Chapter 4 - What Were the Long Poems?

Summary

It is an error to suppose that Latin literature was restricted to a small literate elite; performance before a large public audience (e.g. at a festival or the ludi scaenici) was often the primary form of ‘publication’, prior to the distribution of a written text in a book. Catullus’ poems 62 and 67, both written in dramatic form, were presumably meant for performance; poem 61 is a marriage hymn, sung by two choruses as part of the bride’s procession; poem 63 is a narrative hymn, sung and danced probably at the ludi Megalenses. There are good reasons to believe that poem 64, normally cited as the defining example of an ‘epyllion’ (a genre invented by modern scholarship), was composed as the libretto of an elaborate stage performance. Poems 68a and 68b are entirely separate from each other, addressed to different recipients: 68a is a letter of apology, 68b an elaborate mythic celebration of the poet’s doomed love affair, addressed to Allius but in the hope of reaching a more extensive audience.