Latin Love Poetry

by McCoskey, Denise Eileen; Martirosova Torlone, Zara;

  87 Sara H. Lindheim, Mail and Female: Epistolary Narrative and Desire in Ovid’s Heroides (Madison, 2003), p. 183.

  III. Power and Play

  1 Paul Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy: Love, Poetry, and the West, tr. D. Pellauer (Chicago and London, 1988), p. 90. Veyne, for one, argues that it is essential that the protagonists in elegy not be married at the end. Flaschenriem calls the frequent allusions to death (especially in Propertius) ‘a metaphor for the “impossibility” of desire’ in elegy: see Barbara Flaschenriem, ‘Loss, desire, and writing in Propertius 1.19 and 2.15’, Classical Antiquity, 16/2 (1997), p. 262.

  2 Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy, p. 86; Veyne expands that ‘everything is a humorous simulacrum with no trace of irony or harshness, including the vexations of love and evil company.’

  3 Skinner focuses especially on the term ‘scortillum’ (‘little whore’) and the phrase ‘ut decuit cinaediorem’ (which she translates ‘as suits a whoring faggot’ on p. 8) at Marilyn B. Skinner, ‘Ut decuit cinaediorem: power, gender, and urbanity in Catullus 10’, Helios, 16 (1989), p. 16. The latter insult in particular is complex in gender terms, given that the cinaedus, although it generally references contexts of prostitution, refers to a male subject ‘in all other instances of its occurrence in classical Latin’ (p. 17).

  4 Ibid., p. 14.

  5 Sharon James, ‘Slave-rape and female silence in Ovid’s love poetry’, Helios, 24/1 (1997), p. 62. Another significant ‘asymmetrical’ relationship in love poetry is that of poet and patron. See Parshia Lee-Stecum, Powerplay in Tibullus: Reading Elegies Book One (Cambridge and New York, 1998), p. 20.

  6 Both are discussed at Lee-Stecum, Powerplay in Tibullus, pp. 22–23.

  7 J.P. Sullivan, Propertius: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 1976), p. 83; cf. Georg Luck, The Latin Love Elegy (New York, 1959), p. 15.

  8 Sullivan, Propertius, p. 83. It is this ‘demi-monde’ that Ovid identifies as the primary audience of his Ars Amatoria, as we shall see in Chapter 6.

  9 Dixon places the relationship of real women and their textual representations at the heart of her approach in Suzanne Dixon, Reading Roman Women (London, 2001); her final chapter ‘The allure of “la dolce vita” in Ancient Rome’ examines how and why certain ideas about Roman women have persisted across the centuries, pp. 133–156. See also Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1986), especially her final chapter entitled ‘The emancipation of Roman women’, pp. 257–266.

  10 Maria Wyke, ‘Mistress and metaphor in Augustan elegy’, rev. and repr. in ead., The Roman Mistress: Ancient and Modern Representations (Oxford, 2002), pp. 39–40.

  11 Edwards also urges greater caution in linking ancient accounts to ‘real’ women’s activities at Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge and New York, 1993), pp. 35–36.

  12 Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy, argues that the puella of Latin love poetry is by conscious design ‘someone irregular, a woman one did not marry’ (p. 2), while Gardner argues that ‘the marginality of these women becomes, for the amator, the very basis of their allure’ at Hunter H. Gardner, ‘Ariadne’s lament: the semiotic impulse of Catullus 64’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 137/1 (2007), p. 175.

  13 On the contradictory representations of Tibullus’ Delia, see, for example, Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy, p. 50. Such variable social roles open class as well as ethnic distinctions, as some scholars have identified the women in love poetry specifically as Greek freedwomen; cf. R.O.A.M. Lyne, The Latin Love Poets from Catullus to Horace (Oxford, 1980), pp. 8–18.

  14 Alison R. Sharrock, ‘Womanufacture’, The Journal of Roman Studies, 81 (1991), p. 49.

  15 Ingrid E. Holmberg, ‘The Odyssey and female subjectivity,’ Helios, 22/2 (1995), p. 104. The role of desire has also featured in Lacanian interpretations of Latin love poetry. Janan offers one definition of Lacanian desire as ‘that which propels us to recover a blessed state we believe we once enjoyed’ in Micaela Janan, ‘When the Lamp is Shattered’: Desire and Narrative in Catullus (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1994), p. 25.

