ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 treats the elegiacs attributed to Gallus in the 1588 Aldine edition (Anthologia Latina 914–917): Asinii [sic] Cornelii Galli elegia, nunc primum e tenebris eruta ab Aldo Manuccio. Eiusdem epigrammata tria (Florence: G. Marescotti for Aldus Manutius, 1588). The edition attributed to Gallus a 100-line elegiac poem, ‘Non fuit Arsacidum tanti expugnare Seleucen’, and three elegiac fragments. The chapter proves, against recent attempts to establish their authenticity, that they are Renaissance forgeries. The argument rests in part on the demonstration that traces of Maximianus persist in the version of Gallus presented in these poems, proving that they could not have been written before the sixteenth century. There is analysis of the elegy’s relationship with Virgil’s tenth Eclogue, with the elegies of Tibullus and with Ciris. There follows a discussion of why the elegy appears to anticipate modern interpretations of the genuine Qaṣr Ibrîm lines (the so-called ‘new Gallus’). It is established that the author of the elegy draws upon the elegies of the German Neo-Latin poet Petrus Lotichius Secundus. The chapter includes full text and translation of ‘Non fuit Arsacidum’.
