Latin Love Poetry

by McCoskey, Denise Eileen; Martirosova Torlone, Zara;

  Even as the puella becomes the source of poetic production, palpable anxiety is nonetheless generated by her extension from a ‘written’ to a ‘read’ puella. In Amores 3.12, the very poem in which he calls Corinna the driving force of his ‘genius’, Ovid bemoans the fact that through the circulation of his poetic work she has been made an object of widespread consumption, an availability he equates with prostitution (Amores 3.12.7–10). In effect, by writing about her, Ovid envisions himself as a kind of leno (‘pimp’) (11), candidly admitting just how closely his role as poet vies with that of the lena.29

  Even as the puella becomes enmeshed in literary composition and consumption, she also serves at times as a direct personification of the poet’s work. A.M. Keith argues that ‘Corinna’s bodily perfection corresponds to the stylistic refinement privileged throughout the Amores.’30 Noting Propertius’ continuing attempts to define his poetic project, in part by distinguishing it from other possible literary pursuits, McNamee likewise asserts that Propertius’ physical descriptions of his lover in 1.2 and elsewhere can be read as allusions to specific aspects of literary style, such as the poet’s preference for Cynthia’s unadorned simplicity.31 More generally, McNamee maintains that ‘Cynthia is in every detail an allegory for the kind of poetry that Propertius is willing to write.’32 Wyke argues that Propertius establishes Cynthia’s status as a literary device especially in Book 2 (especially 2.10–13), associating ‘Cynthia so intimately with the practice of writing elegy as to undermine her identity independently of that practice’.33

  In Amores 3.1, Ovid presents an explicit rendering of poetic genre through female flesh, personifying the literary genres of elegy and tragedy as two distinct types of women. While Tragedy enters impassioned with grand strides (11–14), Elegy, presented as a meretrix, conveys the central features of her genre through her body, demonstrating not only a ‘beautiful form, the thinnest cloak and a face for loving’, but also approaching with what seems to the poet ‘one foot longer than the other’ (9), an allusion to the elegiac metre and ‘flaw’ that Ovid labels ‘the reason for her beauty’ (10). As Wyke maintains, the overall appearance and comportment of Elegy reinforces throughout the main tenets of Callimachean style, including the adherence to small poetic forms.34 At first, Ovid seems to prefer elegy (despite its frivolous nature) to tragedy because ‘what she demands requires little time’ (68). However, Ovid eventually ends the poem by defining his own poetic agenda in more precise terms: ‘Let my “Loves” hurry on while I have time: a grander masterpiece is urging me on’ (69–70) – lines that perhaps nod towards his future tragedy, Medea, and suggest that at this stage of his career Ovid was not connecting his hopes for longevity with his elegiac verse.

  Given such juxtaposition of elegy and tragedy – or love poetry and epic in Propertius – we want now to examine more closely how both Propertius and Ovid consistently redefine themselves as poets, at the same time expanding the boundaries of the genre of love poetry itself.

  Propertius: Elegy as Augustan Poetry

  As we have seen, Propertius constantly uses earlier writers to help locate his own literary undertaking, and we can discern the concrete influence of many authors throughout his work. In addition to adopting certain general qualities of Catullus’ love poetry, Propertius alludes directly to Catullus’ exhortation to Lesbia that they ‘live and love’, ignoring the rumours of jealous old men (Catullus 5) when he writes in 2.30, ‘let harsh old men criticize these entertainments of ours, my life, while we wear away our intended path’ (13–14). As mentioned in the previous chapter, there is continuing debate over whether some or all of the Gallus figures of Propertius’ first book should be read as the poet Cornelius Gallus. Beyond this conundrum, Gallus’ influence on Propertius was surely evident to an ancient audience that possessed his entire work; some modern scholars discern Gallus’ influence already in Propertius’ opening poem.35 So, too, Propertius’ difficult Book 2 may show Tibullus’ impact on his work, perhaps leading Propertius to experiment with longer poems.36

  There are two prominent and interrelated features of Propertius’ poetic self-definition, however, that we would like to examine here: his ostensible rejection of epic in defining his poetic programme and his increasing identifications with Callimachus. We begin with Propertius’ employment of recusatio, a trope that ostensibly allowed a poet to refuse certain literary and social demands,37 although, as we shall see, the precise meaning of such refusal in Propertius’ work often remains elusive.

