- Lucius Varius Rufus
Lucius Varius Rufus (ca. 74 - 14 BC), Roman poet of the Augustan age.
He was the friend of
Virgil , after whose death he andPlotius Tucca prepared the "Aeneid " for publication, and ofHorace , for whom he and Virgil obtained an introduction toMaecenas . Horace speaks of him as a master of epic and the only poet capable of celebrating the achievements of Vipsanius Agrippa ("Odes", i. 6); Virgil (under the name of Lycidas, Ecl. ix. 35) regrets that he had hitherto produced nothing comparable to the work of Varius orHelvius Cinna .From
Macrobius ("Saturnalia", vi. I, 39; 2, 19) we learn that Varius composed an epic poem "De Morte", some lines of which are quoted as having been imitated or appropriated by Virgil; Horace ("Sat." i. 10, 43) probably alludes to another epic, and, according to the scholiast on "Epistles", j. 16, 2 729, these three lines are taken bodily from apanegyric of Varius on Augustus.But his most famous literary production was the tragedy "Thyestes", which
Quintilian ("Inst. Orat." x. 1, 98) declares fit to rank with any of the Greek tragedies. The "didascalia" (which is preserved in a Paris manuscript) informs us that it was produced at the games celebrated (29 BC) by Augustus in honour of the victory at Actium, and that Varius received a present of a millionsesterce s from the emperor.Fragments in
E. Bahrens , "Frag. Poetarum Romanorum" (1886); monographs byA. Weichert (1836) andR. Unger (1870, 1878, 1898);Martin Schanz , "Geschichte der römischen Litteratur" (1899), ii. 1; Teuffel, "Hist. of Roman Literature" (Eng. trans., 1900), 223.References
*1911
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