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THE CULEX’S METAPOETIC FUNERARY GARDEN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

K. Sara Myers
K. Sara Myers*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
ksm8m@virginia.edu
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Extract

The Culex is now widely recognized as a piece of post-Ovidian, possibly Tiberian, pseudo-juvenilia written by an author impersonating the young Virgil, although it was attached to Virgil's name already in the first century c.e., being identified as Virgilian by Statius, Suetonius and Martial. Dedicated to the young Octavian (Octaui in line 1), the poem seems to fill a biographical gap in Virgil's career before his composition of the Eclogues. It is introduced as a ludus, which Irene Peirano suggests may openly refer to ‘the act of impersonating Virgil’, and, like many of the poems in the Appendix Vergiliana, it seems to have a parodic intent. The Culex has been interpreted as a parody of neoteric style and the epyllion, as mock-epic, as Virgil parody (John Henderson called it a ‘spoof Aeneid in bucolic drag’), as pointed Augustan satire, as mock Ovidian ‘Weltgedicht’ and as just very bad poetry (Housman's ‘stutterer’). Glenn Most has observed that the poem's three ‘acts’ structurally recapitulate Virgil's three major works in chronological succession. Little attention, however, has been paid to the Culex's final lines, which contain a catalogue of flowers the pastor places on the gnat's tomb. Recent scholarship has reintroduced an older interpretation of the gnat's tomb as a political allegory of Augustus’ Mausoleum; in this paper I suggest instead that the tomb and its flowers serve a closural and metapoetic function at the end of the poem.

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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 749 - 755
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association.

The Culex is now widely recognized as a piece of post-Ovidian, possibly Tiberian, pseudo-juvenilia written by an author impersonating the young Virgil, although it was attached to Virgil's name already in the first century c.e., being identified as Virgilian by Statius, Suetonius and Martial.Footnote 1 Dedicated to the young Octavian (Octaui in line 1), the poem seems to fill a biographical gap in Virgil's career before his composition of the Eclogues.Footnote 2 It is introduced as a ludus, which Irene Peirano suggests may openly refer to ‘the act of impersonating Virgil’,Footnote 3 and, like many of the poems in the Appendix Vergiliana, it seems to have a parodic intent. The Culex has been interpreted as a parody of neoteric style and the epyllion,Footnote 4 as mock-epic,Footnote 5 as Virgil parody (John Henderson called it a ‘spoof Aeneid in bucolic drag’),Footnote 6 as pointed Augustan satire,Footnote 7 as mock Ovidian ‘Weltgedicht’Footnote 8 and as just very bad poetry (Housman's ‘stutterer’).Footnote 9 Glenn Most has observed that the poem's three ‘acts’ structurally recapitulate Virgil's three major works in chronological succession.Footnote 10 Little attention, however, has been paid to the Culex's final lines, which contain a catalogue of flowers the pastor places on the gnat's tomb. Recent scholarship has reintroduced an older interpretation of the gnat's tomb as a political allegory of Augustus’ Mausoleum;Footnote 11 in this paper I suggest instead that the tomb and its flowers serve a closural and metapoetic function at the end of the poem.

In the Culex the eponymous gnat alerts the pastor to the danger of an approaching serpent by stinging him, whereupon the gnat is squashed, although the elderly shepherd is able to save himself in a remarkably short struggle with the snake (189–201).Footnote 12 That night the dead gnat appears to the pastor in his sleep and requests proper burial as a reward for his service (praemia … pietatis, 225) so that he may stop wandering throughout the underworld. The gnat's request for burial humorously recalls such heroic epic models as Patroclus in the Iliad, Elpenor in the Odyssey and Palinurus in the Aeneid.Footnote 13 The shepherd awakens and immediately begins to construct a tomb for the gnat (lines 390–414), the description of which occupies the last twenty-five lines of the poem. The gnat's katabasis bestows on him an incongruous heroic status and his tomb is appropriately amplified by the narrative elaboration of its construction and decoration. The shepherd constructs a circular mound and surrounds it with marble slabs and upon it places eighteen types of plants,Footnote 14 mostly flowers, humorously belying the small size of the buried gnat, addressed as parue Culex in his epitaph (390–414):Footnote 15

