born probably A. u. c. 672, five years after Catullus, six years before Asinius Pollio, twelve before Virgil, and seventeen before Horace of all these poets the intimate friend. He was one of those who saved the Aeneid from the flames and assisted in correcting it. Of his poem on the death of Julius Caesar some lines survive, all pure and spirited, some of masculine beauty; of his panegyric on Augustus two lines are supposed to be quoted by Horace, Epist. 1. xvi. 27, 28. Quintilian declared that his tragedy of Thyestes might stand a comparison with any production of the Grecian stage.

Varro, P. Terentius Atacīnus, so called from the river Atax in Gallia Narbonensis, his native province; a translator of respectable talents, and a not very successful writer of satires and other poems.

Varus. See Quintilius. Horace speaks of another Varus as the faithless lover of Canidia.

Veianius, a famous gladiator, who, after many battles, obtained leave to retire from the arena, and consecrated his arms to Hercules. Viscus, one of the two sons of Vibius Viscus, of the equestrian order, both of whom are said to have been poets.

Voltur (Vultur), the modern Voltore, a picturesque mountain between Lucania and Apulia, near Horace's birth-place.

Xanthias Phoceus, (Phoceus dissyllable,) i. e. youth with auburn locks (avós) from Phocis, the addition of his birth-place giving a certain formality and dignity to the address. The name is either invented by Horace, or adopted from a Greek ode. Many of Horace's love-poems are "merely a Roman artist's translations or paraphrases from the Greek originals."

Zethus and Amphion, twin-sons of Zeus (Jupiter) and Antiope, mythic founders of Thebes. To reconcile conflicting pretensions, Pausanias supposes that Cadmus was the original settler of the hill of the Cadmeia, while Amphion and Zethus extended the settlement to the lower city. Zethus despised music, holding it in suspicion as conducing to effeminacy and vicious sloth, and bade Amphion throw his lyre away. There is a fine contrast in the legendary characters of the two brothers, "the rude and unpolished, but energetic, Zethus, and the refined and amiable, but dreamy, Amphion." (See Grote, Hist. of Greece, I. xiv.)

FINIS.