Valgius Rufus and the Poet Macer in Tibullus and Ovid

Abstract

This article argues that the figure of Macer, who is characterized as a poet with elegiac and epic interests in Tibullus (2.6) and Ovid (Am. 2.18, Pont. 2.10, 4.16), is a pseudonym (“the lean lover”) for Valgius Rufus. The usual candidates for Macer’s identity, Aemilius Macer and Pompeius Macer, have nothing to recommend them but their name and status as poets. In contrast, the information we learn about Valgius Rufus from Horace Carm. 2.9, the Panegyricus Messallae, and his surviving elegiac and hexametric fragments fits extremely well with the portrait of Macer that emerges from Tibullus and Ovid.