The aim of this chapter is to analyse the constructions with support verb (like verba facere, consilium capere, in memoria habere, etc.) in Plautus and Terence, as well as to highlight, among other aspects, their frequency of use, syntactic types, and which are the most common verbs and constructions. At the same time, the comparison between Plautus and Terence and, above all, between early Latin and a selected corpus of classical Latin prose (Caesar, Cicero, Sallust and Livy) and poetry (Virgil and Ovid) will allow me (i) to demonstrate the process of grammaticalization and renewal of these analytic expressions, (ii) to refine the widespread idea that the constructions with support verb are a characteristic of colloquial Latin, and finally (iii) to determine whether early Latin has its own peculiarities in the use of these complex expressions.

An overview of Cicero’s engagment with Latin poetry with discussion of Cicero’s preferential interest in certain poets over others. Discussion of Cicero’s quotation of different Latin poets (Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, Terence, Lucilius) and different genres of Latin poetry (epic, tragedy, comedy, satire), including Cicero’s aversion to the quotation of contemporary poets and neoterics. Discussion of Cicero’s own poetic compositions and practices of self-citation. An overview of Cicero’s quotation of Greek poets (Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Leonidas of Tarentum, Aeschylus, Callimachus, Hesiod, Menander, Pindar, Archilochus, Stesichorus) and proverbs. Discussion of Cicero’s Latin translations of Greek poets (Aratus, Euripides, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles). Discussion of Cicero’s quotations of poetry from memory versus from a book.

Catullus’ poem 51, paradoxically, would be incomplete without its famous lacuna: the gap in 51.8 functions as an acoustic channel through which the sonorous presence of Sappho and her lyric poetry is evoked. This paper shows how this ‘epiphanic’ textual lack enables the readers to experience the past in its sublimity, or to feel themselves connected to a chain of voices and silences. Catullus’ lacuna, accordingly, is interpreted as an empty monument of the ‘absent presence’ of the Sapphic voice which is being simultaneously silenced and reanimated by the endlessly iterable events of reading. In that regard, Catullus’ ‘translation’ is a realization of Walter Benjamin’s imperative included in ‘The Translator’s Task’, awakening the ‘echo’ of the Sapphic original. At the same time, the lacuna – labelled here as Catullus’ ‘Black Square’ – is envisioned as an inherent part of the poetic play between Calvus and Catullus in poems 50 and 51, to be supplemented by Calvus’ textual or bodily presence. In this sense, the 30 or so conjectural supplements of 51.8 in the textual history of the poem – among others, the famous vocis in ore – do nothing more than take on the role of Calvus, and write a palimpsest of absences and presences.

Catullus’ poem 51, paradoxically, would be incomplete without its famous lacuna: the gap in 51.8 functions as an acoustic channel through which the sonorous presence of Sappho and her lyric poetry is evoked. This paper shows how this ‘epiphanic’ textual lack enables the readers to experience the past in its sublimity, or to feel themselves connected to a chain of voices and silences. Catullus’ lacuna, accordingly, is interpreted as an empty monument of the ‘absent presence’ of the Sapphic voice which is being simultaneously silenced and reanimated by the endlessly iterable events of reading. In that regard, Catullus’ ‘translation’ is a realization of Walter Benjamin’s imperative included in ‘The Translator’s Task’, awakening the ‘echo’ of the Sapphic original. At the same time, the lacuna – labelled here as Catullus’ ‘Black Square’ – is envisioned as an inherent part of the poetic play between Calvus and Catullus in poems 50 and 51, to be supplemented by Calvus’ textual or bodily presence. In this sense, the 30 or so conjectural supplements of 51.8 in the textual history of the poem – among others, the famous vocis in ore – do nothing more than take on the role of Calvus, and write a palimpsest of absences and presences.

Catullus features heavily in Chapter 21 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho, but he is by no means the only Roman literary figure to have found in Sappho an important predecessor. Ovid, Horace, and others give powerful evidence of her influence in Latin literature.

The fourteen papers in this volume take advantage of advances in the study of Ennius’ Annales that have occurred in the generation since Otto Skutsch published his monumental edition and commentary on the poem, while also taking advantage of Jackie Elliott's recent provocation to question the most basic assumptions that underlie Skutsch’s work. The result is a collection of essays as diverse in their individual interests and objectives as we believe Ennius and his Annals also were. The essays are organized under four rubrics, namely (1)Innovation, (2) Authority, (3) Influence, and (4) Interpretation. An afterword reflects on the findings of the volume as a whole, with equal emphasis on new questions that the individual papers raise and on solutions that they propose, while raising additional points that should provoke further research.