Impersonating Young Virgil: The Author of the Catalepton and His Libellus

Author(s): Niklas Holzberg

Source: Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici , 2004, No. 52, Re-Presenting
Virgil: Special Issue in Honor of Michael C. J. Putnam (2004), pp. 29-40
Published by: Fabrizio Serra Editore

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 Niklas Holzberg
Impersonating Young Virgil:
The Author ofthe Catalepton and his libellas

In his younger days, thè Vita Suetoniana-Donatiana tells us, Virgil

wrote «Catalepton et Priapea et Epigrammata».1 This we can ar-
guably take to mean a collection of nugae that bore the title
Catalepton and consisted of both Priapea and epigrams.2 And, in-
deed, the Wolfenbüttel Codex of the Appendix Vergiliana intro-
duces a group of poems - three that feature Priapus as speaker
and fifteen which can be defined as epigrams - with the words
Catalepton Virgilii incipit. In some of the manuscripts that présent
thèse same texts in the same order, similar titilli are used.3 The
eighteen poems4 add up to 271 Unes in ali, so it is feasible that
they originally formed, as the title suggests, a short libellas pub-
lished on a small-sized papyrus. Although libn of Roman poetry
are now increasingly studied 'holistically', i.e., in linear readings
that can detect any discursive development of thèmes, the poems
in the Catalepton continue to be singled out for individuai, iso-
lated scrutiny.5 The ail-important question has always been
«Did he or didn't he?», and certain of the poems - most fre-

1. Vitae Vergilianae antiquae, eds. G. Brugnoli and F. Stok, Roma 1997, P- 25 § 17·
2. 1 read «et Priapea et Epigrammata» in parenthèses, as do T. Bm, Jugendverse
und Heimatpoesie Vergib. Erklärung des Catalepton, Leipzig and Berlin 1910, pp. 1-5; R.
E. H. Westendorp Boerma (ed.), P. Vergili Maronis libellus qui insaribitur Catalepton, 2
vols., Assen 1949-1963, i, pp. xx-xxiv; K. Büchner, P. Vergilius Maro, pw 8 A, 1955, pp.
1062-1180 (see 1066-1068); and Vergib. Landleben. Bucolica, Georgica, Catalepton. Vergil-
Viten, eds. J. Götte, M. Gotte, Κ. Bayer, Sammlung Tusculum, Munich 19814, pp. 594-
601; thèse discuss the possible meaning ofthe title: on the grounds ofthe Vita Arati
55 (έγραψε ... και κατά λεπτόν άλλα) and Strabo 10.5.3 (Άρατος έν τοις κατά λεπτόν) Cata-
lepton should be read in the Virgil Vita, not Catalecton. J. Richmond, The Catalepton
and its Background, in Atti del Convegno mondiale scientifico di studi su Virgilio, Mantova,
Roma, Napoli 19-24 settembre 1981, voi. 1, Milano 1984, pp. 50-63, excludes the Pria-
pea from the collection.
3. Appendix Vergiliana, eds. W. V. Clausen, F. R. Goodyear, E. J. Kenney, J. A.
Richmond, Oxford 1966, p. 131.
4. Existing éditions number the Priapea and epigrams separately. I refer here to
the former as Ρ i-3, to the latter as E 1-15.
5. Structural analyses, such as the ones undertaken by Gotte et alii (n. 2), pp. 598-
601, and Richmond (n. 2), only cover E 1-15 and ignore the interlinking fonction of
récurrent key-words and motifs, as well as any engineered transitions from one
poem to the next, working on the assumption that it was a redactor who was respon-
sible for arranging the texts, not an author with a master plan.

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 30 Niklas Holzberg
quently E 5 and E 8 - hâve re
My own assumption hère is th
of one author who lived later t
sent the world with a préten
nugae, supposedly composed by
Georgics, and the Aeneid back
as it were. Accordingly, in the
mous poet says :

Vate Syracosio qui dulcior, He

maior, Homereo non minor o
illius haec quoque sunt diuini
et rudis in uario carminé Cal

Assuming that I am right and

who wrote the seventeen poet
thing must be asked: did the
believe that he really was yo
them to join him in a literary
posed to see through his masqu
a complex question that can sc
paper that represents little mo
wards a 'holistic' interprétat
scale book with an in-depth an
the necessary évidence. What
the seventeen poems contain a
ences to various Greek and
conclusion to be drawn from t
an educated audience whom h
tion made in E 15 as fiction. Fo
that this masquerade was inten
The Catalepton belongs to a

