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True Friendship: Ennius and Other Poets in Catullus 116*
- TAPA
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 151, Number 1, Spring 2021
- pp. 155-184
- 10.1353/apa.2021.0005
- Article
- Additional Information
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summary:
This paper offers a new reading of Catullus's last poem. It argues against the current consensus that Catullus therein parodies both his recipient Gellius and his predecessor Ennius as hackish "anti-Callimacheans." Catullus 116 is rather, on the literal level, an indignant complaint to a false friend and fellow neoteric poet; and, on the figurative level, a programmatic statement of its author's Ennian-Callimachean poetics. To Catullus and his addressee, Ennius is a learned author in the Hellenistic tradition, whose influence alternately converges with and acts as a vector for the influence of Callimachus.