This is a scholarly edition, published in 1851, of the surviving fragments of a lost work by the Roman antiquarian Marcus Terentius Varro. The work, Curio de cultu deorum (“Curio, On the Worship of the Gods”), does not survive intact; what remains are quotations and reports preserved chiefly in Augustine and other early Christian writers, gathered here with an editor’s commentary on how they should be arranged and understood. The edition was prepared by Leopold Kraliner and printed at the press of H. Menz, dedicated to the director of a gymnasium and the director of an orphanage, with the dedication dated early October 1851.
The Core Argument
The editor’s central claim is that the fragments preserved by Augustine and others belong to a single lost book of Varro’s, and that this book is not the same as his great Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum. The Curio, he argues, was a philosophical work, written for friends rather than for citizens, in which Varro set out the deeper doctrines of religion in a speculative spirit. The Antiquitates, by contrast, handled the same material politically—teaching what institutions had anciently existed and ought still to be maintained for the public good. Because the two works could not easily be reconciled, Augustine drew hostile passages from the Curio to refute positions Varro had advanced elsewhere, and the editor’s task is to sort out which fragments belong where.
Inside the Book
The Fragments
The body of the edition consists of numbered fragments drawn from various ancient authors. The first comes from Augustine’s City of God, where Varro, in his book On the Worship of the Gods, expounds verses of Valerius Soranus: “Jupiter almighty, king of kings, himself god and progenitor, parent and mother of the gods, one god and all things.” Varro reads this as meaning that Jupiter is both male, emitting seed, and female, receiving it—that Jupiter is the world, which sends out all seeds from itself and takes them back. Soranus therefore wrote “Jupiter progenitor and mother,” and rightly said all things are one and the same, since the world is one and in that one all things exist. Augustine adds that Juno, on this reading, is nothing other than Jupiter.
A second fragment, from Augustine’s On the Agreement of the Evangelists, reports that Varro, whom his contemporaries considered the most learned of men, thought the God of the Jews was Jupiter, judging that the name by which he is called does not matter so long as the same reality is understood. Augustine suggests Varro was perhaps deterred by the sublimity of that God, and elsewhere says Varro thought this unknowingly. Since the Romans worship nothing higher than Jupiter—as the Capitol testifies—and consider him king of all gods, Varro, observing that the Jews worship a supreme God, could suspect nothing other than Jupiter. Augustine adds that Varro said “Jovis omnia plena,” that Jupiter fills all things, and therefore rightly thought Jupiter was worshiped by the Jews, because He says through the prophet: “I fill heaven and earth.”
A third fragment concerns the office of the major gods by which Rome became so great. Varro believes Jupiter is worshiped even by those who worship one God alone without an image, but only under that name. If so, Rome treated that God badly by making an image for Him—something Varro himself disliked, so that when pressed by the perverse custom of so great a city, he did not hesitate to say and write that those who first set up images for the gods both removed fear and added error.
A fourth fragment cites Varro as a most acute man who does not openly reveal all things which seemed contemptible to him, but also to the vulgar, unless they were kept silent. Augustine says Varro should have been thought to conjecture these things unless he himself clearly said, speaking about religions, that many things are true which it is not only not useful for the vulgar to know, but even if false, it is expedient for the people to think otherwise; and therefore the Greeks enclosed their sacred rites and mysteries in silence and closed walls. Here Varro reveals the whole counsel of the “vain wisdom” by which cities and peoples are ruled.
A fifth fragment states that Varro, the most learned of authors, said that those alone seem to have observed what God is, who believed that He is the soul governing the world by reason and mind. A sixth notes that Varro said the ancient Romans for more than one hundred and seventy years worshiped the gods without images; and if this had continued, he says, the gods would be worshiped more chastely. To this opinion he adds among other testimonies even the Jewish one, and does not hesitate to conclude that those who first set up images of the gods for the people removed fear from their cities and added error, clearly thinking that the gods can easily be despised in the stupidity of images.
A seventh fragment says Varro also states that regarding the generations of the gods, the peoples inclined more to the poets than to the physicists, and therefore the ancient Romans believed their ancestors had both sex and generation, and established marriages for them. An eighth introduces Plutarch’s words, which the editor thinks copied that passage of Varro; Plutarch in his Numa says that Numa forbade the Romans to worship any image of God resembling man or animal, and that in the first hundred and seventy years of the city they built temples and sacred places but set up no image, considering it impious to liken the better nature to the worse, and they thought God could only be perceived by the mind.
