Alfenus Varus was an ancient Roman jurist and writer who lived around the 1st century BC.
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Life

Alfenus Varus (whose praenomen

Praenomen

The praenomen was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the dies lustricus , the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the birth of a boy...

 might have been Publius) was a pupil of Servius Sulpicius Rufus

Servius Sulpicius Rufus

Servius Sulpicius Rufus , surnamed Lemonia from the tribe to which he belonged, was a Roman orator and jurist.He studied rhetoric with Cicero, and accompanied him to Rhodes in 78 BC. Finding that he would never be able to rival his teacher he gave up rhetoric for law...

, and the only pupil of Servius from whom there are any excerpts in the Pandects

Pandects

The Digest, also known as the Pandects , is a name given to a compendium or digest of Roman law compiled by order of the emperor Justinian I in the 6th century .The Digest was one part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the body of civil law issued under Justinian I...

. Nothing is known about him except from a story preserved by the scholiast Helenius Acron

Helenius Acron

Helenius Acron was a Roman commentator and grammarian, probably of the 5th century, but whose precise date is not known.He is known to have written on Terence and Horace. These commentaries on Horace are now lost but are referred to by the grammarian Charisius...

, in his notes on the satires 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:...

. The scholiast assumes the "Alfenus Vafer" of Horace to be the lawyer, and says that he was a native of Cremona

Cremona

Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...

, where he carried on the trade of a barber or a botcher of shoes, that he came to Rome to become a student of Servius, attained the dignity of consulship

Roman consul

A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...

, and was honored with a public funeral.

Pomponius also states that Varus attained consulship, but this will not prove the rest of the scholiast's story to be true. The Publius Alfenius Varus who was consul in 2 AD can hardly be the pupil of Servius; and it is conjectured that he may have been the jurist's son. It is impossible to determine what credit is due to the scholiast on Horace: he must have found the story somewhere, or have invented it. Indeed he and other scholiasts do sometimes favor us with a commentary which tells us nothing more than the text. The fact of an Alfenus being a native of Cremona, and of an Alfenus having been a pupil of Servius, and a learned jurist, and of an Alfenus having been consul, is quite enough to enable a scholiast with the assistance of the passage in Horace to fabricate the whole story of Alfenus, as he has given it.

Works

There are 54 excerpts in the Pandects

Pandects

The Digest, also known as the Pandects , is a name given to a compendium or digest of Roman law compiled by order of the emperor Justinian I in the 6th century .The Digest was one part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the body of civil law issued under Justinian I...

from the 40 books of the Digesta of Alfenus; but it is conjectured that Alfenus may have acted only as the editor of the work of Servius. It appears from the fragments of Alfenus that he was acquainted with the Greek language

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, and these fragments show that he wrote in a pure and perspicuous style. A passage that appears in the Pandects shows that he was not a stranger to the speculations of the philosophers. According to Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius , was a Latin author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office...

, Alfenus was somewhat curious in matters of antiquity, and Gellius quotes a passage from the thirty-fourth book of his Digest in which Alfenus mentions one of the terms of a treaty between the Romans and the Carthaginians

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

. Alfenus is often cited by later jurists. The fragments in the Pandects

Pandects

The Digest, also known as the Pandects , is a name given to a compendium or digest of Roman law compiled by order of the emperor Justinian I in the 6th century .The Digest was one part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the body of civil law issued under Justinian I...

are taken from the second to the seventh books of the Digest and there are fragments from the eighth book taken from the epitome

Epitome

An epitome is a summary or miniature form; an instance that represents a larger reality, also used as a synonym for embodiment....

 by the jurist Paulus. The entire number of books appears from the Florentine Index; the passage in Gellius quotes the thirty-fourth book; and a passage of Paulus cites the forty-ninth book. Whether the epitome of Paulus went further than the eighth book or not, is uncertain.

The passage in Gellius: "Alfenus ... in libro Digestorum trigesimo et quarto, Conjectaneorum autem secundo," ("Alfenus says in the Digest and in the Conlectanea") &c., has given rise to some discussion. It is clear that the passage in the Conlectanea is attributed to Alfenus, and it is also clear that only one passage is meant; or at most the same passage is referred to as being in two different works. But apparently only one work is meant, and therefore we must conclude that the Digesta, which consisted of forty books, contained a subdivision called the Collectanea. Some critics have conjectured that the Conlectanea is the compilation of Aufidius Namusa

Aufidius Namusa

Aufidius Namusa was a Roman jurist and writer of the 1st century BC. He was one of the numerous pupils of Servius Sulpicius Rufus. There were ten of Servius's students who wrote books , and from the works of eight of them Namusa compiled a work which was distributed into one hundred and eighty...

, so that the passage cited by Gellius appeared in both the original work by Alfenus, and in the copious compilation of Namusa, which is made from Alfenus and other pupils of Servius.