The Story of Rome from the Earliest Times to the End of the RepublicGilman, Arthur
History
The Story of Rome from the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic
Gilman, Arthur
Rome -- History -- Republic, 510-30 B.C.
The progress of Roman culture is distinctly shown by a comparison of
the curriculum of Cato with that of Marcus Terentius Varro, a long-time
friend of Cicero, though ten years his senior. [Footnote: Varro is said
to have written of his youth. "For me when a boy there sufficed a
single rough coat and a single undergarment, shoes without stockings, a
horse without a saddle. I had no daily warm bath, and but seldom a
river bath." Still, he utters warnings against over-feeding and over-
sleeping, as well as against cakes and high living, pointing to his own
youthful training, and says that dogs were in his later years more
judiciously cared for than children.] Varro obtained from Quintilian
the title "the most learned of the Romans," and St. Augustine said that
it was astonishing that he could write so much, and that one could
scarcely believe that anybody could find time even to read all that he
wrote. He was proscribed by the triumvirs at the same time that Cicero
was, but was fortunate enough to escape and subsequently to be placed
under the protection of Augustus. Cato thought that a proper man ought
to study oratory, medicine, husbandry, war, and law, and was at liberty
to look into Greek literature a little, that he might cull from the
mass of chaff and rubbish, as he affected to deem it, some serviceable
maxims of practical experience, but he might not study it thoroughly.
Varro extended the limit of allowed and fitting studies to grammar,
logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine, and
architecture.
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