Gaius Terentius Varro
Roman consul 216 BC
Gaius Terentius Varro (fl. 218-200 BCE) was a Roman politician and general active during the Second Punic War. A plebeian son of a butcher, he was a populist politician who was elected consul for the year 216 BCE. While holding that office, he was decisively defeated by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae.
Early years
Varro was a member of a plebeian family, the gens Terentia, and the first man of note in his family. His father was reportedly a butcher who had "employed his son in the menial tasks associated with that profession." Despite this low birth, on his father's death he used the inheritance to embark on a public career, making his name by prosecuting those of higher status and progressing through the various magistracies of the cursus honorum, holding the quaestorship and both the plebeian and curule aedileships. When discussing the provenance of his cognomen, Servius suggests that this Varro served in the First Illyrian War. His first time in office for which details survive was the praetorship of 218 BCE, during which he was perhaps posted in Sardinia.
In 217 BCE, having completed his praetorship, Varro was one of the few senators to support the elevation of Marcus Minucius Rufus to the dictatorship, apparently more because of the popular support of the plebeians that could be won by doing so than from any personal conviction. Not only was Varro successful in appointing Minucius co-dictator, but he was also elected consul for the year 216 BCE.
Consulship
Varro and his colleague, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, assumed the consulship two years after the outbreak of the Second Punic War and the year after the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus had earned the epithet cunctator (delayer) by refusing to engage Hannibal's army in pitched battle. Varro and Paullus, however, took the rare step of combining the two consular armies, which each would normally lead separately, into an 85,000-strong force to face Hannibal.
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