TERENTIUS

Publius Terentius Varro Atacinus. A Roman poet, born 82 B.C. by the river Atax in Gallia Narbonensis; he died before 36 B.C. According to an ancient authority, he only began to study Greek literature in his 35th year. Accordingly his satires on the model of Lucilius, and his epic poem on Caesar's war with the Sequani (Bellum Sequanicum) must belong to his earlier years. He afterwards followed the fashion of imitating the Alexandrian School, which was just coming into vogne, and composed, besides elegies and didactic poems after Greek models, his epic poem, entitled the Argonautoe, in four books, a free imitation of the Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius. This masterpiece, which has been much praised by later poets, and of which (as of his poems in general) only scattered fragments remain, appears to have been the most remarkable production in the domain of narrative epic poetry between the time of Ennius and that of Vergil.