Meleager and Catullus at Vergil Eclogue 1.55

Abstract

Meleager’s pair of epigrams on a grasshopper and cicada (AP 7.195 = HE 12 and AP 7.196 = HE 13) were popular with Roman poets of the late Republic. Allusions to the companion epigrams feature in two of the most programmatically significant poems of the period, Catullus 2 and Vergil Eclogue 1. In this note, I propose a previously unrecognized allusive relationship between these two Latin poems and their engagement with the grasshopper epigram of Meleager. Both Catullus and Vergil recall the address to Meleager’s grasshopper at AP 7.195 as a παραμύθιον, but they interpret the meaning of the epithet quite differently. παραμύθιον has the attested meanings of either “encouragement/exhortation” or “consolation.” I argue that Vergil’s translation of παραμύθιον ὕπνου into somnum suadebit inire at Eclogue 1.55 is a direct response to Catullus’ earlier interpretation of παραμύθιον as solaciolum at 2.7. Vergil’s allusion to Catullus 2 serves to highlight the differences in erotic scenarios for the speaker of Catullus 2 and Tityrus and to demonstrate Vergil’s ability to creatively integrate Catullan erotic lyric into his bucolic poetic mode.