6. Usually on the basis of wishfiil thi

den jungen Vergil, in Gestalt und Wirklich
Mühlher, J. Fischi, Berlin 1967, pp. 337-
authenticity debate as a criterion, then
7. If Quintilian's quotation (Inst. 8.3.2
and which correspond roughly to lines
lian knew the Catalepton, then the libell
Century. It is possible, however, that it
used them to provide an authentic tou
would then have been written after M
ignoring Ρ 1-3) in Martial und das antike E

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 Impersonating Young Virgil 31
Greek and Roman pseudepigrapha in which anony
slip into celebrity rôles. Good cases in point ar
penned, the manuscripts say, by well-known Greek
lust, or books of poems such as the liber tertius of the
lianum and the collection of epigrams that can be r
on the basis of seventy poems identified as
«Seneca»8 in thè Anthologia Latina. The common
among thèse pseudepigrapha is that their authors a
steeped in the lives and works of thè people they ar
that they mean to exude as much of this knowledg
This is equally true of the Cataleptons author: his li
with intertextual allusions to VirgiTs three ope
présence alone betrays their prior existence. It is,
trate below, verses and motifs from thè Bucolica th
frequently between the Unes of the Catalepton, th
for this probably being that the nugae are suppose
an early period in VirgiTs development as a poet and
toral poems were what 'he' was to write next. This
by striking similarities between 'VirgilY nugae and
tullus. The association is apparently part of the fic
tus was obviously the inspiration for thè Bucolic
thor' s earlier writings betray, the reader should s
uence of the poet born in Verona, which, after all
far away from Virgil's own birthplace, Mantua.
An aÛusion-by-allusion démonstration of how the
author constantly draws on stylistic, metrical,
structural éléments of Catullus's poetry is not some
tempted in a paper of this length.10 1 need devote n

8. Cf. N. Holzberg (ed.), Der griechische Briefroman. Gattungstyp

nalyse, Tübingen 1994 («Classica Monacensia» 8); Idem, Four Poets
Portrait ofthe Poet as a Young Man? Thoughts on Book 3 ofthe Corpus
sical Journal» 94, 1998/1999, pp. 169-191; Idem, Ovidius exul in Cors
Epigrammaton Liber, forthcoming in «Harvard Studies in Classical
9. Cf. the parallels identified in Westendorp Boerma (n. 2);
fically ibid., 1, pp. 70 f., for E 14 Büchner (η. 2), p. 1086.
10. A longer study doing just that is what we need. The subject i
E. H. Westendorp Boerma, VergiVs Debt to Catullus, «Acta Classica»
M. Lombardi, Echi catulliani nei Priapea e negli Epigrammata dell'Ap
in Atti del Convegno di studi virgiliani, Pescara 23-25 ottobre, Pesc
ceo-Ginnasio G. d'Annunzio»), pp. 148-160; and, with spécifie reg
Phaselus ille/ Sabinus ille - Ein Beitrag zur neueren Diskussion um die
Texten, in Literaturparodie in Antike und Mittelalter, eds. W. Ax a
1993 («Bochumer Altertumswissenschaftliches Colloquium» 15), pp.

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 32 Niklas Holzberg
instances of neoteric style in
nificant ones are highlighted
tary. Metrically speaking, the
of variatio, the texts in elegiac
jority, being interspersed with
apeans (P 3), others in pure iam
in choliambics (E 2, 5), and a
trimeters and dimeters (E 13).
metra to mind,12 just as the ord
of the Catalepton stands a sixty
by 105 Unes and followed by 9
arrangement of polymetric ep
lus. So, too, with the thematic
lianum. The first fourteen ep
erotic subject matter (E 1, 4, 7)
politicai (E 3, 9), metapoetic (E
5, 8, 14) content. Of the three
over, one is written in Priape
tullus's c. 17. M And like the ea
ton créâtes various intertextu
ally even going so far as to tr
ally.15
While confining myself to a cursory look at stylistic, metrical,
and thematic parallels between the Catalepton and the poetry of
Catullus, I should like to consider more closely the structural