  The Poetics of Refusal

  Epic was the earliest and clearly most authoritative literary genre in antiquity. Attempts to stake out the grounds for other types of poetry – especially those related to love and personal experience – can be traced all the way back to Sappho, as we have already seen. When Propertius in poems 1.7 and 1.9 urges the epic poet Ponticus to embrace love poetry and so better reflect his own experiences in love, he follows a time-honoured tradition of defining love poetry as a distinct genre by showcasing its departures from epic. For the Augustan poets, such a stance also reflected the strong influence of Callimachus, who famously distinguished his poetic style from that of epic.38

  In poem 2.1, Propertius addresses his patron Maecenas with an elaborate recusatio, recounting the topics he deems himself unfit to sing. Propertius’ employment of the trope serves as a kind of two-layered denial, since he professes that if Fate had allowed, he would be writing about different themes – not, he hastens to explain, events of myth or even early Roman history, but rather, ‘I would sing of the wars and achievements of your Caesar [Augustus], and you would come next, after mighty Caesar’ (25–26). Propertius then lists a series of specific sites and events that praise for Augustus might entail, such as Mutina and Philippi – the location of two of Octavian’s victories during the civil wars – and also ‘the Nile, when, having been dragged into the city, it flowed, diverted, with seven captured waters’ (2.1.27–32), an image evoking Augustus’ triple triumph of 29 BCE celebrating the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra.

  Although Propertius assures Maecenas of his place in all these themes (35–36), the construction of the actual list potentially undercuts any straightforward idea of glory. For one, Propertius calls Philippi ‘the citizens’ graveyard’, reiterating its ties to the traumas of civil war, and before Actium he names another potential theme: ‘the overturned hearths of the ancient Etruscan race’ (29), an allusion to the brutal Perusine War of 41–40 BCE which devastated Propertius’ homeland. Moreover, Propertius closes the recusatio by comparing himself to Callimachus, whose ‘slender voice’ could not sing of the mythological Gigantomachy, and he ultimately pronounces himself unfit for both duro versu (‘epic poetry’) and for writing about Augustus (39–42). Professing that everyone should practise the craft best suited to their abilities, Propertius explains that his wars are best ‘waged on a narrow bed’ (45–46).

  In poem 2.10, the poem in which Propertius initiates more fully the idea of the scripta puella, he also presents an extended list of the themes that he should write about, only to defer such undertakings by the end. He begins:

  Now it is time to traverse Helicon [a site sacred to the Muses] with other dances

  and time to give the field to the Thessalian steed.

  Now it is pleasing to celebrate troops brave in battle

  and to speak of the Roman camp of my leader.

  (1–4)

  Noting his own limits, and that he will turn from his puella once she has been ‘written’, Propertius begs for a loftier voice. He then records his predictions of the future exploits of the princeps, beginning with the idea that Augustus will avenge Crassus’ loss of the Roman standards at Carrhae:

  Already the Euphrates refuses to shelter

  the Parthian cavalry behind its back, and grieves

  that it has held Crassus’ men. But India yields its

  neck to your triumph, Augustus, and the

  abode of untouched Arabia trembles before you,

&nbs
p; and, if any other land drags itself to the ends of the earth,

  that land, captured, soon after will feel your touch!

