Idk, neither ovid nor catullus struck me as particularly "serious". Hell, Pygmalion is one of the funniest stories I've ever read in my life. You have to veer into people who are both proud and ideological (eg Cato the Elder) to really get a sense of roman arrogance, IMO. I suppose Seneca might also be a very "serious" roman writer without veering into arrogance.