Varix

“ Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro because of the countless books which he wrote for Latin readers; and Greek writers are extravagant in their praise of their man of brass, because he has written more works than one of us could so much as copy. But since Latin ears would find a list of Greek writers tiresome, I shall confine myself to the Latin Varro. I shall try to shew that we of to-day are sleeping the sleep of Epimenides and devoting to the amassing of riches the energy which our predecessors gave to sound if secular learning. ”

“ The Jews had for a great while had three sects of philosophy peculiar to themselves; the sect of the Essens, and the sect of the Sadducees, and the third sort of opinions was that of those called Pharisees; of which sects, although I have already spoken in the second book of the Jewish War, yet will I a little touch upon them now.
3. Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly, and despise delicacies in diet; and they follow the conduct of reason; and what that prescribes to them as good for them they do; and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reason's dictates for practice. ”

“ But the fat arm of the old woman offered no resistance to his grasp, and the gold pieces did not exist for her. It was evident that she saw neither him nor them, nor the woman with him. With an unsparing hand she spanked the child, whose voice rose in shrill lamentations. Varick and his companion in guilt crept out of the room with a sense of great helplessness upon them, and he breathed a long breath of relief at finding himself—in bed, with a cold February sun shining in through his windows, and the faithful Parker at his side with the quieting announcement that his bath was ready. ”

“ Death to the Christian, Prefect, is life! Crush me by thy engines, and in the twinkling of an eye is my soul dwelling with God, and looking down with compassion upon thy stony heart.'
'Verily, Fronto,' said Varus, 'these Christians are an ingenious people. What a wonderful fancy is this. But, Christian,' turning to Macer, 'it were a pity surely [Pg 364] for thee to die. Thou hast a family as I learn. ”

“ St Augustine informs us that Varro examined in it all the various sects of philosophers, of which he enumerated upwards of 280. The sect of the old Academy was that which he himself followed, and its tenets he maintained in opposition to all others. He classed these numerous sects in the following curious manner: All men chiefly desire, or place their happiness in, four things—pleasure—rest—these two united, (which Epicurus, however, termed pleasure,) or soundness of body and mind. ”

“ Varick, sitting stiffly on the old marble bench, became conscious of an odd dizziness, and set his teeth with a sudden determination to show no evidence of it. She had risen and was moving about among the rose-bushes just behind them. Almost before he missed her she had returned, holding in her hand a beautiful salmon-hued rose, with a flame-colored, crumply heart. He had never before seen one like it. As she held it near him it exhaled an exquisitely reminiscent perfume—the perfume of old joys, old memories, and loves of long ago.
"Is it not beautiful?" she said. "It is called the noisette. ”

“ A woman or a ghost? A creature of this world or a fantasy of the night? Wherever she was, whatever she was, he loved her and he wanted her. And in that hour of his agony her eyes had told that she loved him.
It was eight months before they met again. Varick's friends thought him changed, and quite possibly he was. The insouciant boy of twenty-eight had become a man, a sympathetic, serious, thoughtful man, still given to sports and out-door life, but more than all devoted to a search which had taken in no end of out-of-the-way European towns. ”

“ Varrick,—Your letter has just reached me, and oh! I can not tell you how happy your words made me. But, Mr. Varrick, it can not be; we are destined by a fate most cruel, to be nothing to each other. I may as well tell you the truth— I do love you with all my heart. But there is a barrier [Pg 182] between us which can never be bridged over in this world. ”

“ The gospels generally have left upon the minds of men an impression unfavourable to the Pharisees. They contain denunciations attributed to our Lord and assigned—with obvious injustice in some cases—to the scribes of this sect. It is to be remembered that the Pharisees were the only sect of the Jews who survived in Christian times and that the Pharisees were never a homogeneous body possessed of a definite policy or body of doctrine. ”

“ A verger was showing a lady over a church when she asked him if the vicar was a married man. "No, ma'am," he answered, "he's a chalybeate."
A verger showing a large church to a stranger, pointed out another man and said, "That is the other verger." The gentleman said, "I did not know there were two of you," and the verger replied, "Oh yes, sir, he werges up one side of the church and I werges up the other."
Two little stories connected with Bishop Walsham How's episcopal life may well conclude the anecdotes about vergers. The Bishop's dislike of ostentation was well known. ”

“ But of whatever breed she be, the foreign gods will not presume, I trust, to call a goddess base-born who is a Roman citizen. Who can number the deities to whom the guardianship of Rome was entrusted? Indigenous and imported, both of heaven, earth, hell, seas, fountains, rivers; and, as Varro says, gods certain and uncertain, male and female: for, as among animals, so among all kinds of gods are there these distinctions. ”

“ Those whose works have been preserved are only a few out of a larger circle who worked each in his own province of art, and listened to and criticised the works of their [pg 50] friends. Of the poets belonging to this circle whose works have not reached us, Varius, the older contemporary and life-long friend of Virgil, first acquired distinction as a writer of that kind of epic peculiar to Rome which treated of contemporary subjects and was dedicated to the personal glory of some great man. ”

“ Moreover, he gave him a seal-ring, a sword and a wrapper containing two tunics [FN#365] embroidered with gold and jewels, saying, “O Wazir Faris, when your sons grow up to man’s estate, give to each of them one of these tunics.” Then said he, “In the name of Allah! May the Almighty accomplish your desire! And now nothing remaineth for thee but to depart, relying on the blessing of the Lord the Most High, for the King looketh for thy return night and day and his eye is ever gazing on the road.” So the Wazir advanced to the prophet Solomon son of David (upon both of whom be the Peace!) ”

