MARCUS FURIUS

See also:

• MARCUS FURIUS BIBACULUS

BIBACULUS  , Roman poet, flourished during the last century of the republic . According to Jerome, he was born at Cremona in 103 B.C., and probably lived to a great age . He wrote satirical poems after the manner of Catullus, whose bitterness he rivalled, according to Quintilian (Instil. x . 1 . 196), in his iambics . He even attacked Augustus (and perhaps Caesar), who treated the matter with indifference . He was also author of prose Lucubrationes and perhaps of an epic poem on Caesar's Gallic wars (Pragmatia Belli Gallici) . Otto Ribbeck attributes to him one of the shorter poems usually assigned to Virgil . It is doubtful whether he is the person ridiculed by Horace (Satires, ii . 5 . 40) and whether he is identical with the turgidus Alpinus (Satires, i. ro . 36), the author of an Aethiopis dealing with the life and death of Memnon and of a poem on the Rhine .

Some critics, on the ground that Horace would not have ventured to attack so dangerous an adversary, assume the existence of a poet whose real name was Furius (or

Cornelius) Alpinus . Bibaculus was ridiculed for his high-flown and exaggerated style and manner of expression . See Weichert, " De M . Furio Bibaculo," in his Poetarum Latinorum Reliquiae (183o); fragments in L . Mailer's edition of Catullus in the Teubner Series (187o) .