50 Two different huts associated with Romulus existed during the Augustan period: one on the Palatine and one on the Capitoline. See Edwards, Writing Rome, pp. 32–37; and Rea, Legendary Rome, pp. 35–38.
51 The worship of Isis was evidently quite popular in Rome; see R.E. Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (London, 1971); Sharon K. Heyob, The Cult of Isis among Women in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden, 1975); and Friedrich Solmsen, Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA and London, 1979). For discussion of the elegists’ representation of Isis’ rites, see Heyob, Cult of Isis, pp. 58–60; and Solmsen, Isis among the Greeks, pp. 68–72.
52 See John F. Miller, ‘Propertius’ tirade against Isis (2.33a)’, Classical Journal, 77/2 (1981–1982), pp. 104–111.
53 Maria Wyke, ‘Augustan Cleopatras: female power and poetic authority’, in Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda, p. 107. For a fuller account of such practices, see Eric M. Orlin, ‘Octavian and Egyptian cults: redrawing the boundaries of Romanness’, American Journal of Philology, 129 (2008), pp. 231–253.
54 On general Augustan representations of Cleopatra, see Wyke, ‘Augustan Cleopatras’; also Gottfried Mader, ‘Heroism and hallucination: Cleopatra in Horace C. 1.37 and Propertius 3.11’, Grazer Beiträge, 16 (1989), pp. 183–201.
55 For Cleopatra’s actual visit to the city, see Erich Gruen, ‘Cleopatra in Rome: facts and fantasies’, in D. Braund and C. Gill (eds), Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome: Studies in Honor of T.P. Wiseman (Exeter, 2003), pp. 257–274.
56 See Cassius Dio, Roman History 51.21.8 and Plutarch, Antony 86.1–3.
57 The exact order and meaning of these lines is disputed, see William R. Nethercut, ‘Propertius 3.11’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 102 (1971), pp. 429–436.
58 On Propertius and Antony, see Jasper Griffin, Latin Poets and Roman Life (Chapel Hill, 1986), pp. 32–47.
59 On the ordering of poems here, see William R. Nethercut, ‘Propertius 3.12–14’, Classical Philology, 65/2 (1970), pp. 99–102. On the import of luxury goods, start with Grant Parker, ‘Ex oriente luxuria: Indian commodities and the Roman experience’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 45/1 (2002), pp. 40–95.
60 Jeri B. DeBrohun, Roman Propertius and the Reinvention of Elegy (Ann Arbor, 2003), p. 8.
61 Ibid., p. 22. The concurrence of amor and Roma runs throughout Roman thought, including a proposition recorded in some ancient sources that ‘the secret name of Rome, key to the possession and preservation of the city, was Amor’ at Kellum, ‘Concealing/revealing’, p. 177.
62 DeBrohun, Roman Propertius, p. 96.
63 Ibid., p. 172.
64 Tara S. Welch, The Elegiac Cityscape: Propertius and the Meaning of Roman Monuments (Columbus, 2005), p. 3.
65 Ibid., p. 12.
66 On the use of Remus’ hut here, see Rea, Legendary Rome, p. 109.
67 See, for example, Elaine Fantham, ‘Images of the city: Propertius’ new-old Rome’, in Habinek and Schiesaro (eds), Roman Cultural Revolution, pp. 122–135. See also K.S. Rothwell, ‘Propertius on the site of Rome’, Latomus, 55/4 (1996), pp. 829–854.
68 Hans-Peter Stahl, Propertius: ‘Love’ and ‘War’: Individual and State under Augustus (Berkeley, 1985), pp. 256–257.
69 Welch, Elegiac Cityscape, p. 22.
70 Ibid., p. 24.
71 DeBrohun, Roman Propertius, p. 16.
72 On Vertumnus, see Welch, Elegiac Cityscape, pp. 35–42.
73 Ibid, p. 133.
74 Ibid, pp. 135–137.
75 Richardson, Propertius, p. 477.
76 Welch, Elegiac Cityscape, pp. 137–138.
77 Ibid., p. 145.
78 Ibid., p. 134.
79 Ibid., p. 162; cf. DeBrohun, Roman Propertius, p. 198.
80 DeBrohun, Roman Propertius, p. 89.
81 Welch, Elegiac Cityscape, p. 79. For one interpretation, see Francis Cairns, ‘Propertius and the Battle of Actium (4.6)’, in Anthony Woodman and David West (eds), Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 129–168.
