Florus orator an poeta ? or, To Compare Small Things with Great

Abstract

Despite receiving much attention following its discovery in the nineteenth century, the captivating dialogue fragment Vergilius orator an poeta ? of Florus now lurks in the margins of Latin literary scholarship. This article, the first of a pair of studies on the work, aims to show what readers have been missing. It examines this tantalizing piece of prose as a novel form of autofiction, whereby Florus builds a sophisticated self-portrait out of an elaborate array of references to and evocations of literary texts : he shows how he lives literature like no one else. This reading demonstrates how the work’s unique autobiographical prose functions to playfully advertise Florus’ special status as (frustrated) poet-turned-grammaticus, and to dramatize his flourishing contributions to Latin literary culture in provincial Spain—despite having been thwarted by a tyrannical princeps.

Keywords

• Florus
• prose dialogue
• locus amoenus
• Virgil
• Cicero
• Horace