Lastly, poetry in a prose form begins in this epoch. The law of genuine naive as well as conscious art, which had hitherto remained unchangeable - that the poetical subject-matter and the metrical setting should go together - gave way before the intermixture and disturbance of all kinds and forms of art, which is one of the most significant features of this period. As to romances indeed nothing farther is to be noticed, than that the most famous historian of this epoch, Sisenna, did not esteem himself too good to translate into Latin the much-read Milesian tales of Aristides - licentious fashionable novels of the most stupid sort.

A more original and more pleasing phenomenon in this debateable border-land between poetry and prose was the aesthetic writings of Varro, who was not merely the most important representative of Latin philologico-historical research, but one of the most fertile and most interesting authors in belles-lettres. Descended from a plebeian gens which had its home in the Sabine land but had belonged for the last two hundred years to the Roman senate, strictly reared in antique discipline and decorum[21], and already at the beginning of this epoch a man of maturity, Marcus Terentius Varro of Reate (638-727) belonged in politics, as a matter of course, to the institutional party, and bore an honourable and energetic part in its doings and sufferings. He supported it, partly in literature - as when he combated the first coalition, the "three-headed monster" in pamphlets; partly in more serious warfare, where we found him in the army of Pompeius as commandant of Further Spain[22]. When the cause of the republic was lost, Varro was destined by his conqueror to be librarian of the library which was to be formed in the capital. The troubles of the following period drew the old man once more into their vortex, and it was not till seventeen years after Caesar's death, in the eighty-ninth year of his well-occupied life, that death called him away.

The aesthetic writings, which have made him a name, were brief essays, some in simple prose and of graver contents, others humorous sketches the prose groundwork of which was inlaid with various poetical effusions. The former were the "philosophico-historical dissertation", (logistorici), the latter the Menippean Satires. In neither case did he follow Latin models, and the Satura of Varro in particular was by no means based on that of Lucilius. In fact the Roman Satura in general was not properly a fixed species of art, but only indicated negatively the fact that the "multifarious poe" was not to be included under any of the recognized forms of art; and accordingly the Satura poetry assumed in the hands of every gifted poet a different and peculiar character. It was rather in the pre-Alexandrian Greek philosophy that Varro found the models for his more severe as well as for his lighter aesthetic works; for the graver dissertations, in the dialogues of Heraclides of Heraclea on the Black Sea (d. about 450), for the satires, in the writings of Menippus of Gadara in Syria (flourishing about 475). The choice was significant.

Heraclides, stimulated as an author by Plato's philosophic dialogues, had amidst the brilliance of their form totally lost sight of the scientific contents and made the poetico-fabulistic dress the main matter; he was an agreeable and largely-read author, but far from a philosopher. Menippus was quite as little a philosopher, but the most genuine literary representative of that philosophy whose wisdom consisted in denying philosophy and ridiculing philosophers the cynical wisdom of Diogenes; a comic teacher of serious wisdom, he proved by examples and merry sayings that except an upright life everything is vain in earth and heaven, and nothing more vain than the disputes of so-called sages. These were the true models for Varro, a man full of old Roman indignation at the pitiful times and full of old Roman humour, by no means destitute withal of plastic talent but as to everything which presented the appearance not of palpable fact but of idea or even of system, utterly stupid, and perhaps the most unphilosophical among the unphilosophical Romans[23]. But Varro was no slavish pupil. The impulse and in general the form he derived from Heraclides and Menippus; but his was a nature too individual and too decidedly Roman not to keep his imitative creations essentially independent and national.

For his grave dissertations, in which a moral maxim or other subject of general interest is handled, he disdained, in his framework to approximate to the Milesian tales, as Heraclides had done, and so to serve up to the reader even childish little stories like those of Abaris and of the maiden reawakened to life after being seven days dead. But seldom he borrowed the dress from the nobler myths of the Greeks, as in the essay "Orestes or concerning Madnes"; history ordinarily afforded him a worthier frame for his subjects, more especially the contemporary history of his country, so that these essays became, as they were called laudationes of esteemed Romans, above all of the Coryphaei of the constitutional party. Thus the dissertation "concerning Peace", was at the same time a memorial of Metellus Pius, the last in the brilliant series of successful generals of the senate; that "concerning the Worship of the God" was at the same time destined to preserve the memory of the highly-respected Optimate and Pontifex Gaius Curio; the essay "on Fat" was connected with Marius, that "on the Writing of Histor". with Sisenna the first historian of this epoch, that "on the Beginnings of the Roman Stag" with the princely giver of scenic spectacles Scaurus, that "on Number" with the highly-cultured Roman banker Atticus. The two philosophico-historical essays "Laelius or concerning Friendship", "Cato or concerning Old Age", which Cicero wrote probably after the model of those of Varro, may give us some approximate idea of Varro's half-didactic, half-narrative, treatment of these subjects.

The Menippean satire was handled by Varro with equal originality of form and contents; the bold mixture of prose and verse is foreign to the Greek original, and the whole intellectual contents are pervaded by Roman idiosyncrasy - one might say, by a savour of the Sabine soil. These satires like the philosophico-historical essays handle some moral or other theme adapted to the larger public, as is shown by the several titles - Columnae Herculis, peri doxeis; Euren ei Lopas to Poma, peri gegameikoton, Est Modus Matulae, peri metheis; Papiapapae, peri egkomios. The plastic dress, which in this case might not be wanting, is of course but seldom borrowed from the history of his native country, as in the satire Serranus, peri archairesion. The Cynic-world of Diogenes on the other hand plays, as might be expected, a great part; we meet with the Kounistor, the Kounorreiton, the 'Ippokouon, the 'Oudrokouon, the Kounodidaskalikon - and others of a like kind. Mythology is also laid under contribution for comic purposes; we find a Prometheus Liber, an Ajax Stramenticius, a Hercules Socraticus, a Sesqueulixes who had spent not merely ten but fifteen years in wanderings. The outline of the dramatic or romantic framework is still discoverable from the fragments in some pieces, such as the Prometheus Liber, the Sexagessis, Manius; it appears that Varro frequently, perhaps regularly, narrated the tale as his own experience; e. g. in the Manius the dramatis personae go to Varro and discourse to him "because he was known to them as a maker of books".