Library › Latin: History › De Gente Populi Romani (Fragments)
Varro’s De gente populi Romani in four books, written for Atticus, traced the Roman people back through Greek and Eastern antiquity. The fragments printed by Funaioli, mainly from Augustine’s City of God, Servius and Charisius, concern the names Areopagus, Aventine, circenses, Lycaeus and Luperci, and Serapis. Only a few passages are given. The text follows Hyginus Funaioli’s Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta (Leipzig 1907), without his testimonia, notes and apparatus.
They show Varro relating the origins of Roman names and customs to Greek and Egyptian traditions, and they were much used by Christian writers interested in sacred chronology. Funaioli prints only the fragments that bear on language, so this is a selection from the work, and his numbering is kept. The passages show Varro tracing Roman names and customs back to Greek and Eastern antiquity, and they illustrate how much of his historical writing depended on the explanation of names. Augustine’s interest in Varro’s chronology is the reason most of them survive.
About this edition. The Latin text was transcribed for this library from a public-domain printed edition (edition: Hyginus Funaioli, Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta, Leipzig 1907 (vol. 1, pp. 249–251)), using the scan and text recognition at the Internet Archive; the editor’s notes and critical apparatus are not reproduced. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.