Inspired Leaders versus Emerging Nations: Varro’s and Cicero’s Views on Early Rome

Abstract

Cicero and Varro were not the closest of friends. We know of only comparatively few letters of Cicero’s addressed to Varro, and we remember how embarrassing a task it proved for Cicero to dedicate one of his works to the Reatine polymath.1 Scholars have always wondered why their relationship was not a particularly intimate one, and in fact rather the opposite. Both were born from regional elites and had to work their way through the Roman cursus honorum (Varro stopped after having reached the praetorship); both joined Pompey’s side in the Civil War and, later on, fell victim to the proscriptions which only Varro was lucky enough to survive. They had close friends in common, most conspicuously Pomponius Atticus; both were interested in philosophy and in research on the Roman past, illustrious protagonists in the process of rationalization Claudia Moatti has described so impressively in her magisterial book La raison de Rome;2 both were deeply worried about imminent loss of tradition.3 So we might imagine that their similar biographical backgrounds, similar interests and similar conservative anxieties should have provided more than enough common ground, but what we encounter from Cicero’s part amounts to nothing more than distant politeness and a less than enthusiastic and sometimes rather grudging acknowledgement of Varro’s merits. To try to explain what may have prevented them from becoming close friends would amount to indulging in psychological speculation; what will be attempted here is rather to take a closer look at what has been labeled their ‘conservativism’ or, to put it in a more neutral way, their perspective on the