11. See note 34.

12. Three of the meters found in Catullus's polymetra (choliambic, iambic trime-
ter, and Priapean) - but, strikingly, not the hendecasyllable - appear hère alongside
the one used in the third part of that collection, the elegiac couplet.
13. Probably addressed to Messalla, the poem has long been seen to contain pa-
rallels to thè Panegyrìcus Messallae ([Tib.] 3.7); cf. esp. H. Schoonhoven, The "Pane-
gyricus Messaüae": Date and Retoion with Catalepton 9, in anrw 11.30.3, 1983, pp. 1681-
1707; R. Papke, Panegyrìcus Messaline und Catalepton 9; Form und gegenseitiger Bezug, in
Concentus Hexachordus, eds. P. Krafft, H. J. Tschiedel, Regensburg 1986 (« Eichstätter
Beiträge, Sprache und Literatur» 13), pp. 123-168. In Pseudo-Tibullus's libellus, the
long eulogy for Messalla separates the Lygdamus cycle frorn the Sulpicia poems,
i.e., it is also a 'middle'.
14. Catullus is probably speaking in c. 17 as Priapus; cf. G. Kloss, Catuüs Brückenge-
dicht (c. ij), «Hermes» 126, 1998, pp. 58-79; Ν. Holzberg, Catull: Der Dichter und sein
erotisches Werk, Munich 20033, p. 77.
15. See esp. E 1 (ag 12.24-27; cf. E. Reitzenstein, Zur Erklärung der Catalepton-Ge-
dichte, «Rhein. Mus.» 79, 1930, pp. 65-92 [see 67-70]), 11 (ag 7.725; cf. Birt [n. 2], pp. 126
ff.) and 12 (Sappho 112 lp; cf. E. MagneÙi, Imitazione di Saffo in Catalepton 12, «Atene
& Roma» 42, 1997, pp. 42-44).

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 Impersonating Young Virgil 33
similarities between the two collections, focusing
the techniques used to link individuai poems. My
based on a picture of Catullus as the editor of his
accordingly, on a view of the poems as texts to be
der in which the manuscript tradition présents t
approach most recently - and very persuasively
Paul Claes.16 In his examination of structure in
tries to show that the poems are ail links in a 'cha
motifs. He is, I believe, doubtlessly right, his obs
consistent with those of studies that look at othe
libn: ail demonstrate again and again that Rom
tended their readers to go through thè text in a
sion, and that only by recognizing such concaten
preciate the füll potential of the poems' contents
sonable to suggest that the Catalepton may be no
the assertion could even be proven conclusively
sent a linear reading of ail eighteen poems, for I w
highlight the various interlocking methods already
other libn of Roman poetry: from the simple and
ingly insignificant répétition of single words - e
1.3, 2.2, and 3.6 l8 - to the engineered arrangeme
ems that thus complément one another by taking
the form of a 'continuing story' (E 5 and 8, 6 and
examples must suffice.
The first demonstrates how 'young Virgil' could
by seemingly picking up where he had left off in
one, only to introduce before long an unexpected
vice 'a turn-up for the poems' had already been u
in the transition from c. 51 to 52. 19 Having advised h
16 to remember that otium - which evidently allo
ally to indulge incessantly in his passion for Lesbi
ruin of kings and prosperous cities, Catullus then
Quid est, Catulle, quid moraris emorïl The reader i

16. P. Claes, Concatenano Catulliana: A New Reading of thè Ca

2002 («Studies in Classical Philology» 9).
17. See, e.g., M. C. J. Putnam, Virgiis Pastoral Art: Studies in th
1970; M. S. Santirocco, Unity and Design in Horace' s Odes, Cha
1986; P. Lee-Stecum, Powerplay in Tibuïlus: Reading Elégies Book
New York 1998; N. Holzberg, Ovid: The Poet and His Work, Ithac
176 ff.
18. Cf. Westendorp Boerma (n. 2), i, 32.
19. Holzberg 2003 (n. 14), p. 86.

