Throughout Varro’s fragmentary corpus is a seeming obsession with textual afterlives, his own as well as of others. This was not merely a literary trope, but an idea grounded in Neoptolemus of Parium’s ars poetica and its counter-intuitive definition of ‘poet’. In his theory of poetry, ‘poet’ refers not to the historical poet who creates a poem, but to the meaning or ‘mind’ of a poem, and this ‘poet’ (the poet scriptus) acquires an immortality denied to the flesh-and-blood poet (the poet scribens). Varro’s approach to literary history is informed by this definition of ‘poet’, and when he writes about Rome’s literary past, his interest is less in biographical data about historical poets than in poetic self-preservation through mimesis. An examination of fragments from the De poetis, the De poematis, the De comoediis Plautinis, and the poetic epitaphs preserved in Gellius demonstrates how Varro’s interest in literary immortality and mimesis was misread as literary history in the narrow sense.

This book, having concentrated on Coleridge’s prose, now wonders what remnants of Coleridge’s sensitivity to the rhythm of his steps as well as to his lineal and geometric orientation exist in his nature poetry. To begin with, this chapter focuses on how the imprint of his feet moving through a landscape significantly contributed to the ways in which he shaped the contour of his nature poems and bestowed on them a feeling of immediacy. These poems also demonstrate his keen sensitivity to the lines of motion that run through and diagram the landscape he describes in his notebooks. Also Coleridge often paid attention to his understanding of the geometric figure. This chapter turns to “Frost at Midnight” and to “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” to illustrate how the circular and triangular forms ultimately shape and unite what initially seem disconnected to create a sense of the whole. The chapter ends by recognizing, however, that the topography of Coleridge’s nature poetry is not just determined by the geometric outline of its structure but rather finds its vibrancy in the selection of sensual details. Though alert to abstract geometric figures, Coleridge’s nature poetry primarily grounds itself within the realm of his physical contact with the earth.

Chapter 3 analyses the carpe diem motif in Horace from an innovative angle. It argues that we gain a better understanding of the motif if we read it against the background of Horace’s literary criticism in the Ars Poetica. In the Ars Poetica, Horace compares a language’s lexical development to leaves falling from a tree: while some words disappear, old ones return. Both the image of leaves and the understanding of time as cyclical are also part of Horace’s poetry of carpe diem. The chapter shows that the poems as well as the individual words of which they consist evoke present enjoyment. The chapter combines innovative work on Horace’s literary criticism with new interpretations of some of Horace’s most famous Odes, including the ode to Leuconoe, C. 1.11. The chapter reveals the importance of Horace’s choice of words for his poetics of presence.