Delphi Complete Works of Varro

by Marcus Terentius Varro

  He was pardoned by Caesar, and lived quietly at Rome, being appointed librarian of the great collection of Greek and Latin books which Caesar planned to make. After Caesar’s assassination, he was proscribed by Antony, and his villa at Casinum, with his personal library, was destroyed. But he himself escaped death by the devotion of friends, who concealed him, and he secured the protection of Octavian.

  He lived the remainder of his life in peace and quiet, devoted to his writings, and died in 27 B.C., in his eighty-ninth year.

  Throughout his life he wrote assiduously. His works number seventy-four, amounting to about six hundred and twenty books; they cover virtually all fields of human thought: agriculture, grammar, the history and antiquities of Rome, geography, law, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, education, the history of literature and the drama, satires, poems, orations, letters.

  Of all these only one, his De Re Rustica or Treatise on Agriculture, in three books, has reached us complete. His De Lingua Latina or On the Latin Language, in twenty-five books, has come down to us as a torso, only Books V. to X. are extant, and there are serious gaps in these. The other works are represented by scattered fragments only.

  VARRO’S GRAMMATICAL WORKS

  The grammatical works of Varro, so far as we know them, were the following:

  De Lingua Latina, in twenty-five books, a fuller account of which is given below.

  De Antiquitate Litterarum, in two books, addressed to the tragic poet L. Accius, who died about 86 B.C.; it was therefore one of Varro’s earliest writings.

  De Origine Linguae Latinae, in three books, addressed to Pompey.

  Peri Χαρακτήρων, in at least three books, on the formation of words.

  Quaestmies Plautinae, in five books, containing viii interpretations of rare words found in the comedies of Plautus.

  De Similitudine Verborum, in three books, on regularity in forms and words.

  De Utilitafe Sermonis, in at least four books, in which he dealt with the principle of anomaly or irregularity.

  De Sermone LciHno, in five books or more, addressed to Marcellus, which treats of orthography and the metres of poetry.

  Disciplinae, an encyclopaedia on the liberal arts, in nine books, of which the first dealt with Grammatica.

  The extant fragments of these works, apart from those of the De Lingua Latina, may be found in the Goetz and Schoell edition of the De Lingua Latina, pages 199-212; in the collection of Wilmanns, pages 170-223; and in that of Funaioli, pages 179-371 (see the Bibliography).

  VARRO’S DE LINGUA LATIN A

  Varro’s treatise On the Latin Language was a work in twenty-five books, composed in 47 to 45 B.C., and published before the death of Cicero in 43.

  The first book was an introduction, containing at the outset a dedication of the entire work to Cicero. The remainder seems to have been divided into four sections of six books each, each section being by its subject matter further divisible into two halves of three books each.

  Books II.-VII. dealt with the impositio vocabulorum, or how words were originated and applied to things and ideas. Of this portion, Books II.-IV. were probably an earlier smaller work entitled De Etymologia or the like; it was separately dedicated to one Septumius or Septimius, who had at some time, which we cannot now identify, served Varro as quaestor. Book II. presented the arguments which were advanced against Etymology as a branch of learning; Book III. presented those in its favour as a branch of learning, and useful; Book IV. discussed its nature.

  Books V.-VII. start with a new dedication to Cicero. They treat of the origin of words, the sources from which they come, and the manner in which new words develop. Book V. is devoted to words which are the names of places, and to the objects which are in the places under discussion; VI. treats words denoting time-ideas, and those which contain some time-idea, notably verbs; VII. explains rare and difficult words which are met in the waitings of the poets.

  Books VIII.-XIII. dealt with derivation of words from other words, including stem-derivation, declension of nouns, and conjugation of verbs. The first three treated especially the conflict between the principle of Anomaly, or Irregularity, based on consuetudo ‘popular usage,’ and that of Analogy, or Regularity of a proportional character, based on ratio ‘relation’ of form to form. VIII. gives the arguments against the existence of Analogy, IX. those in favour of its existence, X. Varro’s own solution of the conflicting views, with his decision in favour of its existence. XI.-XIII. discussed Analogy in derivation, in the wide sense given above: probably XI. dealt with nouns of place and associated terms, XII. with time, ideas, notably verbs, XIII. with poetic words.

  Books XIV.-XIX. treated of syntax. Books XX.- XXV. seem to have continued the same theme, but probably with special attention to stylistic and rhetorical embellishments.

