A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric. Barbara K. Gold
of their own) is also a rich resource for the elegists. In fact, as Ovid makes clear in his Amores, it is Menander who defines the key dramatis personae which populate both Latin elegy and comedy (Amores 1.15.17–18):
dum fallax servus, durus pater, improba lena
vivent et meretrix blanda, Menandros erit.
(While slaves are untrustworthy, fathers hard-hearted, bawds immoral,
and while courtesans flatter, Menander will live on.)
These stock comedic characters are certainly all found in Ovid’s Amores, together with the character role that is typically played by the elegiac poet himself – the adulescens amator or unhappy young lover. Ovid even uses this familiar character’s stock catchphrase to declare his unhappiness with life and love: “me miserum!” – “poor me/woe is me!” (Amores 1.1.25, 1.14.51, 2.5.8, 2.11.9, 3.2.69, 3.11.44). The fact that this catchphrase comes from the world of comedy reminds us not to take the poet too seriously when he says this, however. And the fact that this same phrase (and variations thereupon) already appears repeatedly throughout the canon of Latin love lyric and elegy gives us the strong impression that Ovid is well aware that whenever he says “me miserum!” he is effectively speaking to a familiar lover’s “script.” Indeed, the phrase is already well used by Catullus (50.9, 76.19, 99.11) and features prominently in the opening line of Propertius’ programmatic first elegy: Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis (“Cynthia first captured poor me with her eyes”).
The other comedy characters that Ovid lists in the Amores play similarly well-defined roles on the elegiac stage. The scheming and greedy elegiac puella is clearly based on the scheming and greedy meretrix or courtesan of New Comedy (see James 1998, 2012a). The lena (or madam) who occasionally manages her (e.g., Tibullus’ Phryne of 2.6, Propertius’ Acanthis of 4.5, and Ovid’s Dipsas of Amores 1.8) is also a familiar figure from New Comedy (see James 2003). The poet-lover’s rival (e.g., Tibullus 1.6, Propertius 2.8, Ovid Amores 1.4) – who is often portrayed as a wealthier man (vir) – is also a stock character from New Comedy. In fact, Roman elegy and Roman comedy share not only a common cast of characters and, occasionally, a common vocabulary and script; the two genres also share a common focus upon intimate, everyday scenes and domestic scenarios reflecting (albeit in stylized and fictionalized form) some of the socio-cultural realities of Augustan Rome (see Konstan 1986).
Cultural, Political, and Historical Contexts for Elegy and Lyric: Time and Place
In Kristen Ehrhardt’s useful formulation, the space in which Latin lyric situates many of its poems is “a mixed place” (Ehrhardt 2018). It typically blends together aspects of both Greece and Rome, city and countryside, the Greek symposium and the Roman banquet (convivium). Gardens, groves, fields, and forests provide a largely rural background for Horace’s Odes (sometimes pastoral, sometimes bucolic) although the characters who inhabit this space often seem to be slightly out-of-place in this Arcadian landscape – as if they are temporary visitors from the city rather than permanent residents.
In contrast, elegy predominantly stages its scenes and places its poetry within the physical and cultural context of the city (see Welch 2005; Harrison 2013). Its backdrop is contemporary Augustan Rome, and the lifestyles it represents are distinctly urban – and even urbane. Some scholars have characterized Latin love elegy as “pastoral in city clothes” (Veyne 1988: 101–115). But this description is misleading. It’s true that Tibullus often fantasizes about a simple life in the countryside, but the great majority of his elegies are actually based in the city (the rural exceptions are 1.1, 1.3, 1.10, 2.1, and 2.3). Sulpicia, too prefers the city to the countryside and complains loudly when her uncle plans to take her out of Rome to stay at his country house (3.14 and 3.15). For all of the elegiac poets, the city of Rome is the place to be. Propertius and Ovid even take recognizable Roman landmarks and use them to set the scene in their poems. Propertius (2.31.1–2) complains that he is late for a date with his puella (his girlfriend Cynthia) because he has been delayed en route by the ceremonial opening of the porticoes of Augustus’ restored temple of Palatine Apollo. He wryly advises Cynthia that Pompey’s portico offers the perfect environment for her to flaunt her charms (2.32.11–16) – but also suggests some of Rome’s other famous parks and gardens, porticoes, and colonnades, as places where puellae and their lovers like to hang out (2.23.5–6; see also 4.8.75–6). Ovid’s Amores and Ars Amatoria similarly recommend a variety of places in the city that are suitable for romantic and erotic encounters. Indeed, Ovid seems particularly (and cheekily) keen on landmarks that have a special connection with Augustus and the imperial family: he recommends various “pick-up” spots throughout the city of Rome (Ars Amatoria 1.67–170), and recommends the Palatine portico of the Danaids (Amores 2.2.3–4) and the Circus Maximus (Amores 3.2). But he also points out to those interested in an illicit affair al fresco the porticoes of Octavia and Livia (Ars Amatoria 3.391) as particularly good spots to pick up a lover.
Alongside these recognizable spatial markers for their poetry, the Roman elegists also use specific temporal markers. Identifiable historical events and dates are sometimes mentioned (e.g., the Augustan marriage laws, the Secular Games), and a few elegies represent what is known as “occasional poetry,” celebrating a particular event such as a promotion, or a birthday (Tibullus 2.2, Propertius 3.10, Sulpicia 3.14 and 3.15). The combined effect of these features is to offer the impression that elegy represents reality, that the elegiac world is a mirror to the “real world” of Augustan Rome (see Kennedy 1993: 92–93). And, although we should see this reality effect for what it is (or rather, for what it is not), this phenomenon does invite us to look outside the poetry, to consider the wider historical and social world in which the ostensibly private and personal world of elegy is situated. Indeed, there are a number of ways in which lyric and elegy respond to the socio-cultural contexts in which they are produced, and the treatment of two themes are of particular importance to our understanding of these genres: rei publicae (politics) and puellae (girls).
Cultural, Political, and Historical Contexts for Elegy and Lyric: rei publicae
Let’s take the theme of politics first – although this aspect of the Roman world will inevitably shape the context in which the Latin lyric and elegiac poets engage with their puellae too. The period of time for which both lyric and elegy flourish in Rome is relatively short. Catullus is writing in the late Republican era of the 60s and 50s bce, largely under the First Triumvirate (a tense political alliance between Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey). Gallus is writing in the 40s bce, which see the assassination of Caesar and give rise to the Second Triumvirate, a power-share between Octavian (the future Augustus Caesar), Antony, and Lepidus. Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius are all active in the 30s and 20s under Octavian/Augustus’ early principate – that is, during the immediate aftermath of the bloody period of civil war and into the long period of relative peace and restoration led by Augustus. Indeed, it is tempting to see the emphasis on peace and recreation in lyric and elegy, alongside the explicit interest of these poets in making love not war, as a reaction of some kind against the horrors of the civil war period (see Harrison 2013: 133). Ovid joins the party a little later, and begins writing love elegy in the 20s, with the Augustan imperial regime now well established – although Ovid continues writing experimental elegy into the early decades of the new millennium and the reign of Augustus’ adopted son and successor, Tiberius. Latin lyric and elegy prosper for an interval of about seventy years then, but this interval corresponds with one of the most turbulent and transformative periods in ancient history as Rome makes the difficult transition from Republic to Monarchy and Empire.
These seismic changes in Rome’s political system inevitably make an impact upon the lyric and elegiac poetry being produced at the time. One of Catullus’ lesser-known elegiac couplets captures nicely the poet’s political stance (Catullus 93):
Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere,
nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.
(I’m not especially eager in