82 DeBrohun, Roman Propertius, pp. 210–214.
83 Welch, Elegiac Cityscape, pp. 102–103.
84 On Apollo’s intersecting political and poetic roles in this era, see John F. Miller, Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets (Cambridge and New York, 2009).
85 DeBrohun, Roman Propertius, p. 68; Wickkiser similarly argues that Ovid appropriates architectural language in the Metamorphoses to describe his poetic contributions at Bronwen Wickkiser, ‘Famous last words: putting Ovid’s sphragis back into the Metamorphoses’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 42 (1999), p. 129.
86 Welch, Elegiac Cityscape, p. 2.
87 Green, Ovid: Erotic Poems (London, 1982), pp. 322–323.
88 Ibid., p. 323.
89 These sentiments are resonant of the moralizing at the end of Catullus 64.
90 This view can also be found in Tibullus (e.g. 2.3.39).
91 James E.G. Zetzel, ‘Poetic baldness and its cure’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 36 (1996), p. 91.
92 On the passage’s reliance on Propertius, see DeBrohun, Roman Propertius, pp. 113–115.
93 Thomas Habinek, ‘Ovid and empire’, in P. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge, 2002), p. 50.
94 Green, Ovid: Erotic Poems, p. 385.
95 Teresa R. Ramsby and Beth Severy-Hoven, ‘Gender, sex, and the domestication of the empire in art of the Augustan Age’, Arethusa, 40 (2007), pp. 63–64. See also Habinek, ‘Ovid and empire’, p. 50.
96 As, for example, in Amores 3.4.37: ‘that man is overly unrefined who gets offended if his wife is adulterous’.
97 E.K. Rand, Ovid and His Influence (Boston, 1925), p. 77.
98 R.O.A.M. Lyne, The Latin Love Poets from Catullus to Horace (Oxford, 1980), p. 259.
99 A.J. Boyle, Ovid and the Monuments (Bendigo, 2003), p. 4.
100 P.J. Davis, ‘Praeceptor Amoris: Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and the Augustan idea of Rome’, Ramus, 24 (1995), p. 187.
101 Ibid. On the porticoes of Octavia and Livia, see also Milnor, Gender, Domesticity, pp. 56–64.
102 Green, Ovid: The Erotic Poems, p. 340.
103 See Davis, ‘Praeceptor Amoris’, p. 187.
104 Mario Labate, ‘Erotic aetiology: Romulus, Augustus, and the rape of the Sabine women’, in Roy Gibson, Steven Green and Alison Sharrock (eds), The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris (Oxford, 2006), p. 195. See also Eva Stehle, ‘Venus, Cybele, and the Sabine women: the Roman construction of female sexuality’, Helios, 16/2 (1989), pp. 143–164; and Gary B. Miles, ‘The first Roman marriage and the theft of the Sabine women’, in R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds), Innovations of Antiquity (New York and London, 1992), pp. 161–196.
105 Richard Brilliant, Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art (Ithaca and London, 1984), pp. 28–29.
106 Labate, ‘Erotic aetiology’, p. 199.
107 Ibid., p. 212.
VI. Love and Exile
1 Jo-Marie Claassen, ‘Tristia’, in Peter E. Knox (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Malden and Oxford, 2009), p. 170.
2 Allen Miller, Subjecting Verses: Latin Love Elegy and the Emergence of the Real (Princeton, 2004), p. 212.
3 The theory that Ovid was never in fact relegated to Tomi at all but was merely adopting the persona of an exile seems implausible. See Peter Green, Ovid: The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2005), pp. x, xxiii. For more detailed refutation of that theory, see D. Little, ‘Ovid’s last poems: cry of pain from exile or literary frolic in Rome?’, Prudentia, 22 (1990), pp. 23–39.
4 Miller, Subjecting Verses, p. 212; see also Gareth Williams, Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid’s Exile Poetry (Cambridge, 1994), p. 7.
5 Jo-Marie Claassen, ‘Ovid’s poetic Pontus’, in F. Cairns (ed.), Papers of Leeds International Latin Seminar, 6 (1990), p
p. 72–73. See also J. Richmond, ‘The latter days of a love poet: Ovid in exile’, Classics Ireland, 2 (1995), pp. 97–120. The poet even admits that his repeated attacks on Tomi and its inhabitants have caused much resentment against him among the locals who gave him a place of honour and valued his presence (Ex Ponto 4.14.17–19).