  Of these twenty-five books, we have to-day, apart from a few brief fragments, only Books V. to X., and in these there are several extensive gaps where the manuscript tradition fails.

  The fragments of the De Lingua Latina, that is, those quotations or paraphrases in other authors which do not correspond to the extant text of Books V.-X., are not numerous nor long. The most considerable of them are passages in the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius ii. 25 and xvi. 8. They may be found in the edition of Goetz and Schoell, pages 3, 146, 192-198, and in the collections of Wilmanns and Funaioli (see the Bibliography).

  It is hardly possible to discuss here even summarily Varro’s linguistic theories, the sources upon which he drew, and his degree of independence of thought and procedure. He owed much to his teacher Aelius Stilo, to whom he refers frequently, and he draws heavily upon Greek predecessors, of course, but his practice has much to commend it: he followed neither the Anomalists nor the Analogists to the extreme of their theories, and he preferred to derive Latin words from Latin sources, rather than to refer practically all to Greek origins. On such topics reference may be made to the works of Barwick, Kowalski, Dam, Dahlmann, Kriegshammer, and Frederik Muller, and to the articles of Wolfflin in the eighth volume of the Archiv fur lateiniscke Lexikographie, all listed in our Bibliography.

  THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BE LINGUA LATINA

  The text of the extant books of the De Lingua Latina is believed by most scholars to rest on the manuscript here first fisted, from which (except for our No. 4) all other known manuscripts have been copied, directly or indirectly.

  1. Codex Làurentianus li. 10, folios 2 to 34, parchment, written in Langobardic characters in the eleventh century, and now in the Laurentian Library at Florence. It is known as F.

  F was examined by Petrus Victorius and Iacobus Diacetius in 1521 (see the next paragraph); by Hieronymus Lagomarsini in 1740; by Heinrich Keil in 1851; by Adolf Groth in 1877; by Georg Schoell in 1906. Little doubt can remain as to its actual readings.

  2. In 1521, Petrus Victorius and Iacobus Diacetius collated F with a copy of the editio princeps of the De Lingua Latina, in which they entered the differences which they observed. Their copy is preserved in Munich, and despite demonstrable errors in other portions, it has the value of a manuscript for v. 119 to vi. 61, where a quaternion has since their time been lost in F. For this portion, their recorded readings are known as Fv; and the readings of the editio princeps, where they have recorded no variation, are known as (Fv).

  3. The Fragmentant Cassinense (called also Excerptum and Epitome), one folio of Codex Cassinensis 361, parchment, containing v. 41 Capitolium dictum to the end of v. 56; of the eleventh century. It was probably copied direct from F soon after F was written, but may possibly have been copied from the archetype of F. It is still at Monte Cassino, and was transcribed by Keil in 1848. It was published in facsimile as an appendix to Sexti Iulii Frontini de aquaeductu Urbis Romae, a phototyped reproduction of the entire manuscript, Monte Cassino, 1930.

  4. The grammarian Priscian, who flourished about A.D. 500, transcribed into his De Figuris Numerorum Varro’s passage on coined money, beginning with multa, last word of v. 16
8, and ending with Nummi denarii decuma libella, at the beginning of v. 174. The passage is given in H. Keil’s Grammatici Latini iii. 410-411. There are many manuscripts, the oldest and most important being Codex Pansinus 7496, of the ninth century.

  5. Codex Laurentianus li. 5, written at Florence in 1427, where it still remains; it was examined by Keil. It is known asf.

  6. Codex Ilavniensis, of the fifteenth century; on paper, small quarto, 108 folia; now at Copenhagen. It was examined by B. G. Niebuhr for Koeler, and his records came into the hands of L. Spengel. It is known as II.

  7. Codex Gothanus, parchment, of the sixteenth century, now at Gotha; it was examined by Regel for K. O. Mueller, who published its important variants in his edition, pages 270-298. It is known as G.

  8. Codex Pansinus 7189, paper, of the fifteenth century, now at Paris; this and the next two were examined by Donndorf for L. Spengel, who gives their different readings in his edition, pages 661-718. It is known as a.

  9. Codex Parisinus 6142, paper, of the fifteenth century; it goes only to viii. 7 declinarentur. It is known as 6.

  10. Codex Pari sinus 7535, paper, of the sixteenth century; it contains only v. 1-122, ending with dictae. It is known as c.

