The Consolatio ad Liuiam and literary history

The Consolatio ad Liuiam appears in the 1460s and is attributed to Ovid. It describes the circumstances surrounding Drusus’ death in 9 BC, addressing his family before turning to consolation, particularly of Livia. The versification indicates that it is not by Ovid, but it may still be contemporary. The poem sets itself soon after the funeral, but is it conceived as genuine consolation, a rhetorical exercise, or a commentary on the Julio-Claudian era? The historical information in the poem is strikingly accurate; by comparison of it with Dio, it becomes clear that the Consolatio could easily have been written in the immediate aftermath of Drusus’ death. The poem may thus take a central place in Augustan literary history, alluding to several poets and the early works of Ovid, but itself alluded to by Ovid in exile. The chapter considers some cases in detail, showing that the chains of allusion may plausibly be read so.

Catalepton 9 and Valgius Rufus

The chapter explores connections between Catalepton 9, an anonymous elegy from the Appendix Vergiliana, and Valgius Rufus, a poet of the late Republican and early Augustan period, of whose poetic output only a few fragments survive: it is suggested that either Catalepton 9 closely engages with Valgius’ poetry or is possibly a work of his. A date of composition of about 36 BC was tentatively proposed for Catalepton 9 in Kayachev (2016a). In the present chapter, three further lines of argument are developed. First, the Panegyricus Messallae alludes to Catalepton 9 in a context that may imply Valgius’ authorship. Second, a favourable comparison of Messalla with Nestor in Catalepton 9 is related to a Valgius fragment. Third, Catalepton 9 presents itself as a preface poem introducing Latin translations of Messalla’s Greek bucolics. Although none of this amounts to a definitive proof of Valgius’ authorship, the evidence seems to point in that direction.

Authoring, reading, and exploring an Appendix

This introduction outlines the primary contexts for the volume that follows, offering a way to conceive of appendical texts not only as fake or less-than, but as works of literature in their own right. What we know about the specific conditions of production of the three corpora is explored, together with what is and has historically been at stake in the determination of them as genuine or spurious. Taking the poems on their own terms, we suggest, requires engaging with what the notion of authorship is and how it functions in classical scholarship, and also with how canons are formed and unformed. So too, serious attention to the appendical texts may allow us to think differently about the aesthetic issues that so often underpin our appreciation of the literature we study.

The lovers and the rebel

A series of six poems exchanged between lovers (known as the double Heroides) is normally placed at the end of the collection of Ovid’s single Heroides. Their attribution has been questioned in recent decades. Much of the argument has devolved on stylistic features, especially polysyllabic pentameter endings. This chapter briefly revisits the issue by analysing some exilic passages in the Fasti and the Metamorphoses. Rather than making grand claims based on supposed stylistic features, the focus is on reading Ovid as a rebellious poet, a trait that consistently appears across his work from the Amores to the Tristia. By comparing passages from the exilic works with the text of the double Heroides, it is argued that reading Ovid as the author of both fits with our perspective on the great poet of nequitia. The conclusion is subjective, but opens up possibilities in reading the double letters as an exilic text.

The authorship of Tibullus 3.9

Corpus Tibullianum 3.8–18 have often been considered a self-contained unit. Gruppe (1838) attributed poems 14–18, written in the first person, to Sulpicia, and poems 8–13 to the so-called amicus Sulpiciae (8, 10, 12 are in the third person; 9, 11, 13 in the first). This division was widely accepted until Parker (1994) argued that all the poems in the first person were by Sulpicia. This chapter supports Parker’s view, examining [Tib.] 3.9 as a case study for discussions of authorial identity across Sulpicia’s oeuvre. After examining the intertextual references made in [Tib.] 3.9 to Virgil, Tibullus and Propertius, and variations on these poets’ themes, it is suggested that the poem’s author is Sulpicia, since the stylistic features that appear to be specific to poem 9 are common to poems 13 and 18 as well.

