Lucius Varius Rufus was a Roman poet of the Augustan

Augustus

Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...

 age.

He was the friend of Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

, after whose death he and Plotius Tucca

Plotius Tucca

Plotius Tucca was a Roman poet and a friend of Virgil's. He was in the circle of friends with Virgil and Maecenas, as indicated by Horace...

 prepared the Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

for publication, and of Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

, 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

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was a Roman statesman and general. He was a close friend, son-in-law, lieutenant and defense minister to Octavian, the future Emperor Caesar Augustus...

 (Odes, i. 6); Virgil (under the name of Lycidas, Ecl. ix. 35) regrets that he had hitherto produced nothing comparable to the work of Varius or Helvius Cinna

Helvius Cinna

Gaius Helvius Cinna was an influential neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic, a little older than the generation of Catullus and Calvus.His magnum opus Zmyrna established his literary fame; a mythological epic poem focused on the incestuous love of Smyrna for her father Cinyras, treated after...

.

From Macrobius (Saturnalia, vi. I, 39; 2, 19) 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 (Sat. i. 10, 43) probably alludes to another epic, and, according to the scholiast on Epistles, j. 16, 2 729, these three lines are taken bodily from a panegyric

Panegyric

A panegyric is a formal public speech, or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical. It is derived from the Greek πανηγυρικός meaning "a speech fit for a general assembly"...

 of Varius on Augustus.

But his most famous literary production was the tragedy Thyestes, which Quintilian

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...

 (Inst. Orat. x. 1, 98) declares fit to rank with any of the Greek tragedies. The didascalia (which is preserved in a Paris manuscript) informs us that it was produced at the games celebrated (29 BC) by Augustus in honour of the victory at Actium

Battle of Actium

The Battle of Actium was the decisive confrontation of the Final War of the Roman Republic. It was fought between the forces of Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII. The battle took place on 2 September 31 BC, on the Ionian Sea near the city of Actium, at the Roman...

, and that Varius received a present of a million sesterces from the emperor.

Fragments in E. Bahrens, Frag. Poetarum Romanorum (1886); monographs by A. Weichert (1836) and R. Unger (1870, 1878, 1898); Martin Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur (1899), ii. 1; Teuffel

Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel

Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel , German classical scholar, was born at Ludwigsburg in the kingdom of Württemberg...

, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 223.