Sulpicia

Poems

Sulpicia was celebrated for sundry gay amatory effusions, addressed to her husband Calenus.

Their general character may be gathered from the expressions of Martial, Ausonius, and Sidonius Apollinaris, by all of whom they are noticed.

Two lines from one of these productions have been preserved by the scholiast upon Juvenal, Sat. 6.536.

Satirical poem published under the name of Ausonius but written by an earlier female poet

We find in the collected works of Ausonius, as first published by Ugoletus (4to. Parm. 1499, Venet. 1501), a satirical poem, in seventy hexameters, on the edict of Domitian, by which philosophers were banished from Rome and from Italy (Suet. Dom. 10; Gel. 15.11). It has been frequently reprinted, and generally bears the title Satyricon Carmen s. Ecloga de edicto Domitiani, or Satyra de corrupto reipublicae statu temporibus Domitiani. When closely examined it soon appeared manifest that it could not belong to the rhetorician of Bordeaux, but that it must have been written by some one who lived at the period to which the theme refers, that the author was a female (5.8), and that she had previously composed a multitude of sportive pieces in a great variety of measures. Hence many critics, struck by these coincidences, have not hesitated to ascribe the lines in question to the Sulpicia mentioned above, the contemporary of Martial, and in almost all the more recent collections of the minor Latin poets they bear her name. In a literary point of view they possess little interest, being weak, pointless, and destitute of spirit. (Wernsdorf, Poet. Lat. Min. vol iii. p. lx. and p. 83.)