Menippean satires is brilliantly treated in Mommsen's _History of Rome_, and Riese's edition of the satires, to both which, if he desire further information, we refer the reader. [11] The genius of Varro, however, more and more inclined him to prose. The next series of works that issued from his pen were probably those known as _Logistorici_ (about 56-50 B.C.). The model for these was furnished by Heraclides Ponticus, a friend and pupil of Plato, and after his death, of Aristotle. He was a voluminous and encyclopaedic writer, but too indolent to apply the vigorous method of his master. Hence his works, being discursive and easily understood, were well fitted for the comprehension of the Romans. Varro's histories were short, mostly taken from his own or his friends' experience, and centred round some principle of ethics or economics. _Catus de liberis educandis_, _Marius de Fortuna_, &c. are titles which remind us of Cicero's _Laelius de Amicitia_ and _Cato Major de Senectute_, of which it is extremely probable they were the suggesting causes. Varro in his _saturae_ is very severe upon philosophers. He had almost as great a contempt for them as his archetype Cato. And yet Varro was deeply read in the philosophy of Greece. He did not yield to Cicero in admiration of her illustrious thinkers. It is probable that with his keen appreciation of the Roman character he saw that it was unfitted for speculative thought; that in most cases its cultivation would only bring forth pedants or hypocrites. When asked by Cicero why he had not written a great philosophical work, he replied that those who had a real interest in the study would go direct to the fountain head, those who had not would be none the better for reading a Latin compendium. Hence he preferred to turn his labours into a more productive channel, and to instruct the people in their own antiquities, which had never been adequately studied, and, now that Stilo was dead, seemed likely to pass into oblivion. [12] His researches occupied three main fields, that of law and religion, that of civil history and biography, and that of philology.