Introduction

Abstract After presenting some striking features of Calpurnius’ poetry and identifying its promise for answering questions about imperial Latin poetry, the Introduction discusses treatments of pastoral as genre and mode and gives an overview of the history of interpretation of the poetry of Calpurnius Siculus, with a focus on the dating debate. Asserting the interpretive advantages of dehistoricized reading for literary interpretations, it proposes a new account of Calpurnius’ compositional practice in conversation with Kristofer Svensson’s pastoral erasure piece, a work of contemporary classical music, and a new way of thinking about intertextuality in Latin poetry.