Short answers, pulled from the story.
Lucius Varius Rufus was a Roman poet of the early Augustan age, born around 74 BC and dying around 14 BC. He was a close friend of both Virgil and Horace and was celebrated in his own time as a master of epic poetry and tragedy.
Thyestes was a tragedy written by Lucius Varius Rufus and performed at the games held in 29 BC by Octavian to celebrate the victory at Actium. Quintilian declared it worthy of ranking alongside any of the Greek tragedies, and Varius received a gift of a million sesterces from the Roman ruler for the work. The play itself has not survived.
After Virgil's death, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca were entrusted with preparing the Aeneid for publication. They edited the unfinished manuscript and brought it to the form in which it has been read ever since.
In the first book of his Odes, Horace described Varius as a master of epic and the only poet capable of celebrating the achievements of Vipsanius Agrippa. Horace also appears to allude to Varius's epic work in his Satires.
Lucius Varius Rufus wrote an epic poem called De Morte, meaning On Death, fragments of which were preserved by Macrobius in his Saturnalia. Horace alluded to at least one other epic, and ancient sources also credit Varius with a panegyric in praise of Augustus.
Fragments of the works of Lucius Varius Rufus were collected by E. Bahrens in his Fragmenta Poetarum Romanorum, published in 1886. Additional scholarly studies were produced by A. Weichert in 1836 and by R. Unger in editions published in 1870, 1878, and 1898.