(Marcus Terentius), the most learned of all the Romans, was born 28 years B.C. He was a senator of the first distinction, both for birth and merit; and bore many great offices. He was an intimate friend of Cicero; and this friendship was confirmed and immortalized by a mutual dedication of their learned works to each other. Thus Cicero dedicated his Academic Questions to Varro; and Varro dedicated his treatise on the Latin tongue to Cicero.

In the civil wars he was zealously attached to Pompey; but after his defeat soon submitted to Caesar, who was reconciled to him. Afterwards he applied his whole time to letters, and had the charge of the Greek and Latin libraries at Rome. He was above 70 when Antony proscribed him; however, he found means to escape and save his life, though he could not save some of his works and his library from being plundered by the soldiers. After this storm was over, he pursued his studies as usual; and Pliny relates, that he continued to study and to write when he was 88 years of age. He was 80 when he wrote his three books De re Rustica, which are still extant. Five of his books De lingua Latina, which he addressed to Cicero, are also extant. There remain, too, divers fragments of his works, particularly of his Menippean Satires, which are medleys of prose and verse; and Scaliger has collected some of his epigrams from among the Catalebia Virgilii. His books De lingua Latina, and De re Rustica, were printed with the notes of Joseph Scaliger, Turnebus, and Victorinus, by Henry Stephens at Paris, 1573, in 8vo, and have been published separately since among the Auditors de lingua Latina, and the Auditors de re Rustica.

There was another Varro of antiquity, called Atacinus, who was born about 10 years after the first, at a small town near Narbonne. Though infinitely below the Roman in learning, he was at least as good, if not a better, poet; which perhaps has made Lilius Gyraldus and other critics confound them. He composed many works in verse; some fragments of which were collected, and published with those of other ancient poets, at Lyons in 1693. His chief works were, A poem on the war with the Sequani, a people of Gaul; and the Astronomics, that went under the name of Planciades the grammarian. But the Argonautica, in four books, was what gained him the greatest reputation; and though indeed nothing but a translation of Apollonius Rhodius, yet was so well done as to be commended by Quintilian.