  16 Holmberg, ‘The Odyssey and female subjectivity’, p. 107.

  17 Ibid., p. 111.

  18 Ibid., p. 120.

  19 On the various pseudonyms in love poetry, see Sullivan, Propertius, pp. 78–79. Fredrick notes that the name of Sulpicia’s lover, Cerinthus, ‘has associations with bees, wax, and writing’ at David Fredrick, ‘Reading broken skin: violence in Roman elegy’, in Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner (eds), Roman Sexualities (Princeton, 1997), p. 187.

  20 Ovid deftly recognizes this dynamic when he remarks that the name Corinna continuously inspires the desire to know who she ‘really’ is (Ars 3.538).

  21 Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy, pp. 60–61. Wyke has used the phrase ‘the elegiac woman’ to denote the women of elegy collectively as a type, countering the specificity implied by their individual names; see Maria Wyke, ‘Reading female flesh: Amores 3.1’, in A. Cameron (ed.), History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History (Chapel Hill and London, 1989), p. 117.

  22 Veyne, Roman Erotic Elegy, p. 60.

  23 Ibid., p. 64.

  24 Corinna is discussed in detail at J.P. Sullivan, ‘Two problems in Roman love elegy’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 92 (1961), pp. 522–536.

  25 Moreover, the puella’s elusiveness becomes enmeshed in love poetry’s own poetics since one of the central characteristics of elegy is also its ‘lightness’ (levitas). For a lengthier discussion of the puella’s ‘levity’, see Denise E. McCoskey, ‘Reading Cynthia and sexual difference in the poems of Propertius’, Ramus, 28/1 (1999), pp. 22–26.

  26 See Barbara K. Gold, ‘“But Ariadne was never there in the first place”: finding the female in Roman poetry’, in N.S. Rabinowitz and A. Richlin (eds), Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York and London, 1993), p. 89.

  27 Flaschenriem similarly equates the textual and sexual dimensions of Cynthia, noting that Cynthia ‘becomes a focus of literary as well as erotic unease’; see Flaschenriem, ‘Loss, desire, and writing’, p. 259.

  28 For a broader perspective, see Maria Wyke, ‘Woman in the mirror: the rhetoric of adornment in the Roman world’, in Léonie J. Archer, Susan Fischler and Maria Wyke (eds), Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night (New York, 1994), pp. 134–151.

  29 See Lawrence Richardson, jr, Propertius: Elegies I–IV (Norman, 1977), p. 150. See also Sharrock, ‘Womanufacture’, pp. 39–40 and Robert J. Gariépy, ‘Beauty unadorned: a reading of Propertius I.2’, Classical Bulletin, 57 (1980), pp. 12–14.

  30 Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis, 1993), p. 32.

  31 Mary Hamer, Signs of Cleopatra: Reading an Icon Historically, (2nd edn., Exeter, 2008), p. 21; the actual triumph is described in ancient sources at Cassius Dio, Roman History 51.21.8 and Plutarch, Antony 86.1–3.

  32 Wyke, ‘Mistress and metaphor’, p. 45.

  33 This is not to say, however, that illegitimate children were routinely stigmatized in Roman culture; see Edwards, Politics of Immorality, pp. 49–51.

  34 For a fuller account of ancient abortion, see Konstantinos Kapparis, Abortion in the Ancient World (London, 2002). In regard to Ovid’s poem, see also W.J. Watts, ‘Ovid, the law and Roman society on abortion’, Acta Classica, 16 (1973), pp. 89–101.

  35 For a critique of such tendencies, see Dixon, Roman Women, pp. 59–65.

  36 Mary-Kay Gamel, ‘Non sine caede: abortion politics and poetics in Ovid’s Amores’, Helios, 16/2 (1989), p. 189.

  37 Balsdon calls them ‘singularly tasteless’ at J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Roman Women (London, 1962), p. 192.

  38 Gamel, ‘Non sine caede’, pp. 190–192.

  39 Ibid., p. 193.

  40 The use of the gaze as a potential way of tracking gendered power was inspired in large part by Mulvey’s groundbreaking work on film; see Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasure
s (Bloomington, 1989). For the Roman era, begin with David Fredrick (ed.), The Roman Gaze: Vision, Power, and the Body (Baltimore, 2002). For a related discussion of art, see John R. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100 B.C. – A.D. 250 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998).

