Before (pseudo-)Virgil : anonymity, pseudepigraphy, and authorship in "Catalepton"

Recent scholars rightly believe that the fifteen poems transmitted under the title "Catalepton" and attributed to Virgil are 'pseudepigrapha', which were deliberately com- posed to appear as a youthful work by him. However, direct connections with Virgil are only present in some poems (1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15) and are missing in others (2, 3, 6, 10, 12, 13), which instead refer, often polemically, to other people. The article argues that this latter series of poems may have initially circulated anonymously and only later been attributed to Virgil. The other poems, whose author clearly wears Virgil’s mask, interact with these texts, and were perhaps composed from them. Therefore, the poems of "Catalepton" hardly appear to have all been written by the pen of a single author.