For his grave dissertations, in which a moral maxim or other subject of general interest is handled, he disdained, in his framework to approximate to the Milesian tales, as Heraclides had done, and so to serve up to the reader even childish little stories like those of Abaris and of the maiden reawakened to life after being seven days dead. But seldom he borrowed the dress from the nobler myths of the Greeks, as in the essay "Orestes or concerning Madnes"; history ordinarily afforded him a worthier frame for his subjects, more especially the contemporary history of his country, so that these essays became, as they were called laudationes of esteemed Romans, above all of the Coryphaei of the constitutional party. Thus the dissertation "concerning Peace", was at the same time a memorial of Metellus Pius, the last in the brilliant series of successful generals of the senate; that "concerning the Worship of the God" was at the same time destined to preserve the memory of the highly-respected Optimate and Pontifex Gaius Curio; the essay "on Fat" was connected with Marius, that "on the Writing of Histor". with Sisenna the first historian of this epoch, that "on the Beginnings of the Roman Stag" with the princely giver of scenic spectacles Scaurus, that "on Number" with the highly-cultured Roman banker Atticus. The two philosophico-historical essays "Laelius or concerning Friendship", "Cato or concerning Old Age", which Cicero wrote probably after the model of those of Varro, may give us some approximate idea of Varro's half-didactic, half-narrative, treatment of these subjects.
The Menippean satire was handled by Varro with equal originality of form and contents; the bold mixture of prose and verse is foreign to the Greek original, and the whole intellectual contents are pervaded by Roman idiosyncrasy - one might say, by a savour of the Sabine soil. These satires like the philosophico-historical essays handle some moral or other theme adapted to the larger public, as is shown by the several titles - Columnae Herculis, peri doxeis; Euren ei Lopas to Poma, peri gegameikoton, Est Modus Matulae, peri metheis; Papiapapae, peri egkomios. The plastic dress, which in this case might not be wanting, is of course but seldom borrowed from the history of his native country, as in the satire Serranus, peri archairesion. The Cynic-world of Diogenes on the other hand plays, as might be expected, a great part; we meet with the Kounistor, the Kounorreiton, the 'Ippokouon, the 'Oudrokouon, the Kounodidaskalikon - and others of a like kind. Mythology is also laid under contribution for comic purposes; we find a Prometheus Liber, an Ajax Stramenticius, a Hercules Socraticus, a Sesqueulixes who had spent not merely ten but fifteen years in wanderings. The outline of the dramatic or romantic framework is still discoverable from the fragments in some pieces, such as the Prometheus Liber, the Sexagessis, Manius; it appears that Varro frequently, perhaps regularly, narrated the tale as his own experience; e. g. in the Manius the dramatis personae go to Varro and discourse to him "because he was known to them as a maker of books".
As to the poetical value of this dress we are no longer allowed to form any certain judgment; there still occur in our fragments several very charming sketches full of wit and liveliness - thus in the Prometheus Liber the hero after the loosing of his chains opens a manufactory of men, in which Goldshoe the rich (Chrysosandalos) bespeaks for himself a maiden, of milk and finest wax, such as the Milesian bees gather from various flowers, a maiden without bones and sinews, without skin or hair, pure and polished, slim, smooth, tender, charming. The life-breath of this poetry is polemics - not so much the political warfare of party, such as Lucilius and Catullus practised, but the general moral antagonism of the stern elderly man to the unbridled and perverse youth, of the scholar living in the midst of his classics to the loose and slovenly, or at any rate in point of tendency reprobate, modern poetry[24], of the good burgess of the ancient type to the new Rome in which the Forum, to use Varro's language, was a pigsty and Numa, if he turned his eyes towards his city, would see no longer a trace of his wise regulations. In the constitutional struggle Varro did what seemed to him the duty of a citizen; but his heart was not in such party-doings -"why" he complains on one occasion, "do ye call me from my pure life into the filth of your senate-house". He belonged to the good old time, when the talk savoured of onions and garlic, but the heart was sound. His polemic against the hereditary foes of the genuine Roman spirit, the Greek philosophers, was only a single aspect of this old-fashioned opposition to the spirit of the new times; but it resulted both from the nature of the Cynical philosophy and from the temperament of Varro, that the Menippean lash was very specially plied round the cars of the philosophers and put them accordingly into proportional alarm - it was not without palpitation that the philosophic scribes of the time transmitted to the "severe ma", their newly-issued treatises.
Philosophizing is truly no art. With the tenth part of the trouble with which a master rears his slave to be a professional baker, he trains himself to be a philosopher; no doubt, when the baker and the philosopher both come under the hammer, the artist of pastry goes off a hundred times dearer than the sage. Singular people, these philosophers! One enjoins that corpses be buried in honey - it is a fortunate circumstance that his desire is not complied with, otherwise where would any honey-wine be left? Another thinks that men grow out of the earth like cresses. A third has invented a world-borer (Kosmotorounei) by which the earth will some day be destroyed.
It is ludicrous to observe how a Long-beard - by which is meant an etymologizing Stoic - cautiously weighs every word in goldsmith's scales; but there is nothing that surpasses the genuine philosophers' quarrel - a Stoic boxing-match far excels any encounter of athletes. In the satire Marcopolis, peri archeis, when Marcus created for himself a Cloud-Cuckoo-Home after his own heart, matters fared, just as in the Attic comedy, well with the peasant, but ill with the philosopher; the Celer - di'-enos - leimmatos-logos, son of Antipater the Stoic, beats in the skull of his opponent - evidently the philosophic Dilemma - with the mattock.
24. On one occasion he writes, "
The following description of himself by a poet in Varro's
might aptly parody the introduction of Lucretius (p. 474), to whom Varro as a declared enemy of the Epicurean system cannot have been well disposed, and whom he never quotes.