We treasure both Gaius Valerius Catullus and Quintus Horatius Flaccus for their literary gifts and for their lyrics on the power of love and the pleasures of sophisticated urban living. We also, and often, treasure Catullus and Horace together; after all, both poets share a number of distinctive interests: metrically, stylistically, thematically, and what one might call professionally.
Among these common professional interests is their shared literary debt to a female predecessor, the early sixth century BCE Greek poet Sappho. For this reason alone, one might expect Catullus and Horace to acknowledge the presence and activity of female poets, and especially women erotic poets, in their own Roman milieu. I would like to argue that both Catullus and Horace in fact make such acknowledgments, but do so in strikingly different ways.