The volume under review, edited by Franklinos and Fulkerson, gathers a selection of papers presented at the international conference ‘Constructing Authors and Readers in the Appendices Vergiliana, Tibulliana, and Ouidiana’ hosted by the Faculty of Classics and Trinity College (University of Oxford) in September 2018.
While for a long time these Appendices have been studied to ascertain their authenticity or bastardy, finally scholars consider these texts as literary works in their own right, without devoting attention exclusively to the question of authorship. We may welcome this book as a continuation of many questions posed by I. Peirano in her thought-provoking book The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake (2002), in which she persuasively argues that texts without confirmed authors or a certain chronology (she labels these ‘fakes’) also deserve literary analysis.
Particularly noteworthy is the contributors’ attempt to demonstrate that, while reading the texts ascribed to these Appendices, we should avoid aesthetic judgements based on comparison with ‘major’ texts. Instead of asking how ‘bad’ these texts are compared with the canonical ones, it is more productive to locate them in their specific literary and historical contexts. Scholars have done an outstanding job of contextualising them in their historical milieu; this effort leads to the awareness of considering these poems not just with respect to their intrinsic aesthetic value, but as testimonia of the period in which they were composed. Shifting the focus away from authorial identity, most papers point out references or allusions to social and historical frameworks.
The first two contributions deal with the pseudo-Virgilian Ciris. A. Augoustakis investigates the influence of the Ciris – traditionally ascribed to the young Virgil – on the Latin literary tradition, by underscoring the heroine's lament. In contrast to D. Gall (Zur Technik von Anspielung und Zitat in der römischen Dichtung [1999]), who argued that the Ciris predates Virgil, Augoustakis cautiously suggests a post-Neronian date. Fulkerson's focus on the Ciris underlines the usual prejudices against pseudepigraphic texts. Because of these preconceptions, traditional scholarship has labelled the Ciris as a cento and has charged the author of the poem with derivativeness rather than focusing on elements of value. In contrast to the traditional view of the Ciris, Fulkerson encourages scholars to genuinely read the poem.
J. Farrell draws attention to Catalepton, transmitted, as Ciris, as a part of the Appendix Vergiliana, though the majority of scholars reject the opinion that Catal. 1–14 are authentic. The chapter highlights the political connotations of the whole collection. Particularly noteworthy is the reconstruction of the historical and literary context behind Catalepton 2: the identification of Cimber as the addressee of the poem has particular resonance, as Farrell notices. Franklinos and B. Kayachev also focus on Catalepton. Franklinos’s contribution investigates an aspect also treated by Farrell: namely the influence of the Catullan liber on the construction of the three iambic poems in the collection. On the one hand, he analyses how the author ‘receives’ the Catullan model; on the other, how he amends it. In this way, according to Franklinos, the author of Catalepton is shown to be ‘a learned and sophisticated author who was a close and sensitive reader’ (p. 82). Kayachev writes on the connection between Catalepton 9 and Valgius Rufus. Comparing it with the anonymous Laudes Messallae ([Tib.] 3.7), Valgius’ fragments and Horace's Valgius ode, he revives the idea that Catalepton 9 is a poem written by Valgius ‘or by a poet who in significant ways resembled Valgius’ (p. 94).
In the following contribution A. Laird looks at the Culex, another poem ascribed to the young Virgil. Laird's comparison between Virgil's Eclogue 6 and the Culex and his emphasis on ludere/ludus as a possible association with Augustus are of considerable importance, just as the reference to the Narcissus episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses is a hypotext for the Culex.
G. Williams devotes his attention to the Aetna and, accepting the idea that the author belonged to the Neronian or the Vespasianic eras, suggests that the text could be seen as ‘a sort of subterranean antithesis to the skyscape poetics of Manilius’ Astronomica’ (p. 112).
Subsequently, there are chapters on the Appendix Tibulliana, recently commented on by Fulkerson (A Literary Commentary on the Elegies of the Appendix Tibulliana [2017]). The Messalla panegyric, a 211-line hexametric poem, is at the core of R. Maltby's paper, who, by explaining why a panegyrical text has been transmitted as part of the Appendix Tibulliana, makes a comparison between the poem addressed by Tibullus to Messalla (Tib. 1.7) and the so-called Laudes Messallae ([Tib.] 3.7). G. La Bua reconnoitres the quaestio Lygdamea ‘as a fictional reconstruction of a conventional love story’ (p. 133) and convincingly asserts that, by reusing motifs from Catullus and Ovid's Ars amatoria and Heroides, Lygdamus constructs his literary identity as an expert in amatory matters and presents his elegiac persona on the model of the praeceptor amoris.
