Optima tu proprii nominis auctor: The semantics of female authorship in ancient Rome, from Sulpicia to Proba

Abstract

This paper explores evidence for female authorship terminology in extant poetic texts written in Latin by women. It begins by first considering male authorship in Latin literature, before moving on to three case studies of women’s writing: an elegy by Sulpicia, an anonymous graffito from Pompeii, and the Virgilian cento of Proba. By foregrounding the ‘subversive mask’ of female poetic speech in Rome, the paper uncovers a subtextual rhetoric of authorship where female poets both respond to and subvert male authorship paradigms. It thus argues for the importance of analyzing authorship terminology in Latin literature through the lens of gender.