Propertius’ self-proclamation as the ‘Roman Callimachus’ in elegy 4.1 is something of a provocation in a poem and book of Vigilian epicizing ambition – a provocation staged in Horos’ immediate reassertion of a doctrinaire interpretation of Callimachean programmatics. This chapter unpacks these apparent tensions chiefly through exploration of Propertius’ attention to Virgil’s prior programme of Callimachean allusion: thus elegies 4.3, 4.6 and 4.11 recycle Virgil’s use of the Coma Berenices to mediate Caesar’s catasterism; 4.6 reconstitutes the Callimachean hymns that lie behind the shield of Aeneas; 4.9 identifies the rival Callimachean and Apollonian models that Virgil unites in Aeneas’ visit to the future site of Rome; and the book as a whole is peppered with scholarly readings of Virgil’s learnedness. In this way Propertius 4 shows that Callimachus was always already a patriotic poet (despite the tendentiousness of the Roman recusatio), that Virgil had his own claim to Callimachean (and so to Propertian) refinement, and that genre does not preclude an elegist from Virgilian themes (hence Propertius’ obsessive matching of Virgilian and Callimachean stichometries and line-counts).

The chapter sets out to query ancient scholars’ awareness of politeness phenomena as reflected in language and the metalinguistic tools they used to describe them. Particular attention is devoted to the terms charientismos and astimos, as well as to some specific acceptations of reticentia and expressions like grave or durum dictu.

Even if as a general rule ancient grammarians and commentators did not analyse the ordinary spoken language, since they mostly focused on poetry and the more exalted prose genres, it can be argued that all commentators of literary texts pay some considerable attention to ordinary language in interaction, and some attempt is made by them at identifying and labelling what they correctly see as speakers’ rhetorical strategies to reach a pragmatic goal while avoiding conflicts with an interlocutor or giving offence. These writers also make interesting deductions about the social and educational implications of the correct use of politeness etiquette and ritualization.