The trivium and quadrivium of medieval education descend ultimately from Varro's Disciplinae, a work of his eighties. Indeed traces of Varronian systematization still lurk in modern university syllabuses. Characteristic methods, of research and of disposition, can be detected in widely scattered areas: they serve to reveal the Roman polymath at work and to explain how, in a full life, one man's output could be so colossal. Varro found in Menippus, a third-century Syrian freedman writing under Cynic influence, a model for profitable imitation and his 150 Menippeae, combining prose and verse, humour and moral improvement, dominated the literary output of his active public life. Nepos is an intellectual pygmy whom one finds associating uneasily with the literary giants of his generation. Cornelius Nepos and Varro diverge sharply from the narrow traditions of Roman and familial pride, which constitute the origins of Roman biography. Cicero acknowledges with embarrassment his pleasure in the mime's humour.