Cicero, Varo, and the Romantic Poets

There seems to be a strong element of nostalgia and just a way of complaining about the present by wishing you had lived then batically. Cicero and varo are the mean ones. Looking at how varo uses the latin poets gives you some context about how different it is. It populates in your imagination a scholarly tradition, which actually we can see. The romans themselves had a tradition of studying their own poetry that went beyond simply quoting it for ornamental sake.