Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus (82 BC - c. 47 BC) was an orator and poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 of ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

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Son of Licinius Macer

Licinius Macer

Gaius Licinius Macer was an official and annalist of ancient Rome.A member of the ancient plebeian gens Licinia, he was tribune in 73 BC; Sallust mentions him agitating for the people's rights...

 and thus a member of the gens Licinia, he was a friend of the poet Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

, whose style and subject matter he shared. Calvus' oratical style opposed the "Asian" school

Asiatic style

The Asiatic style or Asianism |Brutus]] 325) refers to an Ancient Greek rhetorical tendency that arose in the third century BC, which later became an important point of reference in debates about Roman oratory....

 in favor of a simpler Attic

Atticism

Atticism was a rhetorical movement that began in the first quarter of the 1st century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with spoken Greek, which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greek.Atticism was...

 model: he characterized Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

 as wordy and artificial. Twenty-one speeches are mentioned, including several against Publius Vatinius

Publius Vatinius

Publius Vatinius was a Roman statesman during the last decades of the Republic.-Early political life:Vatinius was quaestor in 63 BC, the same year Marcus Tullius Cicero was consul. Cicero believed that Vatinius was elected on account of the influence of one of the consuls...

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Calvus was apparently short, since Catullus alludes to him as salaputium disertum.

F. Plessis published fragments of Calvus in 1896.

External links

• Catullus poems mentioning Calvus