riuum propter aquae uiridi sub fronde latentem 390
conformare locum capit impiger. hunc et in orbem
destinat ac ferri capulum repetiuit in usum,
gramineam ut uiridi foderet de caespite terram.
iam memor inceptum peragens sibi cura laborem
congestum cumulauit opus, atque aggere multo 395
telluris tumulus formatum creuit in orbem.
quem circum lapidem leui de marmore formans
conserit, assiduae curae memor. hic et acanthos
et rosa purpureum crescent pudibunda ruborem
et uiolae omne genus; hic est et Spartica myrtus 400
atque hyacinthos et hic Cilici crocus editus aruo,
laurus item Phoebi decus ingens, hic rhododaphne
liliaque et roris non auia cura marini
herbaque turis opes priscis imitata Sabina
chrysanthusque hederaeque nitor pallente corymbo 405
et bocchus Libyae regis memor, hic amarantus
bumastusque uirens et semper florida tinus;
non illinc narcissus abest, cui gloria formae
igne Cupidineo proprios exarsit in artus;
et, quoscumque nouant uernantia tempora flores, 410
his tumulus super inseritur. tum fronte locatur
elogium, tacita firmat quod littera uoce:
parve cvlex pecvdvm cvstos tibi tale merenti
fvneris officivm vitae pro mvnere reddit.

Near the stream of water hiding under the green leaves he briskly begins to establish a place. And this he fashions into a circle and often turned to use his iron spade to dig up grassy earth from the green turf. Now his mindful care, pursuing the labour that had been begun, piled up the heap high, and with a massive piling the earthen tumulus grew into the circle he had formed. Around this, constantly mindful of his concern, he joined together stones, shaping them from smooth marble. Here will grow acanthus and the rose blushing with purple bloom, and every variety of violet. Here too are Spartan myrtle and hyacinth, and here saffron crocus sprung from the field of Cilicia, also the laurel, the great glory of Apollo. Here are oleander and lilies, and rosemary, cultivated in familiar places, and the Sabine herb that for men of old imitated expensive incense; and marigold, and ivy glistening with pale clusters, and bocchus, remembering Libya's king. Here are amaranth and flourishing bumastus and always flowering laurustinus. From there neither is narcissus missing, whose praise of his own beauty burned with Cupid's flames for his own limbs; and whatever flowers springtime renews, with these the mound is sown on top. Then on its front an epitaph is placed, which writing thus attests with silent voice: little gnat, to you who deserve it, the guardian of the flocks pays the duty of a funeral in return for the gift of life.

The construction of the tomb is an appropriately closural narrative device, as is the final two-line epitaph.Footnote 16 The location in line 390 recalls the poem to the bucolic world, with echoes of Virgil (Ecl. 8.87 propter aquae riuum uiridi procumbit in ulua; Ecl. 1.80 fronde sub uiridi) and Virgil's model, Lucretius (2.30 propter aquae riuum sub ramis arboris altae). Also recalled perhaps is the beginning of Georgics 3, where Virgil describes a metaphorical marble temple to be built on the banks of his native Mincius, with Augustus in the centre (G. 3.13–14 et uiridi in campo templum de marmore ponam | propter aquam), which represents a potential future poem.Footnote 17 While this parallel underlines the possible metapoetic implications of the Culex's tumulus and flowers, perhaps more specifically and pointedly the poet recalls the tumulus built for Daphnis in Eclogue 5, whose epitaph is echoed in the epitaph for the culex in line 413 pecudum custos ~ Ecl. 5.44 pecoris custos,Footnote 18 which reactivates bucolic poetics and parody at the end of the poem.

