Marcus Terentius Varro in the context of "Phorcys"

Minerva (/mɪˈnɜːrvə/; Latin: [mɪˈnɛru̯ä]; Etruscan: Menrva) is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She is also a goddess of warfare, though with a focus on strategic warfare, rather than the violence of gods such as Mars. Beginning in the second century BC, the Romans equated her with the Greek goddess Athena. Minerva is one of the three Roman deities in the Capitoline Triad, along with Jupiter and Juno.

Minerva is a virgin goddess. Her domain includes music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, and the crafts. Minerva is often depicted with her sacred creature, an owl usually named the "owl of Minerva" which symbolised her association with wisdom and knowledge, as well as, less frequently, the snake and the olive tree. Minerva is commonly depicted as tall with an athletic and muscular build. She is often wearing armour and carrying a spear. As an important Roman goddess, she is highly revered, honored, and respected. Marcus Terentius Varro considered her to be ideal and the plan for the universe personified.

A state religion (also called official religion) is a religion or creed officially endorsed by a sovereign state. A state with an official religion (also known as a confessional state), while not a secular state, is not necessarily a theocracy. State religions are subject to advantageous treatment by official or government-sanctioned establishments of them, ranging from incentivising citizens to recognise and practice them through government endorsement to having public spending on the maintenance of religious property and clergy be unrestricted, but the state does not need to be under the legislative control of the clergy as it would be in a theocracy. Generally, these religions have more rights and fewer restrictions in the country than other religions in a country.

Official religions have been known throughout human history in almost all types of cultures, reaching into the Ancient Near East and prehistory. The relation of religious cult and the state was discussed by the ancient Latin scholar Marcus Terentius Varro, under the term of theologia civilis (lit. 'civic theology'). The first state-sponsored Christian denomination was the Armenian Apostolic Church, established in 301 CE. In Christianity, as the term church is typically applied to a place of worship for Christians or organizations incorporating such ones, the term state church is associated with Christianity as sanctioned by the government, historically the state church of the Roman Empire in the last centuries of the Empire's existence, and is sometimes used to denote a specific modern national branch of Christianity. Closely related to state churches are ecclesiae, which are similar but carry a more minor connotation.

The Varronian chronology is the commonly accepted chronology of early Roman history named after the Roman antiquarian Marcus Terentius Varro. It is from this chronology that the commonly used dates for the foundation of the city (753 BC), the overthrow of the monarchy (509 BC), the Decimvirates (451–450 BC), the Gallic sack of Rome (390 BC), and the first plebeian consul (366 BC) are derived. The chronology consists of an ordered list of magisterial colleges (eg pairs of consuls) which, in modern times, are regularly assigned to years BC.

The years given by the Varronian chronology prior to 300 BC should not be accepted as absolute dates. Years in the chronology are also demonstrably incorrect and it flows four years prior to actual events by 340 BC. Moreover, Roman historians and antiquarians (most especially Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus) also did not all use Varro's scheme. Because both the ordering and absolute position of Varronian years is not well established for this early period, the numeric years derived from it should be taken as "no more than numerical symbols for specific consular years".

In ancient Roman mythology, Salacia (/səˈleɪʃə/ sə-LAY-shə, Latin: [saˈɫaːkia]) was the female divinity of the sea, worshipped as the goddess of salt water who presided over the depths of the ocean. Neptune was her consort. That Salacia was the consort of Neptune is implied by Varro, and is positively affirmed by Seneca, Augustine and Servius. She is identified with the Greek goddess Amphitrite, consort of Poseidon, or Tethys who was also a marine deity.

The god Neptune wanted to marry Salacia, but she was in great awe of her distinguished suitor, and to preserve her virginity, with grace and celerity she managed to glide out of his sight, and hid from him in the Atlantic Ocean. The grieving Neptune sent a dolphin to look for her and persuade the fair nymph to return and share his throne. Salacia agreed to marry Neptune and the King of the Deep was so overjoyed at these good tidings that the dolphin was awarded a place in the heavens, where he now forms a well known constellation Delphinus.

The Neptunalia was an obscure archaic two-day festival in honor of Neptune as god of waters, celebrated at Rome in the heat and drought of summer, probably 23 July (Varro, De lingua Latina vi.19). It was one of the dies comitiales, when committees of citizens could vote on civil or criminal matters. In the ancient calendar this day is marked as Nept. ludi et feriae, or Nept. ludi, from which Leonhard Schmitz (in Smith, see link) concluded that the festival was celebrated with games (ludi). Respecting the ceremonies of this festival nothing is known, except that the people used to build huts of branches and foliage (umbrae, according to Festus, under " Umbrae"), in which they probably feasted, drank, and amused themselves (Horace Carmina iii.28.1, &c.; Tertullian De Spectaculis ("On Celebrations") 6).

Publius Terentius Varro Atacinus (Latin: [ˈpuːbliʊs tɛˈrɛntiʊs ˈwarːoː atakiːnʊs]; 82 – c. 35 BC) was a Roman poet, more polished in his style than the more famous and learned Varro Reatinus, his contemporary, and therefore more widely read by the Augustan writers. He was born in the province of Gallia Narbonensis, the southern part of Gaul with its capital at Narbonne, on the river Atax (now the Aude), for his cognomen Atacinus indicates his birthplace. Varro Atacinus was also in the neoteric circle, which included other notable poets such as Catullus and Marcus Furius Bibaculus.

Lucius Livius Andronicus (/ˈlɪviəs/; Greek: Λούκιος Λίβιος Ανδρόνικος; c. 284 – c. 204 BC) was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period during the Roman Republic. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family, producing Latin translations of Greek works, including Homer's Odyssey. The translations were meant, at first, as educational devices for the school which he founded. He also wrote works for the stage—both tragedies and comedies—which are regarded as the first dramatic works written in the Latin language. His comedies were based on Greek New Comedy and featured characters in Greek costume. Thus, the Romans referred to this new genre by the term comoedia palliata or fabula palliata, meaning "cloaked comedy," the pallium being a Greek-style cloak. The Roman biographer Suetonius later coined the term "half-Greek" of Livius and Ennius (referring to their genre, not their ethnic backgrounds). The genre was imitated by later generations of playwrights, and Andronicus is accordingly regarded as the father of Roman drama and of Latin literature in general; that is, he was the first man of letters to write in Latin. Varro, Cicero, and Horace, all men of letters during the subsequent Classical Latin period, considered Livius Andronicus to have been the originator of Latin literature. He is the earliest Roman poet whose name is known.