Gaius Terentius Varro minter of coins down to the year 197 BC. Varro then disappears from history, either retiring or dying. Gaius Terentius Varro Gaius Terentius Varro (fl. 218 - 200 BC) was a Roman politician and general active during the Second Punic War. A plebeian son of a butcher, he was a populist politician who was elected consul for the year 216. While holding that office, he was decisively defeated by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae. Varro was a member of the plebeian "gens Terentia" and the first man of note in his family. His father was reportedly a butcher who
Religion in ancient Rome Venus was brought from Sicily and installed in a temple on the Capitoline hill. The disasters of the early part of Rome's second Punic War were attributed, in Livy's account, to a growth of superstitious cults, errors in augury and the neglect of Rome's traditional gods, whose anger was expressed directly in Rome's defeat at Cannae (216 BC). The Sibilline books were consulted. They recommended a general vowing of the "ver sacrum" and in the following year, the burial of two Greeks and two Gauls; not the first or the last of its kind, according to Livy. The introduction of