True Friendship: Ennius and Other Poets in Catullus 116

Abstract

This paper offers a new reading of Catullus's last poem. It argues against the current consensus that Catullus therein parodies both his recipient Gellius and his predecessor Ennius as hackish "anti-Callimacheans." Catullus 116 is rather, on the literal level, an indignant complaint to a false friend and fellow neoteric poet; and, on the figurative level, a programmatic statement of its author's Ennian-Callimachean poetics. To Catullus and his addressee, Ennius is a learned author in the Hellenistic tradition, whose influence alternately converges with and acts as a vector for the influence of Callimachus.