The Editorial Discussion
The editor then turns to the problem of assigning these fragments to specific books. He considers Augustine’s City of God VI.4, where Augustine says Varro wrote first about human things, then about divine things, intending to show the true meaning of divine matters. Varro reportedly said he wrote about the opinions of the unlearned, not about truth, and that he would have written according to the “formula of nature” had he been founding a new city; but since he had inherited an old one, he could only follow its custom. The editor argues Augustine wrote somewhat inaccurately here, since in the fourth book Varro distinguishes two jokes, one more obscure, one clearer, confessing he wrote false things. Augustine likely had both jokes in view, specifically their common point: that Varro knowingly presented false things as true.
Comparing three passages of Varro drawn from three different books, the editor notes that one comes from book I, while another does not belong to the same book, its two parts having been inserted by Merkel, though doubtfully. He asks which book these belong to, observing that Augustine likely placed them where he discusses scenic games, which Varro treated and purified. A fragment to be placed in book X of the Res divinae is discussed, and another that may have been read in some prooemium of that book concerning ancestral custom. A third passage belongs neither to the first nor tenth book. He argues that four particles joined by similarity of sentiment should all be assigned to some other book rather than the Res divinae.
The editor examines a seventh fragment from Augustine IV.22, concerning the generations and marriages of the gods, which Augustine repeats in VI.6. He notes Varro’s words about writing common things with the poets alongside citizens, and that greater authority should be with philosophers than poets. Augustine adds that Varro elsewhere says peoples inclined more to poets than to natural philosophers regarding divine generations. The editor discusses Augustine VII.5, where Varro commended natural theology in book XVI, teaching that images of human form are signs of the immortal mind. Varro is then addressed by Augustine, asking whether in these mysteries of doctrine he lost the prudence by which he soberly saw that those who first set up images for peoples took away fear from citizens and added error, and that the ancient Romans observed the gods more chastely without images.
The editor concludes that these matters were not placed in book XVI, and that two different books’ precepts are here compared, showing one was written earlier, the other later. He then turns to the thirteenth fragment from Augustine VII.28, concerning the Samothracian mysteries, which relates to book XV of the Res divinae, about uncertain things. He notes that everyone prefers Samothracian rites to be among uncertain rather than certain things, especially since Varro professes to write things not known to his own people. The editor asks who these “his own” are—whether Romans, who are believed ignorant of Samothracian mysteries, or perhaps Stoics, so that these obscure matters testify that not even the Stoics, most curious investigators of hidden things, knew them. He asks what Varro means by promising to write for his own what he collected there, wondering whether he communicates things worthy of memory found on his journey through those regions. He notes these were reportedly said in the books of Antiquitates, which Varro wrote for Caesar the pontiff, either while living at Rome as library prefect, or at Cumae or Tusculum.
The editor argues these do not pertain to the Antiquitates, as the context itself shows. He compares Augustine VII.5, where Varro pronounced some opinion in book XVI of the Antiquitates, in which same book Augustine accuses Varro of inconsistency, noting Minerva was related to the earth in the middle of the book, which he had placed above the sky itself earlier. Augustine asserts this conflicts with what Varro taught in another book. Therefore these should be removed from the Antiquitates fragments and restored to their proper place, namely the book de cultu deorum. The editor argues that comparing what Probus preserved from Curio, there is no doubt they belong to this book. He notes Augustine, using singular and ambiguous diction, said Varro in the book de diis selectis lost what he had taught in the earlier book. This confirms what was indicated at VII.5: that Curio was written some years before the Antiquitates. Although the editor does not deny that “Curio” here could mean the earlier book, since Augustine mentioned it in earlier parts of book VII, the matter comes to the same thing, and the other explanation seems more correct. He proposes arranging doubtful fragments: those at Augustine VII.5 and VII.6 should be assigned to the beginning of book XVI; the passage at Augustine VII.28 to the same book XVI prooemium; the passage at Augustine VII.28 inserted in the middle of book XVI; the passage at Augustine IV.31 to its proper place.