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 34 Niklas Holzberg
this is still thè lover blaming h
find in the next verse that the
ally his indignant reaction to
'VirgiT and a linear reading of
how this poet also plays with
poem to thè next. At thè begi
leave of school and his fellow
clares, for thè blessed haven
teachings, so he bids the Car
him again, he says, but only pu
another poem follows suggests
really not parting Company for
6, Socer beate - the second is a
the reader expect this to be a
The existence, moreover, of th
dressed in E 6.1 could be take
married in the meantime and
What he then actually says, ho
Socer, beate nec tibi nec alt
generque Noctuine, putidum
tuoque nunc puella talis et
stupore pressa rus abibit? ei
ut ille uersus usquequaque p
'gêner socerque, perdidistis

From line 2 on, then, it becom

only (like E 2 before it) abus
word mentula appears twice (U
thermore, that it forms an in
and obscène c. 29 in terms of m
menae told by 'VirgiT at thè en
under certain conditions) beha
this visit.21
Going away and Coming back also form the substance of the

20. Cf. esp. E 6.6 ~ Cat. 29.24.

21. After various références to Virgil's love life in what were apparently his
younger days, thè Vita Suetoniana-Donatiana tells us: cetera sane uita et ore et animo
tant probum constat, ut Neapoli Parthenias uulgo appeüatus sit (Brugnoli and Stok [n. 1],
pp. 22-23 § 11). Perhaps the last verse of the poem marking the end of 'Virgil's' stu-
dent days is supposed to suggest to readers that the poet will be leading a 'virgin' life
in the future. If that is the case, then thèse expectations will also be proved wrong by
E 6 and the subséquent poems devoted to erotic thèmes.

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 Impersonating Young Virgil 35
transition from Ρ 3 to E 1. The Priapeum closes wi
god of garden and vineyard (v. 18) telling some you
frain from any 'mischievous thieving'. There is a
nearby, he says, with a less conscientious Priapus,
go away and bother him instead (P 3.19-21). At thè
1, we hear that a woman (no name is given) has co
the speaker - he is addressing Tucca (v. 1), a frien
which indicates that it is 'the poet' talking - is no
her: oeculitur limine dansa uva. A moment ago, w
outside a garden, with Priapus turning some yo
now we hâve been whisked off to a locked house.
sensé, foregone any attempts to get into the gard
stead from country surroundings into town.23
speaking, this 'change of scene' forms a bridge be
of the three Priapea in the Catalepton and the first
the young men being turned away from a garden f
lel in the exclusus amator. The same analogy can be
Ovid's taie of Pomona in the Métamorphoses (
14.635) and poem 77 of the Corpus Pnapeorum.24 E
we may assume that Ρ 1-3 and E 1-15 do belong tog
one libellus, not only because thè Vita Suetoniana-
various manuscripts suggest that they do, but als
is an associative link between the end of one poem
ning of the next.25 But why would the author of
hâve his 'Virgil' open the collection with Priap
the 'young poet' choose to deviate in this respect
el' Catullus, whose own collection induded no such

22. Vita Suetoniana-Donatiana, eds. Brugnoli and Stok (n. 1), p. 35

23. A similar change or scene , troni the country to a locked
poeta/ amator cannot enter, occurs in Tibullus 1.1 and 2, first in 1.49
tween 1.1.77-78 and 1.2.1.
24. Just as the αποπομπή at the end or Ρ 3 signais the conclu
cycle Ρ 1-3, Priap. 77 too belongs to a séries of poems which lead
collection.
25. Very briefly, the outlines of other such links between C
1/2: after the first erotic epigram one might expect the amator s Co
hâve been scortorum. E 2/3: 2.5 talks of a brother being «pois
Aspice, heralding, one might think, his epitaph. E 9/10: 'Virgil1 w
were able patno Graios carminé adire sales, but then offers in 10
characteristically Italian 'sait*. E 10/11: Castoris at the end of 10
deus at the beginning of 11.

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 36 Niklas Hohberg
pea?26 Before I try to answer
doser look at Pi:

Vere rosa, autumno pomis, aestate frequentor

spicis : una mihi est horrida pestis hiemps ;
nam frigus metuo et uereor ne ligneus ignem
hic deus ignauis praebeat agricolis.

The first two Unes écho, as has been observed many times be-
fore, Georg. 4.134-138:

primus uere rosam atque autumno carpere poma,

et cum tristis hiems etiamnum frigore saxa
rumperet et glacie cursus frenare t aquarum,
ille comam mollis iam tondebat hyacinthi
aestatem increpitans seram Zephyrosque morantis.

