HeyJ.P.R.! Thanks for your reply. Your profile looks very strong, and your research topic sounds like really good fun too. The metaphor of 'poetic weaving' immediately made me think of Theocritus Idyll I, where he describes a young boy fashioning a cage for a cicada out of reeds (or something like that), which could be taken as a metaphor for the act of poetic composition. Vergil also uses that metaphor at the end of Eclogue 10 if i recall ('These songs, Pierian Maids, shall it suffice Your poet to have sung, the while he sat,
And of slim mallow wove a basket fine').
Anyways, I want to research the role and influence of Epicureanism in the literature of the late Republic and early Empire, with an emphasis on Cicero H,orace, and Vergil. My MA thesis was on the possible influence of Epicureanism on Vergil's Eclogues given his recently confirmed association with the Epicureans in his youth. There are quite a few people who I would love to work with - Sumi Furiya and A.A. Long at Berkeley, for example, both of whom are excellent on Roman Epicureanism and Hellenistic philosophy. At Harvard I would like to work with Richard Thomas too.