Rescripts

Abstract The chapter considers Sulpicia’s literary afterlife and argues that her earliest readership included the third-person author of [Tib.] 3.8, 10, and 12, along with her contemporary, the poet Ovid. The age in which Sulpicia lived and composed poetry was one of intense literary discussion and experimentation, and the Latin elegists too seem to have circulated their poems to friends both before and after publication. While scholars have recently suggested that the “Garland of Sulpicia” also took shape in the context of literary fellowship, they have typically seen Sulpicia’s gender as precluding any opportunity for her to associate with the elite male poets in Messalla’s patronage. Such skepticism, however, is not supported by the evidence feminist scholars have amassed for female participation in the male poetic culture of the first century bce, which shows that elite Roman women’s access to masculine literary culture in the late republic and early principate is primarily focused on domestic channels. Given the communal and familial dynamics of Roman literary culture, some model of distributed authorship seems warranted for the third-person elegies about Sulpicia and perhaps even her first-person compositions—whether across class lines, gender hierarchies, or both.