The catalogue of flowers may be seen as part of a narrative strategy of parodic epic inflation, or what Ross has characterized as typical neoteric narrative distortion.Footnote 19 The Culex poet is fond of catalogues, an important feature of epic and learned poetry,Footnote 20 and in particular also of such plant lists. Earlier in the poem the poet had already included a catalogue of ten types of trees at lines 123–45 and even detailed the five varieties of plants the goats eat at lines 52–6. Such catalogues allow for a display of literary and botanical learning, offering the poet ‘an opportunity to show off his technical skill in embellishing essentially prosaic material’.Footnote 21 Comparison of this flower catalogue, however, with the earlier, far more detailed list of trees in the Culex is illustrative, as the tree catalogue contains numerous mythological references that associate the trees with stories of transformation, among them the Ovidian Heliades (Culex 127–30, 142 ~ Met. 2.340–66), while the flower catalogue is relatively unadorned.Footnote 22

In the catalogue of twelve lines eighteen flowers appear mostly two per line, some with elaboration; the final flower, narcissus, is given two lines. While there is relatively little mythological expansion, the author clearly wishes to display their botanical learning. Most of the flowers are those common to garlands and other poetic flower catalogues, but rarer are rhododaphne (402) and chrysanthus (405), both of which appear first here in Latin (later in Plin. HN 16.79, 24.90 rhododendros ne nomen quidem apud nos inuenit Latinum, rhododaphnen uocant aut nerium; 21.168 Heliochrysum alii chrysanthemon uocant) and exhibit our author's fondness for Greek names and forms (cf. acanthos, hyacinthos).Footnote 23 bocchus in line 406 is a hapax legomenon, a plant of unknown identification.Footnote 24 The mention of the Libyan king, usually identified as either Bocchus I or Bocchus II, kings of Mauretania in the first century b.c.e., suggests horticultural novelty and pride; ‘botanical imperialism’ of the sort Columella and Pliny the Elder also exhibit.Footnote 25 The list contains four geographical references, 400 Spartica myrtus, 401 Cilici crocus editus aruo, 404 herba … Sabina, 406 Libyae regis, a feature typical of plant lists of all genres but also a reminder perhaps of the tradition of epic catalogues.Footnote 26 The use of the adjective Spartica in line 400 may also constitute a learned reference. The myrtle's connection with Laconia seems first to be mentioned at Catull. 64.89 (quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtus), a poem that forms an important intertext with the Culex, but nowhere else.Footnote 27 The Culex-poet, however, includes myrtle earlier in the tree catalogue with a hint at the story of the metamorphosis of Myrene into a myrtle (145 ueteris myrtus non nescia fati), a version preserved only in Servius’ commentary on Aen. 3.23, which contains no mention of a geographical location—might it have been Laconia?Footnote 28 The mention in line 404 of herba Sabina (savin juniper), on the other hand, recalls Italy's rustic origins. The plant is mentioned by Cato (Agr. 70.1) and frequently appears in passages evoking old-fashioned Italian worship (Prop. 4.3.58; Ov. Fast. 1.343). Its presence befits the simple life of the shepherd, who earlier in the poem was said to be supplied with incense by such agrestes herbae instead of foreign imports (87–8). The association of Apollo with the laurel at line 402 activates the potential poetic symbolism of the plant, while the well-known literary and religious links of myrtle and ivy to Venus and Bacchus remain only suggestive. It is only at the end of the catalogue that we find an explicit mythological reference in the two lines on Narcissus (408–9), which underlines its closural function.Footnote 29 While Ax has argued that the Narcissus myth reflects Augustus’ building of the Mausoleum (‘Das Mausoleum ist ein narcisistisches Denkmal der Selbstverliebheit des Princeps’),Footnote 30 more convincing is Laird's suggestion that the myth functions self-reflexively as a symbol of the poet's Virgilian imitation.Footnote 31