  (13–18)

  Propertius’ jubilant personifications of the territory waiting to be conquered by Augustus seem to endorse contemporary ideas about the bright future that awaits Rome. Having predicted such unequivocal domination and that, by recording it, he will be a ‘great poet’ (using the term vates, which we shall discuss below), Propertius nonetheless immediately equivocates, admitting he is still held in the grips of love (19–26), seemingly undermining his earlier praise and enthusiasm.39

  In poem 3.9, Propertius again addresses Maecenas, the only poem – aside from 2.1 – to do so. Asking why Maecenas sends him into ‘such a vast ocean of writing’, Propertius protests that ‘massive sails’ are not suitable for his tiny boat (1–4). He goes on to repudiate a series of mythological themes, proclaiming it will be enough for him ‘to find favour among the work of Callimachus’ and to sing in the strains of Philetas (43–44). But Propertius abruptly seems to reverse himself by suggesting to Maecenas that with Maecenas ‘as guide’ he will write of grand mythological events and also of Roman history, including the ‘walls established by Remus killed’ (47–50) and culminating with ‘Antony’s hand, fatal to himself’ (56), a reference to Mark Antony’s suicide in Egypt. Propertius then concludes that it is due to Maecenas that he will be praised and be seen as one of Maecenas’ cohort (59–60). With such a finish, one infused with unsettling internecine violence, Propertius ostensibly promises to undertake a very different kind of verse for Maecenas, yet in the very next poem he resumes what seems like his standard fare, penning a playful poem about his puella’s birthday.

  Such contradictions or false turns in Propertius’ work have led to ongoing debates about his evolving sense of his own poetic programme and, more specifically, his use of recusatio itself.40 Sullivan sees the recusatio as Propertius’ ‘main shield’ against any political pressure.41 Yet, as Margaret Hubbard points out, ‘the recurrence of the Callimachean apology is certainly in itself no evidence for pressure’.42 And, on closer inspection, the recusatio proves to be a slippery rhetorical device since it involves delineating what will not be included in a poet’s work and so manages to incorporate the very thing it denies. Gregson Davis, examining the device in Horace, has called recusatio a ‘mode of assimilation’, explaining that it is ‘a device by which the speaker disingenuously seeks to include material and styles that he ostensibly precludes’.43

  The fact that, for Propertius, the recusatio often involves not merely a stance against epic, but also a promise that he will, one day, celebrate Augustus means that the trope raises questions about Propertian politics as well, especially given that Propertius’ prospective catalogues of refused topics often include events from the civil wars – a complicated emotional terrain, surely, for any Roman reader of the era. So what should we infer from such passages about Propertius’ understanding of what it means to be not merely a poet, but an Augustan poet at that? Moreover, what should we make of the fact that Propertius eventually does alter his programme in Book 4? Has he given in to relentless pressure and critique or simply extended an ongoing and decidedly unpredictable literary experiment? We can approach such questions from a strictly literary angle by turning to a closely related feature of Propertius’ poetry: his emergent identification with Callimachus.

  The ‘Roman Callimachus’?

  Hubbard helpfully traces the growing presence of Callimachus in Propertius’ work, pointing out that although Book 1 utilizes certain Hellenistic models and Book 2 shows ‘the influence of Callimachus in a more profoundly assimilated form’, it is in Book 3 that Propertius specifically ‘asks for initiation into Callimachus’ rites’,44 substantially elevating their association. Notably, whereas Propertius opens Book 1 with the name ‘Cynthia’, he starts Book 3 with the name ‘Callimachus’, requesting that the ‘shade of Callimachus and the rites of Coan Philetas’ allow him to enter their grove (3.1.1–2). The replacement of Cynthia with Callimachus marks well Propertius’ shift from a preoccupation with the actual experience of love to the more literary idea of the love poet, and the poem as a whole stakes a lofty position for Propertius.

  Labelling himself a sacerdos or ‘priest’ from a ‘pure spring’, Propertius next asserts that he is the first to ‘convey Italian mysteries through Greek dances’ (3–4). In phrasing replete with Callimachean precepts, he bids goodbye to those who ‘delay Apollo in arms’ and requests that his own verse go forward polished with ‘slender pumice stone’ (7–8), noting soon after that a ‘broad path’ is not given for the Muses to run (14). Promising that others will speak of Rome’s future military accomplishments, Propertius proclaims that his own work, deigned for peacetime, was brought down from the Muses’ mountain on an ‘untrodden path’ (17–18). He requests that the Muses award him a ‘soft’ rather than ‘hard’ garland (19–20), a seeming contrast with either epic’s presumed reward or the standard garland awarded to triumphant generals (perhaps both; for the triumph, see Chapter 5). Referencing an ‘envious crowd’ of detractors (21), Propertius finally predicts that his fame will increase after his death, just as the reputations of the Trojan War and Homer himself (21–36).