  41 See Saara Lilja, The Roman Elegists’ Attitude to Women (Helsinki, 1978), pp. 119–132.

  42 O’Neill, for example, uses a Lacanian perspective to argue that the recipient of the gaze in Propertius’ poetry also holds a position of power at Kerill O’Neill, ‘The lover’s gaze and Cynthia’s glance’, in Ronnie Ancona and Ellen Greene (eds), Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry (Baltimore, 2005), p. 245. For similar dynamics in Horace, see Elizabeth H. Sutherland, ‘How (not) to look at a woman: bodily encounters and the failure of the gaze in Horace’s C. 1.19’, The American Journal of Philology, 124/1 (2003), pp. 57–80.

  43 Flaschenriem, ‘Loss, desire, and writing’, p. 270.

  44 See, for example, Ellen Greene, The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry (Baltimore and London, 1998), p. 81.

  45 Joan Booth, ‘The Amores: Ovid making love’, in Peter E. Knox (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Malden and Oxford, 2009), p. 65.

  46 See Walters, ‘Invading the Roman body’, p. 38.

  47 The Roman soldier occupied a paradoxical position in Roman law and social attitudes given his reliance on his body; see ibid., p. 40.

  48 See Leslie Cahoon, ‘The bed as battlefield: erotic conquest and military metaphor in Ovid’s Amores’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 118 (1988); the author notes that, in many ways, this ‘is a perfect reversal’ (p. 302) of the completed sexual act of 1.5.

  49 Alison R. Sharrock, ‘The drooping rose: elegiac failure in Amores 3.7’, Ramus, 24/2 (1995), pp. 156 and 172.

  50 Ibid., p. 157.

  51 Sharrock notes that the closest parallels in Latin literature come from Horace’s Epodes (11, 12, 14 and 17). Tibullus makes indirect reference to a similar experience of impotence in 1.5.39–42; see ibid., pp. 156–157.

  52 The Catullus translation is taken from Sharrock; see her discussion of both passages at ibid., pp. 169–170.

  53 Kirk Ormand, Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome (Westport, 2009), p. 186.

  54 Catullus calls it ‘a tidy, if not large sum’; see Kenneth Quinn (ed.), Catullus: The Poems, (2nd edn., London, 1973), p. 443. The same amount appears in poem 103, where Catullus seems to be asking for a refund from the pimp Silo.

  55 See Fredrick, ‘Reading broken skin’, pp. 176–177. See also Marilyn B. Skinner, ‘The dynamics of Catullan obscenity: cc. 37, 58 and 11’, Syllecta Classica, 3 (1991), pp. 1–11. J.N. Adams’ The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1982) is an essential aid for reading Catullus.

  56 See Julie Hemker, ‘Rape and the founding of Rome’, Helios, 12 (1985), pp. 41–47. See also Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce (eds), Rape in Antiquity (London, 1997).

  57 Gardner, Women in Roman Law, pp. 118–121.

  58 See Leo Curran, ‘Rape and rape victims in the Metamorphoses’, in J. Peradotto and J.P. Sullivan (eds), Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (Albany, 1984), pp. 263–286; and Amy Richlin, ‘Reading Ovid’s rapes’, in ead. (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 158–179.

  59 For bodily inscriptions in antiquity, see C.P. Jones, ‘Stigma: tattooing and branding in Graeco-Roman antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies, 77 (1987), pp. 139–155.

  60 Fredrick, ‘Reading broken skin’, p. 172.

  61 Sharon L. James, Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender and Reading in Roman Love Elegy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2003), p. 185.

  62 See Julia H. Gaisser, ‘Amor, rura, and militia in three elegies of Tibullus: 1.1, 1.5 and 1.10’, Latomus, 42 (1983), pp. 58–72.

  63 In passages like these, love poetry seems to point to some of its origins in epigram; for a detailed discussion of the use of epigrammatic inscriptions in Roman poetry, see Teresa R. Ramsby, Textual Permanence: Roman Elegists and the Epigraphic Tradition (London, 2007).

  64 Cahoon, ‘The bed as battlefield’, p. 294.

  65 See Sharon L. James, ‘Her turn to cry: the politics of weeping in Roman love elegy’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 133/1 (2003), pp. 99–122.

  66 Lilja, Roman Elegists’ Attitude, p. 165.

  67 Greene maintains that the poem overall forges a potent bond between ‘pleasure and male domination’ at Ellen Greene, ‘Travesties of love: violence and voyeurism in Ovid Amores 1.7’, The Classical World, 92/5 (1999), p. 415.