This sentence stands in the famous passage about the old

Corycian and his garden (Georg. 4.116-148). Virgil inserts the sec-
tion as a sort of praetentio in his lecture on beekeeping, and be-
fore it he talks about the garden flowers that attract bées, briefly
introducing Priapus, the custos fiirum atque auium (109-115). No
further mention is made of the god in the garden excursus, and
this could hâve been regarded by the author of the Catalepton as
an 'omission' which he could rectify with his 'VirgilY three Pria-
pea. In thèse the deity watches over the agellulum ... enque uillu-
\am hortulumque pauperis (P 2.3 f.). The identity of this poor man
can be inferred from E 8: there, 'Virgil' commends himself, his
loved ones, and especially his father27 to the uiïluL· and pauper ag-
ellus belonging to Siro, and hopes that the father will find in thèse
a substitute for Manina quoafuerat quodque Cremona pnus.2S In the
light of this poem we can, I think, look back to Ρ 2* s little estate
with its guardian Priapus (w. 3 f.) and assume that those Unes re-
fer to the property which VirgiTs family is said by the vitae and
scholia to hâve lost during the expropriation and redistribution

26. Ρ 1-3 were included by Muretus as c. 18-20 in his Catullus édition; Lachmann
took them out of the corpus again.
27. tibi ... commendo ... patrem echoes Aen. 2.747: Anchisenque patron ... commendo
sociis. This alone seems to me to indicate that E 8 cannot genuinely be a poem writ-
ten by the young Virgil.
28. An allusion to Ed. 9.28: Mantua uae miserae nimium uicinae Cremonae (cf. H.
Naumann, Ist Vergil der Verfasser von Catalepton ν und vm?, «Rhein. Mus.» 121, [1978],
pp. 78-93 [esp. 83-84]). The expropriation of land is a central thème in the ninth
eclogue.

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 Impersonating Young Virgil 37
of land in bc 41. 29 The crus pauper of Ρ 2.4 could the
gilY father,30 especially since thè domini of a uillu
we may safely take to be the same one as in Ρ 2.4
pater filiusque adulescens (Unes 5 ff.).31 This would fi
what Priapus says in Ρ 2.10-15 about the agellus:

meis capella delicata pascuis

in urbem adulta lacté portât ubera,
meisque pinguis agnus et ouilibus
grauem domum remittit aere dexteram
teneraque matre mugiente uaccula
deum profundit ante templa sanguinem.

The anonymous poet clearly decided to furnish

thor' of thè Bucolica with a pastoral panorama to s
front door - visual aids, as it were; in fact, one o
cited (13) unmistakably echoes Eclogues 1.35 :32 non
domum mihi dextra redibat. Why the prominent p
three Priapea at thè beginning of thè Cataleptoni C
the author saw them as a way to create a link betw
and VirgiTs two 'countrified' works and, at the s
pea being originally epigrams by genre - to affor
wise famous only for more elevated forms of vers
effective 'début' as epigrammatist? The anony
the Catalepton, it seems to me, was evidently prete
were written during the years when Virgil wa
home on his father's estate. The move that takes
3 and E 1, i.e., from a rural area to an urban env
then represent VirgiTs move from Northern Ital

29. It matters little hère whether the loss be a historical fact or

'documents' (Gotte et alii [η. 2], pp. 396-401; G. Brugnoli and F. S
Vergiliam pertinentes, in Enciclopedia Virgiliana, 5.2, 1991, pp. 427-5
460]) that are in fact based on Ecl 1 and 9.
30. According to thè Vita Suetoniana-Donatiana, VirgiTs fath
been a pauper before he became the son-in-law of a viator called
perty subsequently grew. He worked first zsfigulus and later as
Magius (Brugnoli and Stok [n. 1], pp. 17-18 § 1).
31. In Ρ 3.6 the uillula is a tugunum. The first words in this line
to mind the beginning of Ed. 1.68, where the speaker Meliboeus
land reform.
32. The speaker is Tityrus, whose mask Virgil wears in Ecl 6
poet has repeatedly been identified by ancient and modem read
2.13 seems to be 'emending' the 'information' given in Ecl. 1.35.