The Commentary on Doctrine
The commentator opens by defending a passage of Arnobius as genuinely Arnobian, where Arnobius reports how ancient philosophers used to defend the use of images: unless one says that the gods have other forms, and that humans have accommodated visible appearances to them for the sake of honor and dowry. The commentator rejects Lipsius’s conjecture of dicis causa (“for form’s sake”) as alien to the sense and empty. He notes that many teach that images of the gods were inventions of craftsmen—citing Varro in Clement, Cicero, Tertullian, Athenagoras, and Rechenberg—and recalls that in manuscripts artem and dotem are interchanged. He had thought artem (the art of fashioning images) was meant, especially since “if the little asses had arts of fashioning” follows. But this leaves the sense incomplete, and one must first see whether the manuscript reading can be defended. The sense requires, from the following words (“if they wished to honor us with some cult”), that Arnobius meant: humans accommodated mortal appearances to the gods for the sake of honor and the rest of cult. Arnobius everywhere describes this second part of cult using terms of giving. The commentator concludes that “for the sake of honor and dowry” means these things were instituted not “for form’s sake,” and that dos (dowry) collectively signifies the variety of gifts owed to the gods—images were set up lest the gods be deprived of their honor or dowry. By naming dos rather than cultus, Arnobius hinted at the priestly office, since a priest was held to be a giver of sacred things.
The commentary then turns to how Varro’s doctrine, meant as “mysteries of doctrine” for the more expert, was published to the vulgar and became firm bulwarks of ancient religion, provoking ecclesiastical writers to attack it. It cites Augustine repeatedly: On Christian Doctrine III.7 (images as signs referring to creatures), Epistle XLIX, Enarrationes on the Psalms XCVI and CXIII (the disputant who says he does not worship the stone but the invisible numen presiding over the image; those claiming purer religion who interpret images as signifying earth, sea, air, fire, Lucifer, sun, moon, and who, when accused of worshipping bodies, reply they worship the numina presiding over them). Among Greek fathers Varro is rarely mentioned, but Clement shows he was known at Alexandria; Athanasius disputes against gentiles, ridiculing poets’ fables and refuting philosophers’ precepts. Athanasius reports that philosophers said images were fashioned so the gods might answer through them, while others claiming wiser and higher things (from the “mysteries of doctrine”) said that through images the celestial beings are invoked and angels and powers appear, thus instilling a true notion of God; images are like letters by which humans may attain understanding of God.
On the final prophecy, the commentator says he has nothing to reply to one objecting it is not of this book, except that the hydromancy example seems aptly ascribed to the book in which Varro commented on Numa’s marvelous arts, as Augustine testifies. He adds an example of magic art from Apuleius drawn from Varro: Fabius, having lost five hundred denarii, consulted Nigidius; boys stirred by a chant indicated where the buried purse was, with parts distributed, and one denarius held by Cato the philosopher, who confessed receiving it from a slave. The commentator does not refuse this, though it is uncertain from Varro’s partition; Varro, embracing Stoic and Pythagorean doctrine, was most curious in these matters, as was Nigidius Figulus.
He notes other fragments possibly belonging to the book’s remains: Augustine City of God VII.13 on the genius as each one’s rational soul, hence individual genii; Lactantius I.21 on Saturn’s human sacrifices in Latium from a certain response, with Varro as author; and Jerome I.7. He observes that the doctrine that gods were once men seems hardly set aside by Varro writing On the Worship of the Gods, and Augustine On the Agreement of the Evangelists I.23 reports Varro saying (as poet or Academic doubting) that the sacred rites of such gods were composed from each one’s life or death. Such gods are those made from men by consecration, whom Varro called Heroes, Lares, and Genii, affirming them to be airy souls. Ecclesiastical fathers strive to reduce all gods to this nature; Augustine City of God VIII.5 again mentions this doctrine, invoking Numa’s books treated by Varro in On the Worship of the Gods. The commentator finds it most persuasive that Augustine read those passages in the Divinarum book where the species of gods are enumerated, conjecturing it was book XV, de diis incertis, and does not regret the conjecture. He also suspects Varro mentioned Alexander the Great’s letter to his mother Olympias (cited by Cyprian, Minucius Felix, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Augustine), which Rigaltius thought was from Alexander Polyhistor’s book; he wonders whether Varro mentioned it in the book titled Orestes or De insania, since he could hardly have referred to Alexander’s madness there except to castigate it.