  Soon after, in poem 3.3, Propertius presents an even more impressionistic sense of his place in the Roman literary canon, recounting a dream he had ‘in the shade of Mount Helicon’ at the spring of Hippocrene (1–2), a setting that links the poem both to the Aetia and to the Annals of the Roman poet Ennius. Suggesting that he drank from the same spring at which Ennius ‘thirstily’ drank, Propertius is about to follow Ennius by singing episodes of Roman history when suddenly Apollo interrupts him (5–14).45 Demanding to know who ordered the poet to sing a ‘work of heroic song’ (15–16), Apollo reminds Propertius of his ties to love poetry, using a by now familiar emphasis on the modest size and weight of such poetry (18 and 22). Calliope later reiterates that Rome’s military achievements are not for Propertius, using her own list of themes unsuited to him (41–46). At the poem’s conclusion, the Muse now wets Propertius’ lips with the very same waters that Philetas once drank (51–52).

  Although he evokes Callimachus with greater reverence in Book 3, it is in Book 4 – after proclaiming himself free of love and condemning Cynthia to the ravages of old age (3.24 and 3.25) – that Propertius demonstrates perhaps most dramatically his debt to the earlier poet by undertaking a major shift from his previous poetry. While Propertius, as we have seen, incorporates the voices of Cynthia and other women in Book 4, he also adopts the Aetia as a model for many of the poems, offering an account of the origins of various rituals and sites in Rome. The book opens with a request that a ‘visitor’ look at ‘mighty Rome’ (4.1a.1), then juxtaposes the present grandeur of the city with its earlier, more humble form. We shall explore in the next chapter the role of this poem and others in Book 4 in elucidating the meaning of the Roman past in light of its present landscape. For our purposes here, it is enough to note that, after recounting at length the glories of Rome and its history, the poet signals his intention to change poetic modes by announcing that his role is now to ‘serve his country’ (60). Requesting recognition from Ennius and the god Bacchus, he hopes that his homeland ‘Umbria might swell with pride at my work, Umbria home of the Roman Callimachus!’ (63–64).

  As in earlier books, however, Propertius’ connections to love poetry defy any straightforward attempt at literary transformation. For Propertius’ claim to Rome that ‘this work rises for you’ (67) is punctured shortly after by an interlocutor, later identified as the astrologer Horos, who cautions Propertius that Apollo does not approve of such poetry from him (4.1b.73–74). Relaying Propertius’ horoscope, during which he briefly recounts the poet’s own biography, Horos soon orders Propertius instead to ‘compose elegy, a deceitful undertaking [fallax opus]’ (135), a characterization of elegy that might seem surprising, but nonetheless conveys well the unpredictability of the gen
re in Propertius’ hands. Despite the seeming reinforcement of Propertius’ status as love poet, then, Book 4 develops in ways that demonstrate Propertius’ serious engagement with new poetic forms, even as he continues to juxtapose, and at times blur, the opposing genres of elegy and epic.

  As many critics have argued, Propertius’ third book demonstrates patent familiarity with Horace’s odes, offering, in many places, a sly rejoinder to them.46 Horace, in turn, launches a scathing attack on Propertius’ claims to the title ‘Roman Callimachus’ in his Epistles (2.2.99–101). Such parries suggest the vibrancy with which Roman literary genres were taking shape – and being contested – throughout the Augustan era. Rome’s Greek inheritance in particular provided a malleable resource for the Latin love poets, albeit one with a certain amount of contradiction, especially when it came to their use of myth. In declining epic themes through devices like the recusatio, Propertius seems to reject myth as suitable material for his poetry. On the other hand, he frequently incorporates mythical references into his work. How can we reconcile these two opposing strategies, not merely in Propertius, but in love poetry more broadly? That is, given their strong adherence to Callimachean principles, why do the Latin love poets so often integrate myth, the foundation of epic, into their verse?