  11. Codex Vindobonensis lxiii., of the fifteenth century, at Vienna; it was examined by L. Spengel in 1835, and its important variants are recorded in the apparatus of A. Spengel’s edition. It is known as V.

  12. Codex Basiliensis F iv. 13, at Basel; examined by L. Spengel in 1838. It is known as p.

  13. Codex Guelferbytanus 896, of the sixteenth century, at Wolfenbiittel; examined by Schneidewin for K. O. Mueller, and afterwards by L. Spengel. It is known as M.

  14. Codex B, probably of the fifteenth century, now not identifiable; its variants were noted by Petrus Victorius in a copy of the Editio Gryphiana, and either it or a very similar manuscript was used by Antonius Augustinus in preparing the so-called Editio Vulgata.

  These are the manuscripts to which reference is made in our critical notes; there are many others, some of greater authority than those placed at the end of our list, but their readings are mostly not available. In any case, as F alone has prime value, the variants of other than the first four in our list can be only the attempted improvements made by their copyists, and have accordingly the same value as that which attaches to the emendations of editors of printed editions.

  Fuller information with regard to the manuscripts may be found in the following:

  Leonhard Spengel, edition of the De Lingua Latina (1826), pages v-xviii.

  K. O. Mueller, edition (1833), pages xii-xxxi. Andreas Spengel, edition (1885), pages ii-xxviii. Giulio Antonibon, Supplemento di Lezioni Varianti ai libri de lingua Latina (1899), pages 10-23.

  G. Goetz et F. Schoell, edition (1910), pages xi-xxxv.

  THE LAURENTIAN MANUSCRIPT F

  Manuscript F contains all the extant continuous text of the De Lingua Latina, except v. 119 trua quod to vi. 61 dicendofinit; this was contained in the second quaternion, now lost, but still in place when the other manuscripts were copied from it, and when Victorius and Diacetius collated it in 1521. There are a number of important lacunae, apart from omitted lines or single words; these are due to losses in its archetype.

  Leonhard Spengel, from the notations in the manuscript and the amount of text between the gaps, calculated that the archetype of F consisted of 16 quaternions, with these losses:

  Quaternion 4 lacked folios 4 and 5, the gap after v. — 162.

  Quaternion 7 lacked folio 2, the end of vi and the beginning of vii., and folio 7, the gap after vii. 23. Quaternion 11 was missing entire, the end of viii and the beginning of ix.

  Quaternion 15 lacked folios 1 to 3, the gap after x. 23, and folios 6 to 8, the gap after x. 34.

  The amount of text lost at each point can be calculated from the fact that one folio of the archetype held about 50 lines of our text.

  There is a serious transposition in F, in the text of Book V. In § 23, near the end, after qui ad humum, there follows ut Sabini, now in § 32, and so on to Septimontium, now in § 41; then comes demissior, now in § 23 after humum, and so on to ab hominibus, now in § 32, after which comes nominatum of § 41. Mueller, who identified the transposition and restored the text to its true order in his edition, showed that the alteration was due to the wrong folding of folios 4 and 5 in the first quaternion of an archetype of F; though this was not the immediate archetype of F, since the amount of text on each page was different.

  This transposition is now always rectified in our printed texts; but there is probably another in the later part of Book V., which has not been remedied because the breaks do not fall inside the sentences, thus making the text unintelligible. The sequence of topics indicates that v. 115-128 should stand between v. 140 and v. 141 ; there is then the division by topics:

  General Heading v. — 105

  De Victu — v. — 105-112

  De Vestitu — v. — 113-114, — 129-133

  De Instrumenta — v. — 134-140, — 115-128, 141-183

  Then also vi. 49 and vi. 45 may have changed places, but I have not introduced this into the present text; I have however adopted the transfer of x. 18 from its manuscript position after x. 20, to the position before x. 19, which the continuity of the thought clearly demands.

  The text of F is unfortunately very corrupt, and while there are corrections both by the first hand and by a second hand, it is not always certain that the corrections are to be justified.

