s so written can only be advised to study
in literary matters a becoming silence.

Professional Sciences.
Latin Philology
Varro

Of the sciences only a single one manifested vigorous life,
that of Latin philology. The scheme of linguistic and antiquarian
research within the domain of the Latin race, planned by Silo,
was carried out especially by his disciple Varro on the grandest scale.
There appeared comprehensive elaborations of the whole stores
of the language, more especially the extensive grammatical commentaries
of Figulus and the great work of Varro -De Lingua Latina-;
monographs on grammar and the history of the language, such as
Varro's writings on the usage of the Latin language, on synonyms,
on the age of the letters, on the origin of the Latin tongue;
scholia on the older literature, especially on Plautus;
works of literary history, biographies of poets, investigations
into the earlier drama, into the scenic division of the comedies
of Plautus, and into their genuineness. Latin archaeology,
which embraced the whole older history and the ritual law apart
from practical jurisprudence, was comprehended in Varro's "Antiquities
of Things Human and Divine," which was and for all times remained
the fundamental treatise on the subject (published between 687
and 709). The first portion, "Of Things Human," described the primeval
age of Rome, the divisions of city and country, the sciences
of the years, months, and days, lastly, the public transactions
at home and in war; in the second half, "Of Things Divine," the state-
theology, the nature and significance of the colleges of experts,
of the holy places, of the religious festivals, of sacrificial
and votive gifts, and lastly of the gods themselves were summarily
unfolded. Moreover, besides a number of monographs--
e. g. on the descent of the Roman people, on the Roman gentes
descended from Troy, on the tribes--there was added, as a larger
and more independent supplement, the treatise "Of the Life
of the Roman People"--a remarkable attempt at a history of Roman manners,
which sketched a picture of the state of domestic life, finance,
and culture in the regal, the early republican, the Hannibalic,
and the most recent period. These labours of Varro were based
on an empiric knowledge of the Roman world and its adjacent Hellenic
domain more various and greater in its kind than any other Roman
either before or after him possessed--a knowledge to which living
obs