Varia historia ovvero "come vendere la Città" (Vario Rufo tra politica e poesia da Virgilio a Lucano)

The aim of this paper is to offer a study on L. Varius Rufus and his works (especially the poem De morte), seen mainly in their strict relation with some fundamental authors and texts of Augustan poetry: Virgil’s Bucolics, Georgics, and Aeneid; Horace’s Sermones and Carmina; Propertius 2.34 (new arguments are also proposed in favour of the identification Lynceus = Varius in this elegy). Varius’s reinterpretation, especially in Virgil, has been often considered a typical example of ‘arte allusiva’ (virtually from Macrobius to G. Pasquali). This paper will rather explore the structural arrangement and the politico-ideological meaning of the imitations of Varius, an Epicurean and a political enemy of Marc Antony, in the works of the Augustan poets. In this new perspective it will be much easier to understand the imitation of Virgil (and perhaps, via Virgil, of Varius himself) in the final sententia, about C. Curio, that closes Lucan’s book 4.