The metapoetic potential of both flowers and gardens in Greek and Roman literature is well known, wherein the arrangement of plants parallels the poet's labour and artistry.Footnote 32 Virgil includes numerous plant lists in both the Georgics and the Eclogues, but overlaps between these catalogues and the Culex are perhaps more inevitable than significant: acanthos, rosa, uiolae, myrtus, hyacinthos, crocus, lilia, hederae, narcissus, tinus/pinus are common to all textual gardens and garlands.Footnote 33 At G. 4.125–46 Virgil enumerates the flowers, produce and trees of the Corycian's garden at Tarentum, a passage often interpreted metapoetically,Footnote 34 and at Ecl. 2.45–55, in a passage perhaps more closely related to the Culex, Corydon gives a list of fourteen garlanded (48 iungit, 49 intexens, 51 legam, 55 sic positae, miscetis) flowers, plants and fruits intended as erotic gifts. Both Theocritus (Id. 11.56–9) and Meleager (Anth. Pal. 5.147 = 46 G–P) have been posited as Virgil's model for the latter passage, and, as Clausen suggests, Corydon's list represents metaphorically ‘a literary garland, for Meleager gathered his flowers from poetry’.Footnote 35 As Nisbet and Hubbard remark on Hor. Carm. 1.26.8, the ‘weaving of flowers is a common metaphor for poetic composition’.Footnote 36 Famously, Meleager introduced his Garland with a poem in which most of the poets included in the collection are identified with flowers and plants (Anth. Pal. 4.1 = 1 G–P).Footnote 37 I would also suggest that Nicander, whose poetry contains the first extensive poetic botanical lists, was an important model for Virgil's plant lists, as well as for those in the Culex. Footnote 38 Nicander, fr. 74, a 72-line fragment from his Georgics 2, which lists over thirty varieties of flowers and plants for garlands, offers numerous parallels to the Culex catalogue.Footnote 39

While the flower catalogue of the Culex also resembles the lists of plants given on numerous Latin sepulchral inscriptions and epitaphs,Footnote 40 the most common offerings to the dead were flower garlands.Footnote 41 The plants on the gnat's circular tomb can also be seen to suggest a garland (391, 396 in orbem) and to invite a similar metapoetic interpretation.Footnote 42 Two key terms in the Culex passage might support an interpretation of the flower catalogue as a symbolic garland as well as a garden: conserit in line 398 and inseritur in line 411 at the conclusion of the catalogue.Footnote 43 Both verbs are derived either from serere (OLD s.v. sero 1) ‘to plant, sow’ or serere (OLD s.v. sero 2) ‘to link together, join’.Footnote 44 While the TLL lists conserit at line 398 as ‘to join together’, and inseritur at line 411 as ‘to plant’,Footnote 45 the potential ambiguity of both verbs activates images of both planting and ‘the twining of a flower in a circular garland (serta)’.Footnote 46 A number of scholars have underlined the closural function of such poetic garlands, by drawing attention to the analogy between the terminology for the diacritic mark (coronis), the symbol added to the end of a text to show that the roll must be rewound, and the term for garland (corona).Footnote 47 Metapoetics and closure combine in the image of the tumulus and its flower garden.Footnote 48 The presence of this flower catalogue at the end of the Culex functions self-reflexively to represent the poet's own artistry, as well as to express his indebtedness to his multiple literary sources, especially Virgil.Footnote 49

References

1 Stat. Silv. 1 praef. 7–9, 2.7.73–4; Suet. Vita Lucani 5–7 (where Lucan is said to have cited the Culex); and Mart. 8.55.19–20, 14.185. See Peirano, I., The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context (Cambridge, 2012), 59–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the question of authenticity and the ancient testimonia. On dating, see Güntzschel, D., Beiträge zur Datierung des Culex (Münster, 1972)Google Scholar.

2 Kennedy, D., ‘Gallus and the Culex’, CQ 32 (1982), 371–89, at 371CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Peirano (n. 1), 58.

4 Ross, D.O., ‘The Culex and Moretum as post-Augustan literary parodies’, HSPh 79 (1975), 235–63, at 241–2Google Scholar; Ax, W., ‘Die pseudovergilische “Mucke” – ein Beispiel römischer Literaturparodie’, Philologus 128 (1984), 230–49Google Scholar; Stachon, M., Tractavi monumentum aere perennius: Untersuchungen zu vergilischen und ovidischen Pseudepigraphen (Trier, 2014)Google Scholar.

