The Boy Who Crashed and Burned: Quintus Sulpicius Maximus and the Limits of Classical Literary Criticism

This is an exploratory reading of a distinctive text, a 43-line hexameter Greek poem composed for Domitian’s Games for Capitoline Jupiter in 94 CE by Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, who was 11 years old. The following discussion considers the case of this talented but inevitably inexpert poet, and its implications for our reading practices as classicists.