6 Thibault suggests that Ovid’s indiscretion may have been in aiding and abetting Julia’s affair or that she was encouraged in her improper behaviour by merely reading the Art of Love; see John C. Thibault, The Mystery of Ovid’s Exile (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), p. 55.
7 See ibid., pp. 68–74: the work offers a survey of these suggestions, ranging from Ovid’s accidental intrusion upon a scene of some delicacy involving Augustus’ daughter’s adultery to the princeps’ practice of pederasty and Livia’s preparation of poison for Agrippa Postumus, Augustus’ grandson.
8 For the political theory, see Aldo Luisi and Nicoletta F. Berrino, Culpa Silenda: Le Elegie dell’error Ovidiano (Bari, 2002).
9 Gian Biagio Conte, Latin Literature: A History, tr. J.B. Solodow, rev. Don Fowler and Glen W. Most (Baltimore and London, 1994), p. 340. For more on the theories of sexual intrigue, see R. Verdière, Le Secret du voltigeur d’amour, ou, Le Mystère de la relégation d’Ovide (Brussels, 1992).
10 For a detailed account, see Thibault, Mystery, pp. 4–19.
11 This enmity, moreover, did not die with the princeps; even after Augustus’ death, both Tiberius (Augustus’ adopted son and successor) and Livia (Augustus’ wife and Tiberius’ mother) refused to allow Ovid to return to Rome despite his many tearful appeals (see Epistulae ex Ponto 2.8.37, 2.8.43, 3.1.97).
12 Matthew McGowan, Ovid in Exile: Power and Poetic Redress in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto (Leiden and Boston, 2009), p. 2. McGowan’s book focuses on Ovid’s relationship with Augustus in light of his exilic poetry.
13 For more on the notion of ‘political opposition’ to Augustus, see K.A. Raaflaub and L.J. Samons, ‘Opposition to Augustus’, in K.A. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1990), pp. 417–454. They argue against any notion of organized opposition (p. 454).
14 Although Ovid blames the Ars Amatoria alone for his banishment, some scholars single out the Metamorphoses as another possibility because it was irreverent towards traditional religion. See Maurice W. Avery, ‘Ovid’s apologia’, Classical Journal, 32 (1936), p. 101.
15 Thibault, Mystery, p. 35.
16 Ibid., p. 36.
17 Green, Poems of Exile, p. xxiv.
18 Ronald Syme, History in Ovid (Oxford 1978), p. 222.
19 On Julia’s plight, see Richard A. Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London and New York, 1992), pp. 108–119.
20 Syme, History in Ovid, p. 190.
21 Alessandro Barchiesi, The Poet and the Prince (Berkeley, 1997), p. 272. See also Alessandro Barchiesi, ‘Voices and narrative: instances in the Metamorphoses’, in id., Speaking Volumes: Narrative and Intertext in Ovid and Other Latin Poets (London, 2001), p. 76.
22 Paul Allen Miller, ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed.), Latin Erotic Elegy (London and New York, 2002), p. 32.
23 Thomas Habinek, ‘Ovid and empire’, in P. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge, 2002), p. 46.
24 Adultery among the upper class was a prominent theme in Roman public discourse beginning in the late Republic; we should use some caution, however, in taking these texts as evidence of actual sexual practices. See Chapter 3 and Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge and New York, 1993), pp. 35–36, 42–62.
25 See Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.19.
26 Edwards, Politics of Immorality, p. 27.
27 As this suggests, despite Augustus’ continual claims that he was merely restoring the earlier Republic, the Augustan period increasingly featured a ‘realignment of authority in many areas of Roman culture around the figure of Augustus’; see Parshia Lee-Stecum, ‘Poet/reader, authority deferred: re-reading Tibullan elegy’, Arethusa, 33/2 (2000), p. 179.
28 P.J. Davis, Ovid and Augustus: A Political Reading of Ovid’s Erotic Poems (London, 2006), pp. 85–86.
29 As Little observes, ‘it elaborates, codifies, and clarifies, but the underlying assumptions and attitudes are unchanged’ at Douglas Little, ‘Politics in Augustan poetry’, in Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, 2.30.1 (1982), p. 254.
