Calpurnius Siculus: Technique and Date

Abstract

In 1854 Moritz Haupt, in a classic exercise of the higher criticism, established that only the first seven poems of a collection of eleven which had all passed under his name could be attributed to Calpurnius, and that the last four belonged to Nemesianus (Opuscula I. 358–406). This division and attribution is beyond question now. Haupt then went on to show that Calpurnius was active in the Neronian age. Some of the evidence was philological. Indeed, it was the very evidence which he had used to distinguish the techniques of the two poets. E. Champlin, however, claims that ‘all the traditional indications of a Neronian date are based on circumstantial details which are equally appropriate to other periods in imperial history’. This is incautious. For Champlin, unlike Haupt, fails to consider such matters as prosody and diction, which are, after all, historical data that may prove to be as useful tools to the historian as an allusion to a barbarian invasion or to a consular year. In fact, all the ascertainable evidence was not put into the balance. We now turn to that evidence.