5 K. Büchner, ‘P. Vergilius Maro’, RE 8.A.1 (1955), 1021–264, at 1104.

6 Henderson, J., ‘The Carmina Einsidlensia and Calpurnius Siculus’ Eclogues’, in Buckley, E. and Dinter, M. (edd.), A Companion to the Neronian Age (Chichester, 2013), 170–87, at 182Google Scholar; Gall, D., Zur Technik von Anspielung und Zitat in der römischen Dichtung: Vergil, Gallus und die Ciris (Munich, 1999)Google Scholar; Mindt, N., ‘Vergil zur Mucke machen. Zum Culex der Appendix Vergiliana’, A&R 5 (2011), 19–36Google Scholar.

7 Most recently by W. Ax, ‘Marcellus, die Mücke: politische Allegorien im Culex?’, Philologus 136 (1992), 89–129.

8 Janka, M., ‘Prolusio oder Posttext? Zum intertextuellen Stammbaum des hypervergilischen Culex’, in Holzberg, N. (ed.), Die Appendix Vergiliana. Pseudepigraphen im literarischen Kontext (Tübingen, 2005), 28–67, at 52–9Google Scholar.

9 Housman, A.E., Classical Papers (Cambridge, 1902), 339Google Scholar. Marinčič, M., ‘The pseudo-Virgilian Culex: what kind of parody?’, CentoPagine 5 (2011), 13–23Google Scholar argues against a parodic interpretation of the poem.

10 Most, G., ‘The “Virgilian” Culex’, in Whitby, M., Hardie, P., Whitby, M. (edd.), Homo Viator: Classical Essays for J. Bramble (Bristol, 1987), 199–209Google Scholar.

11 Ax (n. 7), 99; building on Dornseiff/Thielscher in Dornseiff, F., Verschmähtes zu Vergil, Horaz und Properz (Berlin, 1951), 35–50Google Scholar; cf. Fabre-Serris, J., ‘Le Culex et la construction du mythe augustéen, pratiques et enjeux d'un poème faussement adressé à Octave’, in Labate, M. and Rosati, G. (edd.), La costruzione del mito augusteo (Heidelberg, 2013), 285–302Google Scholar; Seelentag, S., Der Pseudovergilische Culex (Stuttgart, 2012), 23–4Google Scholar; Janka (n. 8), 42. Stachon (n. 4), 130 also rejects this political interpretation.

12 See Ross (n. 4), 244 on the parodic brevity of the scene.

13 Hom. Il. 23.62–112, Od. 11.51–83; Verg. Aen. 6.337–83 (380 et statuent tumulum et tumulo sollemnia mittent).

14 It is important to acknowledge that the textual difficulties in line 399 make it uncertain whether in the Culex these flowers are to grow on the tomb as a garden, as I suggest, or whether they have been simply heaped upon it as an offering to the dead gnat. Seelentag (n. 11), ad loc. has followed Gärtner, T., ‘Untersuchungen zum pseudo-Vergilischen Culex’, AAntHung 46 (2010), 203–47, at 228–9Google Scholar and others, who question the reading of crescent as transmitted in the manuscripts, observing the difficulty of its tense (cf. est in line 400) and plural form (crescet is a recentior reading), and of understanding the accusative purpureum … ruborem as dependent on pudibunda (Gärtner proposes testans).

15 Cf. line 183 paruulus … umoris … alumnus. The literary tradition of epigrams for dead animals and insects (mostly cicadas), as found in Anth. Pal. 7.189–216, often underlines the small size of the deceased (e.g. Anth. Pal. 7.198). See G. Herrlinger, Totenklage um Tiere in der antiken Dichtung (Stuttgart, 1930). Ov. Am. 2.6 similarly ends with the two-line epitaph for a dead parrot, although it is specified as buried in a tomb of appropriately small size: ossa tegit tumulus, tumulus pro corpore magnus, | quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet (2.6.59–60). All quotations of the Culex are from Clausen's text in W.V. Clausen et al., Appendix Vergiliana (Oxford, 1966).