J. Fabre-Serris approaches the poetry of Sulpicia, the earliest and most significant female poet of classical Latin and, by considering the categories of author, reader and editor, persuasively makes the case that Sulpicia wrote [Tib.] 3.9. I. Fielding offers a broad view of Sulpicia's authorship of the poems generally ascribed to her ([Tib.] 3.13–18). In contrast to those who argue that Sulpicia of the Appendix Tibulliana was a literary persona of a male poet, Fielding compellingly contends the existence of a female circle of poetic composition around Sulpicia and the necessity of concealing her authorial identity behind the mask of a lectrix.
The last few contributions focus on the Appendix Ovidiana. S.J. Harrison writes on the Halieutica. Having claimed that the fragment is the one read by Pliny and, therefore, it should have been composed by ad 79, Harrison suggests curative emendations to improve the text. In the second part of the chapter he shows the desire of readers to integrate such a fragmentary text by providing a preface to this acephalous work. K. Volk's contribution also covers the Halieutica. By bypassing the question whether Ovid is the real author of the Halieutica or not, Volk cogently argues that the poem is ‘Ovidian’ and reflects the spirit with which Ovid wrote the Ars amatoria. The numerous parallels with the Ars, more than the testimony of Pliny who judges the poem as genuinely Ovidian, explain why scholars for a long time have ascribed this fragmentary work to Ovid.
S.J. Heyworth focuses on the Consolatio ad Liviam, attributed by manuscripts to Ovid. Heyworth is right in claiming that ‘in the case of this poem, the judgement on date is perhaps more important than that on authorship’ (p. 223). Heyworth dates the work to 8 bc and stresses many points of contact with Ovid and Seneca's consolations; both probably had the author of the Consolatio ad Liviam among their models.
K. Vuković considers the double Heroides, whose Ovidian authorship has been long debated. Instead of questioning Ovid's authorship (Vuković argues for Ovidian authorship), he is interested in exploring how we read the double letters in the light of Ovid's exile, based on the assumption that Ovid wrote the double letters during his exile. He demonstrates that Ovid, through these six letters, constructs his literary persona on the model of the rebel poet, who continues tirelessly writing elegy.
The final chapter, by M. McGowan, investigates the reception of the Nux by the Renaissance humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, author of a commentary dedicated to John More (Thomas More's son). The poem's subject – a genuine defence against maltreatment – relates profoundly to Erasmus’ personal circumstances, trapped as he was between radicals employing his discoveries to harass him.
From these contributions we learn that the constructed author(s) of these texts should not be confused with the historical author, who cannot be identified. Therefore, rather than attempting to determine definitely the genuine author of a text, it is more constructive to investigate the fictional or putative character who constructs a literary identity and is able to accommodate so many senses in these texts. From this point of view, intertextuality is central to authors’ construction of their fictional literary personae. Remarkably, authors’ reformulation of poetic topoi is particularly noteworthy as it allows us to re-establish the connections between the ‘main’ poets, such as Virgil, Ovid and Tibullus, and the mysterious ones whose works are collected in these Appendices and to see how these authors consider their most illustrious predecessors and engage in conversation with them. Therefore, sophisticated literary craftsmanship does not merely involve adding intertextual allusions but, rather, is seen through a decisive indication of inserting oneself into a specific literary tradition. Intertextual references are not decorative, but play a fundamental role in the thematic structure of the book as a whole.
What is also worth noting is the relationship that authors construct with their readers, who are called to admit them into a specific canon. For instance, as La Bua has shown, Lygdamus solicits readers to consider his work a supplement to Ovid's didactic love poetry. Indeed, the volume succeeds in becoming part of the debate of what should be considered canonical and, more interestingly, whether it is worth drawing a line between the canonical and the marginal. The editors are right in underlining in the introduction that this distinction is especially unavailing given that the majority of Latin literature is lost and, perhaps, ‘much of what seems peculiar (‘marginal’) to us might well be part of, even integral to, a larger tradition that is mostly unknown or undiscovered’ (p. 7). Related to the distinction between marginal and canonical, another aspect that is particularly valuable is the reflection that emerges from many contributions about the kind of auctoritas an author can confer on a work. Assigning an illustrious name to a specific work inevitably makes it more widely known and places it into a canon.
However, it also emerges from this volume that works of significant quality can be found in non-canonical texts, the so-called pseudepigraphic poems, and texts so poorly transmitted, as Harrison has pointed out speaking of the Halieutica, merit more scrutiny and philological examination than they have been given. All the contributions demonstrate that some understudied texts, generally unduly neglected being considered ‘minor’, deserve more investigation as increased scholarly interest might lead to an appreciation of their value. Certainly, this volume will contribute to broadening the canon of Latin writers and Roman poetry books. The scholarly community is grateful to the editors and the contributors for having drawn attention to these ‘minor’ texts and having provided such fine pieces of scholarship.
