Stealing the Club from Hercules : On Imitation in Latin Poetry Frontmatter Index Foreword 1. Stealing the club from Hercules 2. A critical retrospective: method and its limits In the first part of this volume on the literary technique of imitation the author analyses Virgils working over the text of Homer which paradoxically represents a true act of artistic originality. In the second chapter the author reconstructs the presuppositions of a method and explores at the same time its limitations