Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro was born in 116 BC and lived through the collapse of the Republic into the early years of the Empire. A polymath who ranged across grammar, agriculture, philosophy, history, and religion, he produced a staggering volume of work — later writers counted hundreds of volumes. Petrarch would call him "the third great light of Rome," ranked behind only Virgil and Cicero. To separate him from a younger contemporary also named Varro, he's sometimes called Varro Reatinus, after the town of Rieti. He died in 27 BC, having outlasted the Republic he'd spent a lifetime documenting.