Catullus, Ennius, and the Poetics of Aui^sion'

earlier Latin literature; they adopted instead the manner and the matter of Alexandrian poetry, particularly of Callimachus. They wrote urbane short poems and recondite epyllia; they made use of Greek words in transliteration and of learned allusions after the manner of the Alexandrians; they polished the hexameter to such a degree that Catullus, in poem 64, shows not a single violation of Hermann's Bridge. In short, it would seem, the poetry of the neoterics is Greek in all but its use of the Latin language.