In examining the terminological, rhetorical, and sociopractical intersections between Catullus and Cicero, we have been able to uncover a bit more of the textual story of the late Republic. And yet, mapping the textual practices of the late Republic onto the ongoing continuum of ancient textual culture and the “textualization” of culture as a whole, leaves us with one further question: what happened next?

There is of course no monolithic answer to such a monolithic question. What happened to the text and the textual world in later periods? To a certain extent I would respond that the Principate of Augustus, and the resultant blooming of textual culture in the Principate and early Empire, is what “happened” to the text and the textual community that fostered it. As isonomic textual prestation seems to have all but disappeared in this later period – it might indeed be argued that under the social and political structure of the Principate textual isonomy had become well-nigh impossible – there arose an immensely productive system of the sort of hierarchically organized literary patronage investigated by White and others. Yet as much as the textual efflorescence of the Principate and Empire may seem to have little in common with the practices of the earlier periods, the disjuncture between these two periods is not so great. Indeed, the Augustan textual world has its roots firmly planted in the soil of the Republic, and the points of contact and lines of continuity suggested in this study will, I think, be useful for ongoing investigations into these later periods.