“ As an historian he is most untrustworthy, but there are many gaps in Roman history (e.g. owing to the lost books of Livy) which he helps to supply. His style shows all the faults of his age and rhetorical training; his work was probably intended to be a commonplace-book for students and teachers of rhetoric.
M. TERENTIUS VARRO, 116-27 B.C. 1. Life. VARRO.
Born at Reate, in the Sabine territory, which was the nurse of all manly virtues, Varro was brought up in the good old-fashioned way. ”

“ You know Warry's interest in church matters is abnormal. The boy really knows a lot of theology for one who has never studied it. He has, he says, a neat taste in bishops, whatever that means—" the bishop chuckled softly,—"and whenever one of my brethren visits me, Warry always lays himself out to give us what he calls a warm little time. A few days ago I had a letter from the Patriarch of Alexandria, whom I don't know, in which he set forth that Doctor Warrick Raridan, of my diocese, had written him proposing a great reunion of Christendom, based on the Coptic rite. ”

“ But beware of sin; for every sin shall be as a stain on thy robe. Keep it white for but one day, and all the joys of Paradise shall be thine eternal reward.”
As the angel spake, he cast round the form of Fagir a radiant robe, white as the snow on the mountains. Then the angel touched the broad border of the robe, and on the border appeared in letters [12] of gold, Fear God, and keep his commandments (Eccles. xii. 13) . Fagir gazed in wonder on the inscription; but even as he gazed it faded away. He turned to look on the angel, but behold! the bright messenger had vanished. ”

“ The following gods, certainly, Varro signalizes as select, devoting one book to this subject: Janus, Jupiter, Saturn, Genius, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Sol, Orcus, father Liber, Tellus, Ceres, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, Venus, [Pg 260] Vesta; of which twenty gods, twelve are males, and eight females. Whether are these deities called select, because of their higher spheres of administration in the world, or because they have become better known to the people, and more worship has been expended on them? ”

“ The woman came and told these things to the king. After a little he saw the vezir in the dress of an Arab, and he came and fell at the king’s feet and mourned and wept. The king said, ‘O vezir, I wronged thee and took thy wealth and deposed thee; ah! the past is past, the gone is gone. Befriend me as much as in thee lies, and if God most high raise me to my throne, I know the honor I will do thee.’ The vezir said, ‘O king, if thou tookest my wealth, it was thine own wealth; if thou didst depose me, I was thy slave and had done wrong ”

“ Those that knew him from the beginning could testify for him that he was a Pharisee, that he was not only of the Jewish religion, and an observer of all the ordinances of it, but that he was of the most strict sect of that religion, most nice and exact in observing the institutions of it himself, and most rigid and critical in imposing them upon others. He was not only called a Pharisee, but he lived a Pharisee. All that knew him knew very well that never any Pharisee conformed more punctually to the rules of his order than he did. ”

“ A certain Jewish king used to persecute the Christians, desiring to exterminate their faith. His Vazir persuaded him to try a stratagem, namely, to mutilate the Vazir himself, and expel him from his court, with the intent that he might take refuge with the Christians, and stir up mutual dissensions amongst them. The Vazir's suggestion was adopted.1 He fled to the Christians, and found no difficulty in persuading them that he had been treated in that barbarous way on account of his attachment to the Christian faith. ”

“ The same thing is happening here among ourselves. As the good churchmen at Varallo have thrown away their Flemish dancer, their footprint of the Saviour, and their Virgins that box thieves’ ears and persist in turning round and smiling even after they have been asked not to do so, so we, by the mouths of our Bishops, are flinging away our Genesis, our Exodus, and I know not how much more. ”

“ The testimony of Varro is also cited by the naturalist to show that there were people in the Hellespont, near Pasium, who could cure the bite of snakes by their saliva.... It is remarkable that in administering the rite of baptism the priest, among other ceremonies, moistens a napkin with his own saliva, and then touches with it the eyes and nose of the child, accompanying the action by the word Ephphatha. It was with a similar rite that Roman infants received their names on the Dies Lustricus.” [122]
The Satirists were not slow in holding up these various superstitions to deserved ridicule. ”

“ Abbâ Isaac, the priest of the Cells, used to say that Abbâ Pambô said, “The manner of the apparel which a monk ought to wear should be such that if it were cast outside the cell for three days no one would carry it away.”
169. A certain brother asked one of the old men a question, and said unto him, “Dost thou wish me to keep two darics as provision for the needs of the feebleness of the body?” And the old man, perceiving his mind and also that he wished to keep them, said unto him, “Yea.” ”

“ What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. ”

“ Varick reflected grimly that it was not the "amusing things" which occasioned his perturbation, but he kept his reflection to himself and smiled down at her sunnily.
"For example," she continued, "as we really do not exist here, and as we are not visible to these people, we cannot do anything that will affect them in any way or attract their attention. ”

“ The King and his Wazir set forth in magnificent array, and after a rapid march, they arrived before the holy city Medina, which may God keep in high renown! The Wazir then said to the King, "Here is the holy house of God, and the place of great ceremonies. No one should enter here who is not perfectly pure, and with head and feet bare. ”

“ The word by which Virgil recognises the agency of this impersonal, or perhaps we should rather say undefined, Power, is ‘Fatum,’ or more often in the plural, ‘Fata.’ It is by the ‘Fates’ that the action is set in motion and directed to its issue. The human and even the divine actors in the story are instruments in their hands; some more, some less conscious of the part they are performing. Even Jupiter is represented rather as cognisant of the Fates than as their author. ”