POUR UNE DATATION DU POEME DE QUATTUOR TEMPORIBUS ANNI (AL 864 IN APP. RIESE).

This paper focuses on the short poem De quattuor temporibus anni and the possible date of its composition. The quatrain, which was preserved in codex Phillippicus 1694 and in manuscript Reims, Bibliothèque Municipale 1275, appears within the critical apparatus to poem 864 of Riese’s edition of the Anthologia Latina and in Wernsdorf’s Poetae Latini minores. Almost nothing is known about this piece of work and the few scholars who have shown interest in proposing a date for it have been undecided between an earlier and a later production. Closer scrutiny of the evidence at our disposal, bringing together elements taken from the structure of the text itself, as well as from other Latin poems, allows us to draw clearer conclusions and identify a period between the end of the first century AD and the beginning of the fifth century AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]