Construing the author as a Catullan reader in the pure iambic Catalepton (6, 10, 12)

It has long been recognized that the poems of the Catalepton betray their author’s intimate familiarity with the works of Catullus. This chapter revisits the holoiambic poems of the Catalepton (6, 10, and 12), the parts of the pseudo-Vergilian libellus that seem to engage most explicitly with the works of Catullus, his contemporaries, and his predecessors. After considering the unique relationship between Catalepton 10 and Catullus 4, this chapter turns to Catalepton 6 and 12. These two poems are integral to the architecture of the libellus, which, it is argued, was originally constituted of Catalepton 1–13 and arranged by its author. This chapter explores how the poet of the Catalepton engages not only Catullus’ works, but also those of his neoteric contemporaries; it demonstrates how the poet’s closely allusive treatment of literary forebears (in this case, Sappho) allows him to toy with, and to subvert, neoteric modes of engagement with their precursors’ works.

Author and audience in Catalepton

Catalepton presents itself as a work of Vergil’s youth that reflects the time when it is set. It represents Vergil as a belated neoteric and a critic of littérateurs; and it reflects on the downfall of an unnamed individual evocative of Pompey. This chapter argues that such topics have a double frame of reference, speaking both to the collection’s dramatic date and to the time when it was written, probably in the first century AD. The collection represents Vergil as preoccupied with literary belatedness and inferiority; the death of oratory; the pernicious influence of rhetores; issues surrounding monarchy; the end of history—all themes more characteristic of early imperial intellectuals than of Vergil. Yet the author of Catalepton presents Vergil’s concerns with plausibility. One may therefore infer that the author’s double focus addresses an early imperial audience on two levels, commenting on contemporary concerns, and reflecting on a posited similarity between two historical moments (the collection’s dramatic date and the period when it was produced).

The Halieutica attributed to Ovid

Pliny the Elder paraphrased a poem attributed to Ovid; this is almost certainly the extant Halieutica. This chapter looks at the poem as transmitted. It argues that the text can be bettered by closer attention to Pliny, whose accurate paraphrase has been insufficiently employed; as often an ‘inferior’ text has not been edited with the rigour applied to canonical texts. The poem, however, is well written enough to assume reasonable coherence, style, and grammar. The transmitted text is acephalous, thus presenting an inviting gap for imitators; two attempts to fabricate the opening are considered. The first is a passage which must date from the high empire; the second is a humanistic forgery. This chapter stresses two aspects of the reception of ‘appendix’ texts: their comparative neglect by modern editors who expect too little, and the temptations that gaps in such texts provide for later writers and forgers to provide new material to supplement what is transmitted.

Teaching the death of elegy

A compact unit of elegiac poems, the Lygdamus cycle ([Tib.] 3.1–6) recounts the end of the lover-poet’s affair with Neaera. Through a fictional account of his story, from the initial dedication of his libellus ([Tib.] 3.1) and the ‘celebration’ of his soon-to-be death ([Tib.] 3.2), to a visitation from Apollo ([Tib. 3.4]) and the closing hymn to Bacchus ([Tib.] 3.6), Lygdamus displays the credentials of a poeta-amator and provides lovers with a study of elegiac love; he becomes a praeceptor amoris. This chapter focuses on Lygdamus’ construction of his elegiac persona and points to elegiac models (especially Catullus and Ovid) as central to Lygdamus’ fashioning of his love story as an elegiac paradigm. He expects his readers to draw on his affair with Neaera in order to learn how to love; by narrating his discidium, he celebrates the death of elegiac love and enters into the elegiac canon.

Echoing Virgil and Narcissus

Following Most’s 1987 essay, studies of the Culex have offered few general interpretations, and scholarship has polarized. There are discussions about authorship followed by surveys of the story, and there are a few detailed commentaries or commentary-style studies. The latter identify passages from works that are woven with remarkable frequency into the Culex, but do little more than list these echoes. The lack of alternatives to these two tendencies indicate the need for a comprehensive reading, but this is hard to achieve because the poem resists a totalizing interpretation. This chapter explores possible perspectives on the poem’s structure, before showing what these different conceptions of the organisation of the Culex might suggest about the poem’s author. The various sources and their respective operations in the Culex offer several ways of modelling the poem, in terms of how the text might be segmented or structured, and of its themes and functions.