16 For closural poetic epitaphs, cf. Prop. 2.1.72; Ov. Am. 2.6.61–2, Her. 2.145–8. See Thomas, R.F., ‘“Melodious tears”: sepulchral epigram and generic mobility’, in Harder, M.A., Regtuit, R.F., Wakker, G.C. (edd.), Genre in Hellenistic Poetry (Groningen, 1998), 205–23Google Scholar; Ramsby, T., Textual Permanence: Roman Elegists and the Epigraphic Tradition (London, 2007)Google Scholar.

17 Ax (n. 7), 106; Stachon (n. 4), 123. Cf. Verg. Ecl. 7.31 leui de marmore. For a different interpretation of the Virgilian passage, see Harrison, S.J., ‘Vergil and the Mausoleum Augusti: Georgics 3.12–18’, AClass 48 (2005), 185–8Google Scholar.

18 Fabre-Serris (n. 11), 299.

19 Ross (n. 4), 244; cf. Seelentag (n. 11), 33: ‘retardieren’.

20 Kenney, E.J., The Ploughman's Lunch. Moretum: A Poem Ascribed to Virgil (Bristol, 1983), 34Google Scholar.

21 Kenney (n. 20), 34.

22 Seelentag (n. 11), 32: ‘Er ist reduziert auf ein blosses Verzeichnis der Grabbepflanzung.’ We might also compare the flower catalogue of the Culex with Ovid's catalogue of flowers in Flora's garden in Fast. 5.223–8, where each flower is named allusively by the boy from which it sprang.

23 Ross (n. 4), 251; Seelentag (n. 11), 34.

24 Ax (n. 7), 122–4 argues that the etymology of bocchus may have been derived from the writings of Juba II on African botany; cf. Seelentag (n. 11), 13–14, who cites Plin. HN 5.16, 25.77 on Juba's naming of the plant Euphorbeam from his doctor.

25 See A. Marzano, ‘Roman gardens and elite self-representation’, in K. Coleman and P. Derron (edd.), Le jardin dans l'antiquité (Entretiens sur l'Antiquité 60) (Vandoeuvres, 2014), 195–244.

26 Nicander's botanical lists also contain numerous geographical references, e.g. fr. 74.5, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19; cf. Columella, Rust. 10.130–9, 171–3, 182–93, 259–70.

27 Seelentag (n. 11), ad loc. cites a later mention in a gloss by Hesychius.

28 Geoponica 11.6 Myrsine gives a different version.

29 For the metamorphosis of Narcissus, cf. Ov. Met. 3.351–5. Although Janka (n. 8), 40 lists Ovid's Metamorphoses as a major intertext for the flower catalogue, it is notable that there is no gesture towards the Ovidian metamorphosis myths associated with the hyacinth (Met. 10.162–219, 13.394–8) or the crocus (Met. 4.283).

30 Ax (n. 7), 125; at (n. 7), 111–12 Ax argues that the plant catalogue exhibits parallels with Augustan vegetative decoration (especially herba Sabina, laurus); cf. Fabre-Serris (n. 11), 299.

31 See Laird, A., ‘Echoing Virgil and Narcissus: structure and interpretation of the Culex’, in Franklinos, T.E. and Fulkerson, L. (edd.), Constructing Authors and Readers in the Appendices Vergiliana, Tibulliana, and Ouidiana (Oxford, 2020), 96–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the metapoetic function of the Narcissus myth in Ovid's Metamorphoses, see Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998), 8Google Scholar and Rosati, G., Narciso e Pigmalione (Florence, 1983), 28Google Scholar. See also, on the prominence of the motif of mirroring in water in bucolic poetry, Paraskeviotis, G., ‘The watery image in Greek and Latin pastoral poetry’, Sileno 42 (2016), 111–22Google Scholar.

