widely accepted as Virgilian within eighty years of the poet's death. Others make no pretence of Virgilian authorship, and it seems
that the attribution was simply the result of an insatiable desire in the reading public for more poems by Rome's greatest writer.
Several are quite interesting in their own right, notably the Copa, a short hedonistic piece about the charms of a dancer at a country
inn, and the Ciris, a self-consciously decadent epyllion about a girl betraying her country for love. The only members of the
collection with any chance of being by Virgil are one or two of the very short pieces collectively known as the Catalepton ('In the
Slender Style'). Certainty about them will never be reached.
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