Background
Lucius Varius Rufus was born c. 74 BC.
Lucius Varius Rufus was born c. 74 BC.
He was the friend of Virgil, after whose death he and Plotius Tucca prepared the Aeneid for publication, and of Horace, for whom he and Virgil obtained an introduction to Maecenas. Horace speaks of him as a master of epic and the only poet capable of celebrating the achievements of Vipsanius Agrippa ; Virgil regrets that he had hitherto produced nothing comparable to the work of Varius or Helvius Cinna.
From Macrobius 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 probably alludes to another epic, and, according to the scholiast on Epistles, I 16, 2 729, these three lines are taken bodily from a panegyric of Varius on Augustus.
The didascalia (which is preserved in a Paris manuscript) informs us that it was produced at the games celebrated in 29 BC by Augustus in honour of the victory at Actium, and that Varius received a present of a million sesterces from the emperor.