32 See É. Prioux, ‘Parler de jardins pour parler de créations littéraires’, in K. Coleman and P. Derron (ed.), Le jardin dans l'antiquité (Entretiens sur l'Antiquité 60) (Vandoeuvres, 2014), 87–143 and Roberts, M., The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, 1989), 47–55Google Scholar on metapoetic flower imagery. On horticultural metapoetics, see Fitzgerald, W., ‘Labor and laborer in Latin poetry: the case of the Moretum’, Arethusa 29 (1996), 389–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Columella, Rust. 9.2.1 on Virgil's contribution to apicultural writing: Vergilius poeticis floribus inluminauit ‘Virgil brightened the subject with the flowers of poetry’.

33 Plin. HN 21.14 lists roses, violets and lilies as the most popular for garlands. For other plant catalogues in Virgil's poetry, see H. Peraki-Kyriakidou, ‘Trees and plants in poetic emulation: from the Homeric epic to Virgil's Eclogues’, in A. Efstathiou and I. Karamanou (edd.), Homeric Reception across Generic and Cultural Contexts (Berlin and Boston, 2016), 227–47.

34 E.g. Fitzgerald (n. 32), 411; Clay, J., ‘The old man in the garden: Geo. 4.116–48’, Arethusa 14 (1981), 57–65Google Scholar. Fabre-Serris (n. 11), 298–9 has suggested an allusion to the garden of Georgics 4 in the Culex catalogue; cf. Drew, D.L., ‘Culex’: Sources and their Bearing on the Problem of Authorship (Oxford, 1925), 89Google Scholar. Although it is tempting to see in Culex 401 Cilici crocus editus aruo a reference to the old Corycian of Verg. G. 4.127, it is a common epithet of crocus (cf. Lucr. 2.416 croco Cilici; Hor. Sat. 2.4.68 Corycioque croco; Stat. Silv. 2.1.160 Cilicium flores; Columella, Rust. 3.8.4, 9.94.4 Corycius … bulbus croci; Plin. HN 13.5).

35 Clausen, W., Virgil Eclogues (Oxford, 1994), 79Google Scholar; cf. Coleman, R., Vergil Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 101Google Scholar and Paraskeviotis, G., ‘Verg. Ecl. 2.45–55. Corydon's catalogue of flowers, plants and fruits’, Latomus 77 (2018), 763–72, at 766Google Scholar. For metapoetic readings of Ecl. 2.45–55, see Deremetz, A., Le miroir des Muses: Poétiques de la réflexivité à Rome (Lille, 1995), 312–14Google Scholar and Heerink, M., Echoing Hylas: A Study in Hellenistic and Roman Metapoetics (Madison, 2015), 94, 96–7Google Scholar. Kronenberg, L., Allegories of Farming from Greece and Rome (Cambridge, 2009), 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar has suggested that the garden in Georgics 4 also recalls Meleager, Anth. Pal. 4.1 as a model. Considering Kennedy's (n. 2) strong arguments for the importance of Gallus’ poetry for the Culex-poet, it is tempting to view the flower-garland as figuring also in Gallus: cf. Ecl. 6.68 floribus atque apio crinis ornatus amaro, 10.41 serta mihi Phyllis legeret. Culex 405 recalls the ivy border in Verg. Ecl. 3.38–9 uitis | diffusos hedera uestit pallente corymbos.

36 Nisbet, R. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace Odes Book 1I (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar.

37 See Gutzwiller, K., Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context (Berkeley, 1998), 279–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leigh, M., ‘A garland for Maecenas (Horace, Odes 1.1.35)’, CQ 69 (2010), 268–71, at 270Google Scholar; Coleman (n. 35), 101.

38 Cf. Harrison, S., ‘Virgil's Corycius senex and Nicander's Georgica’, in Gale, M. (ed.), Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry (Swansea, 2004), 109–24Google Scholar on the influence of Nicander on Verg. Georgics 4.

39 Nicander, fr. 74 lists the usual flowers such as acanthus (55), roses (9–16), violets (1–8, 60), hyacinth (60), crocus (56), lilies (27, 70), ivy (17–24), but also the rare χρυσανθές (69), mentioned at Culex 405. See Drew (n. 34), 90–2 on parallels; also Seelentag (n. 11), ad locc. See F. Overduin, Nicander of Colophon's Theriaca: A Literary Commentary (Leiden and Boston, 2015), 53–116 on Nicander's plant catalogues.

