Varro, Visellius
1. C. Visellius Varro, the son of the jurist C. Aculeo, who married Helvia, the sister of Cicero's mother. Varro was consequently the first cousin of Cicero. He was trained by his father in a knowledge of the civil law. He served as tribune of the soldiers in Asia about B. C. 79, and during Cicero's banishment he drew up the rogatio which the tribune T. Fadius Gallus intended to bring forward to recall the orator. Varro died after holding the office of curule aedile. (Cic. Brut. 76, Verr. 1.28, ad Att. 3.23, where some editions have T. Visellius.) Varro had an intrigue with Otacilia, of which Valerius Maximus (8.2.2) relates a tale, but it is not mentioned by Cicero. (Comp. Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. v. p. 214.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.