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Whether Virgil was to be considered an orator or a poet was one of the key issues in the reception of his work, as is attested by discussions in Florus, Macrobius, Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus. This paper will take as its starting point Macrobius’ often cited discussion of Virgil as an orator and the implications of this “rhetoricizing” of the Virgilian epic not only for understanding post-classical “author function” dynamics but also for reassessing Virgil’s own engagement with the rhetorical.