El tópico del princeps poetarum en la poesía latina: desde Lucrecio hasta Marcial

The aim of this paper is to pinpoint and perform a literary analysis of the princeps poetarum topos in Latin poetry, from Lucretius—the first Roman author to employ it—through the poets of the Flavian era. The princeps poetarum topos represents a specific expression of “vainglory”, through which poets proclaim the “supremacy” of their own works over those of all other writers, especially within the same literary genre. From a formal standpoint, this topos typically presents three distinct variants: first, the primus poet, in which supremacy is expressed in a simple and direct manner; second, the poet victor, by means of the metaphor of a competition in which poet emerges as the “victor”; and third, the poet coronatus, in which the poet is awarded the “palm” or “crown” for winning the competition. This topos, in any of its three aforementioned variants, can be found in the works of these seven Latin poets: Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Statius, and Martial.