BICS-60-2  2017 © 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London 49 VARRO’S WRITINGS ON THE SENATE: A RECONSTRUCTIVE HYPOTHESIS ELISABETTA TODISCO Abstract: On frst becoming consul in 70 bc, Pompey asked his friend Varro to provide him with a manual on how to conduct a session of the senate. The manual was later lost. Varro returned to the subject decades later in one or more letters to Oppianus. Aulus Gellius reports on both stages of Varro’s composition, political assistance and literary composition, summarizing the contents of the letter to Oppianus. Here I will attempt to reconstruct the work, putting it in its context and discussing its implications. Keywords: Varro, Pompey, senate, Oppianus, Gellius 1. Introduction Pompey was consul for the frst time in 70 bc. He was skilled in military affairs and latterly in ius belli ac pacis, 1 but not in senatorial procedure, and so he asked his young familiaris to supply him with a manual on conducting a session of the senate. Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights (14.7) reports as follows: Gnaeus Pompeius was elected consul for the frst time with Marcus Crassus. When he was on the point of entering upon the offce, because of his long military service he was unacquainted with the method of convening and consulting the senate, and of city affairs in general. He therefore asked his friend Marcus Varro to make him a book of instructions εἰσαγωγικός, as Varro himself termed it, from which he might learn (disceret) what he ought to say and do when he brought a measure before the House. 2 Pompey had a trusted friend in Varro, closely allied to him since the war in Spain in 77 bc. Varro had already dedicated a book of Ephemerides to him at the time of this expedition, 3 but most of all he was an expert on antiquitates. Since the Romans had no fxed written constitution, experts in antiquarian matters were indispensable. Their knowledge was to assume even greater importance during the political power games of the frst century bc, when procedures hallowed by custom were set aside. 4 Now, the manual in question was lost, but Varro rewrote it by treating the same material in a letter 5 to a certain Oppianus, which ended up in the fourth book of the Epistolicae Quaestiones, as Gellius attests (14.7): 1 See Cic. Balb. 15. 2 Trans. Rolfe 1961, occasionally adapted. On Gellius’s citation of Varro see also Marshall, section 2, in this volume. 3 Della Corte 1970: 52, n. 8 and 250 relates the commentarius for Pompey to Varro’s Ephemerides, the frst of which was composed in 77 bc. Moatti 1997: 337, n. 44 [= 2015: 65, n. 102] disagrees. 4 Rawson 1985: 232–49; Wallace-Hadrill 1997: 14–5; Pani 2006: 727–40. 5 The term epistula in Gellius’s text is sometimes singular, sometimes plural; I use the singular for convenience. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/bics/article-abstract/60/2/49/5587258 by guest on 08 July 2020