Conclusion

On the matter of Catullan arrangement, scholarly progress has moved glacially and without the impetus of global warming. Yet, after a century and a half, some limited consensus seems to have been reached. Whether they stipulate that the libellus ended with poem 14 or extend it to include the Juventius poems, Catullan scholars now appear to agree that the opening sequence(s) of the polymetric section are elegantly structured according to a combination of metrical and thematic principles, and that Catullus himself is responsible for that design. We may, accordingly, identify this segment of the corpus with the libellus dedicated to Nepos, as a whole or in part. Dispute continues over the layout of the remaining polymetric poems; there is certainly no agreement on whether they continue the libellus, represent another organized volume or volumes, or were gathered together and added posthumously. The carmina maiora probably circulated first as independent poems, but who compiled them may never be known. Finally, the elegiac poems are beginning to receive the same amount of attention formerly directed toward the polymetrics. They too seem to display interesting features: stylistic and metrical contrasts between the longer opening elegies and the epigrams, and patterned arrangement of the first 25 epigrams succeeded by looser correlations among the remaining ones. Recent papyrus discoveries, particularly the new Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309), contribute to the debate - by providing evidence of how published Hellenistic poetry collections were structured (Hutchinson 2003) and, more disturbingly, by perhaps calling the notion of a ‘‘controlling author as editor and architect’’ into question (Barchiesi 2005: 341). In the next 150 years we may finally see a satisfactory resolution of die Catullfrage. Or not.