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Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) ranks amongst the most influential personalities of Roman cultural history. Of his monumental work, amounting possibly to six hundred books, there remains only a fragment: the treatise Res rusticae (On Agriculture) in three books, and six books of the original 25 of the treatise De lingua Latina (On the Latin Language). In his works, Varro covers virtually all spheres of human activity. However, what accounts for the biggest part of his writings is the work that was in the widest sense antiquarian. Varro's life mission was the literary salvation of traditions consigned to oblivion by the evolution of society. A part of this was also the interest in the history of his own language, which he primarily approached as the search for the origin of words, that is, their etymology. At the same time, Varro used etymologizing as a means of general interpretation in works that were other than primarily linguistically oriented. And it is this very method that the following generations associate Varro with in particular. The treatise De lingua Latina had originally 25 books, according to later testimonies. It is the first half of the treatise that we have a clearer idea about: the books II–VII dealt with the discipline of etymology, the books VIII–XIII – using modern terminology – with morphology, while the first three of each set of six books was a theoretical introduction to the discipline, and the latter three were a collection of examples. Of the first etymological sextet, it is the practical part that has reached us (books V–VII), while of the latter set it is the theoretical part (VIII–X). In the fifth, sixth and seventh book of the treatise De lingua Latina, which are contained in this volume, Varro provides etymological explanations of approximately 1450 words. Book V. is devoted to, in Varro's own definition, “the words denoting places and those things which are in them”, VI. treats “the words denoting times, and those things which take place in them” and VII. explains “both of these as expressed by the poets”. Book V. includes explanations of geographical terms, then the words designating “those which deal with immortals and mortals”, that is the names of gods and living beings, and then the things “which are made by human hands” (food, instruments for weaving, kitchenware, furniture, toiletries, clothes, farming tools, buildings and furnishings, coins and everything pertaining to money). Book VI. opens with words designating time data, with a long passage devoted to the names of Roman feasts, and continues with the words concerning human activity in a broad sense. Book VII. is then a collection of quotations by archaic authors and explanations of poetical or archaic expressions from these (to Varro's contemporaries already unknown or hardly understandable) pertaining to the fields treated in the previous two books. With several expressions explained by Varro being hapax legomenona and many terms describing life and institutions not having survived elsewhere than in Varro, this text is of overriding importance for contemporary sciences dealing with antiquity in their wide scope. It is not only Varro's explanations that are of immense value, but also the frequent quotations from archaic literary and non‑literary (e.g. legal or ritual) texts. Although we deal with a work of such importance, there are – perhaps due to Varro's economical and difficult to read style of writing, and the problematic survival of the text – only very few translations even on an international scale. The present text is the first translation of Varro into Czech. The ambition of the translation was to preserve Varro's style to the biggest possible extent, albeit it might be for those normally dealing with the literary texts of Varro's contemporaries, particularly the great Cicero, almost shocking. After all, it was not the esthetics of his texts that Varro was admired for both by his contemporaries and his followers. His fo |
