Who Built the Boat? Labor and Material in Phaedrus IV. 7 and Catullus 64
By Christopher J Londa
The opening of Catullus 64 has long been recognized as an intertextual tour de force, where the poet’s restaging of the Argo theme variously “rejects,” “corrects,” or “pays homage” to Euripides, Apollonius, Callimachus, Ennius, and Accius (Jocelyn 1967; Thomas 1982; Hinds 1998). Similarly well-documented has been the influence of this poem on the canonically central works of Vergil (Libby 2016) and Ovid (Conte 1986). Considerably less attention, however, has been paid to the links between Catullus 64 and the refashioned Argo motif in Phaedrus IV. 7.
Crops of Destruction: Parallels in Lucretius' Origins of Life and Disease
By W. Erickson Bridges
Lucretian scholarship has frequently discussed how the Plague of Athens serves as a fitting ending for the De Rerum Natura, both in its parallels with the invocation of Venus in the proem to Book 1 (Gale 1994, 2001) and in the cycle of creation and destruction found throughout the poem (Minadeo; Müller; Schiesaro).
Just Taking the Pith: Lucilius’ First Satires as (Mis)Quotable One-Liners
By Marcie Persyn
The textual remains of Lucilius’ Satires, the cornerstone of Roman verse satire, can perhaps best be described using the Horatian tag “disiecti membra poetae.”
Gellius the Poet
By Jesse Hill
Modern scholarship by and large agrees on two points about Gellius, the gaunt, rosy-lipped figure of Catullus’ epigrams: (1) he was a hackish versifier whose “anti-Callimachean” poetry gets parodied in Catullus’ final poem (e.g. Macleod 1973, Sheets 2007, Mastandrea 2008, Adamik 2014); and (2) he is to be identified with L. Gellius Poplicola, consul in 36 BCE (e.g. Neudling 1955, Wiseman 1974, Skinner 2003, Stroup 2010).