Varro Atacinus
Roman writer and poet
Publius Terentius Varro Atacinus (Latin: [ˈpuːbliʊs tɛˈrɛntiʊs ˈwarːoː atakiːnʊs]; 82 – c. 35 BC) was a Roman poet, more polished in his style than the more famous and learned Varro Reatinus, his contemporary, and therefore more widely read by the Augustan writers. He was born in the province of Gallia Narbonensis, the southern part of Gaul with its capital at Narbonne, on the river Atax (now the Aude), for his cognomen Atacinus indicates his birthplace. Varro Atacinus was also in the neoteric circle, which included other notable poets such as Catullus and Marcus Furius Bibaculus.
Writings
Only fragments of his works survive. His first known works are Bellum sequanicum, a poem on Julius Caesar's campaign against Ariovistus, and some satires; these should not be confused with the Menippean Satires of the other Varro, of which some 600 fragments survive. He also wrote a geographical poem, Chorographia; Ephemeris, a hexameter poem on weather-signs after Aratus, from which Virgil has borrowed; and (late in life) elegies to his lover Leucadia.
His translation of the Alexandrian poet Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica into Latin has some fine surviving lines; and was singled out for praise by Ovid: "Of Varro too what age will not be told/And Jason's Argo and the fleece of gold?". Oskar Seyffert considered that the poem to have been "the most remarkable production in the domain of narrative epic poetry between the time of Ennius and that of Vergil".
Of Varro's fragments, the epigram on "The Tombs of the Great" is well-known; whether or not it is truly Varro's is debatable:
Patrons
Cicero as well as Caesar have been suggested as possible patrons of Varro's writings.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q355732. VIAF identifies the subject as 77112123. The Library of Congress control number is nr95022110. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Varro Atacinus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.