  THE ORTHOGRAPHY OF THE DE LINGUA LATINA

  The orthography of F contains not merely many corrupted spellings which must be corrected, but also many variant spellings which are within the range of recognized Latin orthography, and these must mostly be retained in any edition. For there are many points on which we are uncertain of Varro’s own practice, and he even speaks of certain permissible variations: if we were to standardize his orthography, we should do constant violence to the best manuscript tradition, without any assurance that we were in all respects restoring Varro’s own spelling. Moreover, as this work is on language, Varro has intentionally varied some spellings to suit his etymological argument; any extensive normalization might, and probably would, do him injustice in some passages. Further, Varro quotes from earlier authors who used an older orthography; we do not know whether Varro, in quoting from them, tried to use their original orthography, or merely used the orthography which was his own habitual practice.

  I have therefore retained for the most part the spellings of F, or of the best authorities when F fails, replacing only a few of the more misleading spellings by the familiar ones, and allowing other variations to remain. These variations mostly fall within the following categories:

  1. El: Varro wrote El for the long vowel I in the nom pi of Decl. II (ix. 80); but he was probably not consistent in writing El everywhere. The manuscript testifies to its use in the following: plebei (gen.; cf plebis vi. 91, in a quotation) v. 40, 81, 158, vi. 87; eidem (nom sing.) vii. 17 (eadem F), x. 10; scirpeis vii. “; Terentiei (nom.), vireis Terentieis (masc.), Terentieis (fern.) viii. 36; infeineiteis viii. 50 (changed to infiniteis in our text, cf. {in)finitam viii. 52); i(e)is viii. 51 (his F), ix. 5; iei (nom.) ix. 2, 35; hei re{e)i fer(re)ei de(e)i viii. 70; hinnulei ix. 28; utrei (nom pi.) ix. 65 (utre.I. F; cf utri ix. 65); (B)a(e)biei, B{a)ebieis x. 50 (alongside Caelii, Celiis).

  2. AE and E: Varro, as a countryman, may in some words have used E where residents of the city of Rome used AE (cf v. 97); but the standard orthography has been introduced in our text, except that E has been retained in seculum and sepio (and its compounds: v. 141, 150, 157, 162, vii. 7, 13), which always appear in this form.

  3. OE and U: The writing OE is kept where it appears in the manuscript or is supported by the context: moems and derivatives v. 50, 141 his, 143, vi. — 87; moenere, moenitius v. 141; Poenicum v. 113, viii. 65 his; poeniendo v. 177. OE in other words is the standard orthography.

  4. VO UO and VU UU: Varro certainly wrote only VO
or UO, but the manuscript rarely shows VO. or UO in inflectional syllables. The examples are novorn ix. 20 (corrected from nouum in F); nominatuom ix. 95, x. 30 (both -tiuom F); obliquom x. 50; loquontur vi. 1, ix. 85; sequontur x. 71; clivos v. 158; perhaps amburvom v. 127 (impurro Fv). In initial syllables VO is almost regular: volt vi. 47, etc.; volpes v. 101; volgus v. 58, etc., but vulgo viii. 66; Volcanus v. 70,’ etc.; voleillis ix. 33. Examples of the opposite practice are aequum vi. 71; duum x. 11; antiquus vi. 68; sequuntur viii. 25; conjluunt x. 50. Our text preserves the manuscript readings.

  5. UV before a vowel: Varro probably wrote U and not UV before a vowel, except initially, where his practice may have been the other way. The examples are: Pacuius v. 60, vi. 6 (Catulus (Fv)), 94, vii. 18, 76, and Pacwius v. 17, 24, vii. 59; gen. Pacui v. 7, vi. 6, vii. — 22; Pacuium vii. 87, 88, 91, 102; compluium, impluium v. 161, and pluvia v. 161, compluvium v. 125; simpuium v. 124 his (sinipulum codd.); cf panuvellium v. 114. Initially: uvidus v. 24; uvae, uvore v. 104; uvidum v. 109.

  6. U and I: Varro shows in medial syllables a variation between U and I, before P or B or F or M plus a vowel. The orthography of the manuscript has been retained in our text, though it is likely that Varro regularly used U in these types:

  The superlative and similar words: ulbissumum viii. — 75; fnigalissumus viii. 77; c(a)esi(s)sumus viii. 76; intumus v. 154; maritumae v. 113; melisxumum viii. — 76; optumum vii. 51; pauperrumus viii. 77; proxuma etc v. 36, 93, ix. 115, x. 4, 26; septuma etc. ix. — 30, x. 46 ter; Septumio v. 1, vii. 109; superrumo vii. — 51; decuma vi. 54. Cf proximo optima maxima v. — 102, minimum vii. 101, and many in viii. 75-78.