WHO MAKES THE PESTO? LABOUR, SOCIAL STATUS AND AUTHORSHIP IN THE <i>MORETVM</i>

Abstract This article offers a fresh examination of the different kinds of labour and labourers in the pseudo-Virgilian Moretum , and argues that the poem lends expression to the difficulty of distinguishing between exploitation and collaboration in any form of production, but particularly in literary production. At its core, this article considers the ways in which the Moretum repeatedly denies readerly attempts to pin down the exact status of, and relationship between, the poem’s two principal characters, Simulus and Scybale. This lack of clarity is important for the poem’s interpretation: if, as many have argued, the Moretum is about poetic labour, then the ambiguous socio-economic status of its central characters should lead critics to ask what the poem is trying to say about the nature of literary production. This article shows that, throughout the Moretum , exploitative labour is presented as collaborative, and vice versa; and this, in turn, allows the poem to raise the question of whether there can ever be collaboration without exploitation in the Roman literary world. By thus reading the Moretum as an exploration of willed and coerced co-production in literature, new light can be shed on the poem’s authorship.