40 Lattimore, R., Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana, 1942), 135–6Google Scholar. The reading of crescent in line 399 may be supported by sepulchral epigram parallels: cf. CE 1184.12–18 (13) ut tuo de tumulo flos ego cerna nouum | crescere. On tomb gardens, see J. Bodel, ‘Roman tomb gardens’, in W. Jashemski, K. Gleason, K. Hartswick, A. Malek (edd.), Gardens of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2018), 199–242; at 209 Bodel states that the ‘garden with a tomb’ came into use in the second half of the first century c.e.

41 E.g. Tib. 2.4.48 annua constructo serta dabit tumulo; Prop. 3.16.23.

42 I thank John Dillery and Glenn Most for encouraging me in this direction. Other words in the flower catalogue that resonate with the technical language of rhetorical style and gesture towards metapoetics include the three-fold repetition of memor (394, 398, 406), opus (395), cura, laborem (394), assiduae curae (398), editus (401), decus (402; cf. 18 Pierii laticis decus), imitata (404), uirens, florida (407).

43 Although conserit in line 398 refers to the placing of the marble, I agree with Seelentag's suggestion (n. 11), on lines 397–8, that the verb also looks ahead to the planting of the flowers. The verb is usually applied to more pliant materials (TLL 4.416.64–78); Heinsius proposed congerit.

44 Cf. (of planting) Verg. Ecl. 1.72, G. 2.37; Manilius 5.261; Columella, Rust. 2.17.4.

45 TLL 4.416.68 s.v. consero 2; TLL 7.1.1876.32 s.v. insero 1.

46 Nisbet and Hubbard (n. 36) on Hor. Carm. 2.5.21. See also Leigh (n. 37). A.J. Woodman brilliantly suggests that emending tumulus to tumulo in line 411 and repunctuating after inseritur would facilitate this interpretation: his tumulo super inseritur, tum fronte locatur ‘and, whatever flowers springtime renews, <a tribute> is woven with these above the mound and then on its front …’. The echo of Verg. Ecl. 5.42 (which introduces Daphnis’ epitaph) supports the emendation: et tumulo superaddite carmen.

47 See Bing, P., The Well-Read Muse (Göttingen, 1988), 33–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fowler, D., ‘First thoughts on closure: problems and prospects’, MD 22 (1989), 75–122, at 105–7Google Scholar (id., Roman Constructions [Oxford, 2000], 239–83, at 267–9); A. Barchiesi, ‘Endgames: Ovid's Metamorphoses 15 and Fasti 6’, in D. Roberts, F. Dunn and D. Fowler (edd.), Classical Closure (Princeton, 1997), 181–208, at 190–1; Leigh (n. 37), 271.

48 Gardens elsewhere suggest metapoetic closure, cf. Verg. G. 4.116 (iam sub fine laborum); Varro, Rust. 3.5; Ov. Met. 14.622–771; Columella, Rust. 10. On garlands and closure, see Hor. Carm. 1.1.35–6 (with Leigh [n. 37]), Carm. 3.30.14–16; Ov. Met. 6.127–8 (with H. Bernsdorff, ‘Arachnes Efeusaum [Ovid, Metamorphosen 6.127–8]’, Hermes 125 [1997], 347–56); [Tib.] 3.6.64; Mart. 8.82.4 (serta); A. Barchiesi, ‘The search for the perfect book: a PS to the New Posidippus’, in K. Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic Poetry Book (Oxford, 2005), 320–42, at 325 on Mart. 13.127 (coronas) remarks that ‘a poem about garlands at the end of an epigram collection cannot be a coincidence’.

49 For suggestions and improvements, I would like to offer my thanks to Tony Woodman, Hans Bernsdorff and the participants of the Oxford University conference on ‘Constructing Authors and Readers in the Appendices Vergiliana, Tibulliana, and Ouidiana’ (organized by T. Franklinos and L. Fulkerson).