Gender Reversals and Intertextuality in Tibullus

This paper argues that Tibullus’ practice of altering the gender of his intertextual references destabilizes gender as a biological, social, and even grammatical category in his elegies. In 1.8, Tibullus draws on images of women’s adornment from Callimachus, Philitas, and Propertius to create the opening image of the puer Marathus. In 2.6, Tibullus draws from Catullus’ lament for his brother in carmen 101 as he describes Nemesis’ dead young sister and demonstrates his technical skill in manipulating the flexibility of grammatical gender in Latin.