What are the loci of comparison for Epode 16 and Eclogue 4, and at what points can we say they establish a conversation? The terms comparison and conversation are important, because they imply two different principles of reading, principles it will be helpful to elucidate before we attempt to answer the question. Comparison is an artificial, or better, synthetic act associated most directly with the reader-interpreter, the one performing the comparison. It comes from the Latin con + parare meaning literally, 'to match together, to pair, to make equal'. Comparison is synthetic because it is essentially creative – the reader links together two works hitherto unassociated (at least in his mind) so that each might illuminate and deepen his understanding of the other; it is artificial because the point of contact between the two works is not obvious or inevitable, but rather supplied and nurtured by the reader. The etymology of conversation is less straightforward, and therefore somewhat more revealing. It comes from the early French verb converser, which in turn comes from the Latin conversare, literally a turning towards, but also 'to pass one's life, to dwell, to hold intercourse with [sexual as opposed to Platonic], and [increasingly in modern French and English], to exchange words'. I would like to stress the notions of dwelling and intercourse. With conversation, we move from the primarily synthetic comparison to something more organic, sunontic, so to speak. What is it stake are two different views of literature: either literature is an accumulation of independent, self-composed entities or it is the space cohabit of many voices combining or colliding in a dissonant harmony that reuses and reproduces its own past. This is the space of history, and ideally the space we would like to investigate. However, since in practice it is difficult or impossible to find such an object without in part inventing it, we must of necessity mix the two, moving from congruencies that are too close to be accidental to the comparisons that these congruencies suggest. This will be our method for examining the poems.