Reflections: Two Letters, and two poets

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the rapport of two epistolary poems of Catullus (poems 50 and 65) to the rendition of earlier poets that follow them (poems 51 and 66) as read through the prism of a Callimachean epigram (34 G.-P. = 2 Pf.). The paper seeks to further not only our understanding of Catullus’s use of Sappho and Callimachus as both artistic models and actual poetic figures of his own work, but to demonstrate how widely the intertextual resonance of one poem, here a sepulchral epigram for a dead poet, can be spread throughout the composition of a later author.