  68 Ibid.

  69 Ibid., p. 417.

  70 Greene, Erotics of Domination, p. xvi.

  71 Fredrick, ‘Reading broken skin’, p. 190.

  72 James L. Butrica, ‘Propertius 3.8: unity and cohesion’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 111 (1981), p. 24.

  73 For an overview, see James H. Dee, ‘Elegy 4.8: a Propertian comedy’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 108 (1978), pp. 41–53.

  74 See Dee, ‘Elegy 4.8’, for example; the author rightly emphasizes the graphic nature of the verbs describing Cynthia’s actions, p. 50.

  75 Richardson, Propertius, p. 462.

  76 For the background on each myth, see Francis M. Dunn, ‘The lover reflected in the exemplum: a study of Propertius 1.3 and 2.6’, Illinois Classical Studies, 10/2 (1985), pp. 239–250. Significantly, Ovid parodies Propertius’ opening in Amores 1.10.1–6.

  77 See especially Hérica Valladares, ‘The lover as a model viewer: gendered dynamics in Propertius 1.3’, in Ancona and Greene (eds), Gendered Dynamics, pp. 206–242. For a bibliography on the connections of the poem to Roman art, see also Dunn, ‘The lover reflected’, pp. 242–243.

  78 R.O.A.M. Lyne, ‘Propertius and Cynthia: Elegy 1.3,’ Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, NS 16 (1970), p. 76.

  79 Brian W. Breed, ‘Portrait of a lady: Propertius 1.3 and ecphrasis’, The Classical Journal, 99/1 (2003), p. 51.

  80 Cf. Greene, Erotics of Domination, p. 58; the author presents a more pessimistic view of Cynthia’s speech.

  81 See the important article by Judith de Luce, ‘“O, for a thousand tongues to sing”: a footnote on metamorphosis, silence, and power’, in Mary DeForest (ed.), Woman’s Power, Man’s Game: Essays on Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy K. King (Wauconda, IL, 1993), pp. 305–321.

  82 Breed, ‘Portrait of a lady’, p. 42.

  83 Judith Hallett, ‘Women’s voices and Catullus’ poetry’, The Classical World, 95/4 (2002), pp. 421–424.

  84 Hallett, ‘Women’s voices’, pp. 422–423; although, Hallett suggests that in fact 2a and 51 can be assigned to Lesbia (pp. 423–424). For an example of Lesbia’s potential ability to ‘talk back’ in poem 36, see David Wray, Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (Cambridge and New York, 2001), p. 180.

  85 In providing a detailed description of a work of art (i.e. the embroidered cloth) within a literary text, Catullus takes advantage of a popular form of ancient narrative called ecphrasis; see Andrew Laird, ‘Sounding out ecphrasis: art and text in Catullus 64’, Journal of Roman Studies, 83 (1993), pp. 18–30.

  86 Julia H. Gaisser, ‘Threads in the labyrinth: competing views and voices in Catullus 64’, The American Journal of Philology, 116/4 (1995), p. 595.

  87 See, for example, Breed, ‘Portrait of a lady’, p. 35.

  88 Gardner, ‘Ariadne’s lament’, pp. 147 and 148.

  89 Ibid., pp. 170–175.

  90 In relation to other negative speech acts, Propertius accuses Cynthia of saying bad things about him in 2.9.21–22.

  91 Maria Wyke, ‘The elegiac woman at Rome: Propertius’ Book 4’, in ead., The Roman Mistress, p. 85.

  92 See, for example, John Warden, Fallax Opus: Poet and Reader in the Elegies of Propertius (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1980). See also Basil Dufallo, The Ghosts of
the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Rome’s Transition to a Principate (Columbus, 2007), pp. 77–84.

  93 Wyke, ‘The elegiac woman at Rome’, p. 106.

  94 William C. Helmbold, ‘Propertius IV.7: prolegomena to an interpretation’, University of California Publications in Classical Philology, 13/9 (1949), p. 342.

  95 Dorothy K. Lange, ‘Cynthia and Cornelia: two voices from the grave’, in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History I, Collection Latomus 164 (Brussels, 1979), p. 338.

  96 Warden, Fallax Opus, p. 70.

  97 For the sexual connotations of her phrasing, see Theodore D. Papanghelis, Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death (Cambridge and New York, 1987), p. 23.