chief glory of Rome. He did not scruple to say (and Polybius had said it before him) that the grandeur of the Republic was due to the piety of the Republic. It was reserved for the philosopher of a later age [25] to asperse with bitter ridicule ceremonies to which all before him had conformed while they disbelieved, and had respected while seeing through their object. Varro dedicated his work to Caesar, who was then Pontifex Maximus, and well able to appreciate the chain of reasoning it contained. The acute mind of Varro had doubtless seen in Caesar a disposition to rehabilitate the fallen ceremonial, and foreseeing his supremacy in the state, had laid before him this great manual for his guidance. Caesar evinced the deepest respect for Varro, and must have carefully studied his views. At least it can be no mere coincidence that Augustus, in carrying out his predecessor's plans for the restoration of public worship, should have followed so closely on the lines which we see from Augustine Varro struck out. To consider Varro's labours as undirected to any practical object would be to misinterpret them altogether. No man was less of the mere _savant_ or the mere _littérateur_ than he. Besides this larger work Varro seems to have written smaller ones, as introductions or pendants to it. Among these were the _Aitia_, or _rationale_ of Roman manners and customs, and a work _de gente populi Romani_, the most noticeable feature of which was its chronological calculation, which fixed the building of Rome to the date now generally received, and called the Varronian Era (753 B.C.). It contained also computations and theories with regard to the early history of many other states with which Rome came in contact, _e.g._ Athens, Argos, etc., and is referred to more than once by St Augustine. [26] The names of many other treatises on this subject are preserved; and this is not surprising, when we learn that no less than 620 books belonging to 74 different works can be traced to his indefatigable pen, so that, as an ancient critic says, "so much has he written that it seems impossible he could have read anything, so much has he read that it seems incredible he could have written anything."