The Occasion and Character of the Work
The writer argues that Varro wrote the Curio while serving as a soldier in Asia, perhaps around 709 AUC, the year when C. Scribonius Curio was pontifex maximus. The occasion for writing was the novelty of foreign sacred rites encountered on campaign, which prompted comparison with Roman cult practices. The author identifies the work’s content as including Samothracian mysteries, the gods of the Samothracians, perhaps the boy Tralianus, and Egyptian sacred matters, besides the words of Augustine already discussed.
The writer judges that the Curio was part of a philosophical project, written not so much for citizens as for friends, and that a distinction existed between the Curio and the Antiquitates: in the Curio Varro set out the mysteries of the ultimate doctrines of religions in a philosophical manner, while in the Antiquitates he taught, in a “political” manner, what institutions had existed anciently and ought still to be maintained for the public good, adding causes for rites either doubtful or despised drawn from the most holy Stoic doctrine. Hence Augustine, understanding that the two works could not easily be reconciled, drew hostile passages from the Curio to refute positions advanced in the Antiquitates—as shown by what is disputed in each work about the world and about images.
The writer notes that mixing historical and institutional material with philosophical writing is not incongruous, and that Ritschl rightly described the style of the Logistorici as adapted from both philosophical and historical subject matter. He endorses Ritschl’s conjecture about the Curio‘s name and suggests the book may have been written in 706, the year C. Scribonius was pontifex, and preserved as a kind of laudation of Varro’s friend. He adds that the titles of the Logistorici were not yet fixed in Varro’s lifetime, and that individual books may have circulated under the name “laudationes” before being collected and composed as Logistorici after Cicero’s death. He argues that Cicero’s laudationes and Varro’s Logistorici may be the same works, and that neither Cicero nor Jerome need be charged with omission. He concludes with remarks on Varro as theologian, noting his devotion to Stoic natural philosophy and his effort to reconcile discordant traditions, and observes that Augustine, though unfair to Varro as a theologian, still preserves material showing the character of Varro’s philosophizing.
Key Ideas
The fragments and commentary turn on a set of recurring problems. One is the identity of the supreme god: Varro’s willingness to see Jupiter in the God of the Jews, and his insistence that the name matters less than the reality understood. Another is the status of images: Varro’s report that the ancient Romans worshiped without images for more than a century and a half, and his judgment that those who first set up images removed fear and added error. A third is the distinction between what the vulgar may know and what the wise keep silent—the “mysteries of doctrine” reserved for the expert, which Varro nonetheless published and which became, in the editor’s phrase, firm bulwarks of ancient religion. A fourth is the relation between natural philosophy and civic cult: Varro’s Stoic conviction that God is the soul governing the world by reason and mind, set beside his political acceptance of inherited custom.
Themes
The edition is, at bottom, a study in how a lost work can be reconstructed from its enemies. Augustine quotes Varro to refute him, and the editor must read against the grain to recover what Varro actually wrote. The Curio emerges as a philosophical meditation on religion, written for friends and shaped by travel and campaign, in which Varro tried to reconcile discordant traditions—Greek mysteries, Egyptian sacred matters, Samothracian rites, Roman custom—under a Stoic natural philosophy. The editor’s own argument is that the Curio and the Antiquitates represent two different modes of writing about the same subject: the philosophical and the political, the mysteries of doctrine and the institutions of the city. Augustine’s hostility, on this reading, is itself evidence of the Curio‘s speculative character, since it was the philosophical work that gave him the most troubling material.
Why It Matters
For readers of Roman religion and of the history of ideas, this edition matters because it gathers in one place the scattered remains of a work that no longer exists and shows how a nineteenth-century scholar went about the delicate business of assigning them to their proper books. The fragments preserve Varro’s views on the unity of the divine, on the antiquity of aniconic worship, on the generations and marriages of the gods, and on the secret doctrines reserved for the few—views that shaped how later antiquity, pagan and Christian alike, thought about the nature of religion. The editor’s commentary, dense and contentious, is itself a document of nineteenth-century classical scholarship, and the 1851 edition remains a point of reference for anyone trying to hear Varro’s voice through the quotations of those who quoted him to disagree.