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 38 Niklas Holzberg
later Naples).33 And, correspon
'VirgiT first as a poet followin
ing erotic, abusive, and polit
such as Tucca (E 1.1), Octaviu
7.1); going to rhetoric school (E
10) ; acquiring teacher's uillula
tate back home; and then, fina
14). 34 It is pointless to debate
plicitly presented hère as a 'do
any basis in historical truth, s
tle for sure about the real poet
tion offered by the Vita Sue
which probably ail dépend o
could well have been pieced t
and those of various authors w
am inclined to think that the a
with the biographical traditi
while elsewhere he simply ma
The intertextual corrélation t
establishes between his own lib
cludes the reprise of a feature
must certainly have been rem
temporaries, and which modem
enough to warrant endless spéc
tery that shrouds some charac
the very first of the eclogues

33. Vita Suetoniana-Donatiana, eds. Bru

a Cremona Mediofonum et inde paulo pos
dem, p. 23 § 11. Siro taught there (West
34. The last of 'young VirgilY collect
io ws), E 14, which now replaces interte
the Aeneid, clearly marks thè end of th
as the penultimate poem because its o
Epodes Horace published soon after 31
'Virgil' did not just switch directly from
there via Horatian-style poems.
35. Cf. W. Suerbaum, Von der Vita Verg
rer Vergilius. Probleme-Perspektiven-Analy
36. For the genuinely historical facts w
gende, «Mnemosyne» 35, 1982, pp. 148-
Times, in A Companion to the Study of
Supplementum, 151), pp. 1-25.
37. He could, for example, have been
teacher; cf. Naumann 1978 (n. 28), pp. 8

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 Impersonating Young Virgil 39
name, but who is, for Tityrus, a god (Unes 7 f.
Eclogue 4 Virgil leaves unnamed the puer who is to
Golden Age (Unes 8 f.), and in Eclogue 8 the impera
thè poet would celebrate is merely addressed as tu
Eclogue 6, fmthermore, Apollo calls the speaker
making it tempting to wonder whether perhaps
could be talking to us in thè Bucolica through
Tityrus and others of the shepherds. The real-life
cient readers thought they could put to anonymo
Eclogues 1, 4, and 9, and the herdsmen they though
disguise need not interest us hère. Suffice it to say
of the Catalepton also introduced some unnamed p
poems, and what we hâve to wonder is why he wan
Let us take a look at the Catalepton s nameless:

Ρ 2 : erus pauper (4) ;

Ρ y. paterfiliusque adulescens (6); uicinus diues (20);
E 1: a woman whom 'Virgil' is prevented from seeing;
E 2: rhetor (2); /rater (5);
E 3: a generai who brought Asia to its knees, then fe
to subjugate Rome ;
E 6 : socer (1, 4) ; pueïla (3) ;
E 7: puer, loved by Varius and 'Virgil· (unless pothos [2
E 9: a generai and poet, apparently a member of Mess
family (40), and his puelh (23);
E 12: pueïla (2);filiae (5);
E 13: Luccius's soror (S),frater (12) and uxor (30); a Caes

The author of the Catalepton has succeeded in tem

scholars to devote often considérable efforts to th
of 'VirgilY unnamed characters. Westendorp B
stance, spends almost nine pages wondering who t
E 3 could be.38 Biographical readings entail the
sumption that ali thè people listed above must hav
to first-generation Catalepton readers. I am more i
that (except in the cases of Ρ 2's erus pauper and
son, who probably, as we saw above, stand for
and Virgil') the author of the collection was not t
spécifie men or women. It seems more likely that
ous omission of names is a veiled allusion to those
nameless figures in Virgil's Bucolica; in other wor

38. Westendorp Boerma [n. 2], 1, pp. 43-51.

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 40 Niklas Holzberg
to caricature this feature by s
guests' for a sort of 'guess-th
grams in the Catalepton are, a
abusive in content, so the auth
pecting an amusing read. It is
ple who are given names in th
in real life: take, for example,
5.3, whom no one has ever man
To recapitulate : the intertext
works by Catullus, Virgil, and
cause the author of the libellus could be sure that readers would
be familiär with the texts in question.39 This interprétation
would mean that the libellus was intended as a sort of script for a
literary 'who-said-it' show; the added insertion of 'rounds' in
which mystery identities could be spotted would be in keeping
with this kind of playfulness. My arguments hère in favor of read-
ing the Catalepton as a poetic lusus hâve of necessity been a little
sketchy. However, I hâve reason to hope that an exhaustive anal-
ysis of thè libellus, with special focus on its overall cohésion and
continuity, would support my approach.

University of Munich

39. The reader who fails to appreciate, e.g., that E 10 represents a superb parody
of Cat. 4 (cf. n. 10) is not likely to derive much pleasure from the poem.

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