30 Sergio Casali, ‘The art of making oneself hated: rethinking (anti-)Augustanism in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria’, in Roy Gibson, Steven Green and Alison Sharrock (eds), The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris (Oxford, 2006), p. 219.
31 Green, Poems of Exile, p. xi.
32 For a survey of the different opinions on the relationship between the poem and the mistake, see Thibault, The Mystery, p. 32.
33 Miller, ‘Introduction’, p. 32. As Bowditch phrases it, in the Ars Amatoria, ‘the various conventions and topoi of elegy are revealed as a semiotic (often behavioural) system, one whose principles become […] objective material to be taught and manipulated for the purposes of seduction’, at Phebe Lowell Bowditch, ‘Hermeneutic uncertainty and the feminine in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria: the Procris and Cephalus digression’, in Ronnie Ancona and Ellen Greene (eds), Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry (Baltimore, 2005), p. 272.
34 Bowditch, ‘Hermeneutic uncertainty’, p. 272. Earlier in Book 1, when advising that the best time to approach a girl is when she is happy, Ovid equates the puella to the city of Troy: ‘then, when she was sad, Troy was defended by arms: when happy she welcomed the horse heavy with the soldiers’ (Ars 1.363–364).
35 Molly Myerowitz, Ovid’s Games of Love (Detroit, 1985), pp. 57–72.
36 Davis, Ovid and Augustus, p. 88.
37 See Little, ‘Politics in Augustan poetry’, p. 319. Little argues that freedwomen would also have been regarded at the time as free citizens and thus should have been off limits as far as the lex Iulia is concerned.
38 R.K. Gibson, ‘Meretrix or matrona? Stereotypes in Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3’, Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar, 10 (1998), pp. 295–312. See also Steven Green, ‘Lessons in love: fifty years of scholarship on the Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris’, in Gibson, Green and Sharrock (eds), Art of Love, p. 14.
39 Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford, 1991), pp. 279 ff. See also Thomas A. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1998), p. 155. Davis points out that Ovid’s didactic strategy in the Ars Amatoria was ‘based on a false premise’ at Davis, Ovid and Augustus, p. 89.
40 For more on the opposition of cultus and rusticitas in the Ars, see Myerowitz, Ovid’s Games of Love, pp. 41–72.
41 Alexander Dalzell, The Criticism of Didactic Poetry: Essays on Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid (Toronto, 1996), pp. 138–139.
42 Green, ‘Lessons in love’, p. 13.
43 Eric Downing, ‘Anti-Pygmalion: the praeceptor in Ars Amatoria, Book 3’, Helios, 17 (1990), p. 238.
44 John F. Miller, ‘Apostrophe, aside and the didactic addressee: poetic strategies in Ars Amatoria III’, in A. Schiesaro, P. Mitsis and J. Clay (eds), ‘Mega Nepios: il destinario nell’epos didascalisco’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 31 (1993), pp. 231–241.
45 For a summary of the leading opinion of earlier scholarship, see Christopher Brunelle, ‘Ovid’s satirical remedies’, in Ancona and Greene (eds), Gendered Dynamics, p. 141.
46 Ibid.
47 Miller, Subjecting Verses, p. 211.
48 Richard Tarrant, ‘Ovid and ancient literary history’, in Hardie (ed.), Cambridge Companion, p. 29.
49 Claassen, ‘Tristia’, p. 174.
50 Green, Poems of Exile, p. xxxviii.
51 For more details on the pat
tern of addressees in the Epistulae ex Ponto, see A.L. Wheeler, Tristia, Ex Ponto (London, 1924), 2nd edn., rev. G.P. Goold (London and Cambridge, 1988).
52 Gareth Williams, ‘Ovid’s exile poetry: Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto and Ibis’, in Hardie (ed.), Cambridge Companion, p. 234.
53 Efrossini Spenzou, ‘Silenced subjects: Ovid and the heroines in exile’, in Ancona and Greene (eds), Gendered Dynamics, p. 319.
54 Green, Poems of Exile, p. xxxviii.
55 Patricia Rosenmeyer, ‘Ovid’s Heroides and Tristia: voices from exile’, Ramus, 26/1 (1997), p. 29.
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