ABSTRACT
The so-called "Garland of Sulpicia" is a series of five elegiac poems written in relationship to Sulpicia's epigrams in a more literary, smooth, and learned manner. It has been assumed by those who think that both the Garland and the shorter Sulpicia poems were composed by one poet that this poet created an alternating sequence in which the first, third, and last poems are spoken in the third person by a friend or some observer, and the second and fourth poems are spoken by "Sulpicia." In other words, if the Garland is a response to Sulpicia's poems, to demote them to a secondary status dissembles the reciprocity of the relationship. This flies in the face of her concerns communication, with care, and with silence, the silence of men around her and the silence she finds in her own dissembling.
