Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

INTRODUCTION TOreign a friend twitted him \\dth his long absencefrom the capital, telling him that his poems hadwon appreciation there. By Hadrian's time he wasonce more in Rome, enjoying the Emperor's regardin virtue of his literary abilities and possibly becauseof some common links with Spain also. The intimacywas so close that it emboldened Florus to addressHadrian in a few extant trochaic lines of persiflageupon his craze for travel Ego nolo Caesar esse—towhich we have the imperial repartee Ego Jiolo Florusesse.^ Happily there is more poetry in his hexametersupon spring-roses and in some at least of histrochaic tetrameters. This is the quality which haslent support to the conjecture hazarded by certainscholars, that Florus was the author of one of themost romantic poems in Latin, the PervigiliumVeneris. Certainly that poem would have beensignally appropriate during the principate of Hadrian,who resuscitated the cult of Venus on a scale ofgreat magnificence.^ We cannot, however, be surethat the Pervigilium Veneris belongs to the secondcentury : and a rival hypothesis claims it for thefourth century, laying stress upon its resemblance tothe manner of Tiberianus.^In the codex Salmasianus of the Latin Anthologia(Parisinus, 10318) twenty-six trochaic tetrametersappear under the superscription Flori de qualitatevitae. The codex Thuaneus (Parisinus 8071) has,instead of Flori, Floridi, a corruption due to a mistakein the succeeding word. Five hexameters inthe codex Salmasianus also bear the heading Flori.° Spartianus, Hadrian, xvi.^ See Introduction, p. ,344, to Loeb edition of Catullus,Tibullus and Pervigilium Veneris.'^Sec Introduction to Tiberianus, infra.424