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The essays included in Clio Revisits Calliope. A Historian's Excursion to the Kavya Literature analyze kavya literature in Sanskrit, bringing to bear on it a sense of history. Taken up for study are the kavyas of Kalidasa, Bharavi and Magha, as well as a few prasastis. There is also a study of the Manipravalam poetry from Kerala, which partake of all features of Sanskrit kavyas. The burden of argument in these essays is that even when the theme taken up by two texts are the same, each has a different flavour and character and that it is the social formation which produced a literary piece that determines them. Although not planned and written as a disciplined monograph, the essays, when read together, will bring home the point that Clio, the muse of history, and Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, are not antagonistic to one another. They complement each other. A sense of history is essential in appreciating poetry; so also, a literary sensibility is a desideratum in understanding the past.