A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric. Barbara K. Gold

A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric - Barbara K. Gold


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More poignantly, he also mentions the personal loss of a close relative named Gallus (not the poet Gallus) at the siege of Perusia in 40 bce – one of the cruelest episodes of the civil war period (1.21 and 1.22). The long winter siege of the town of Perusia (neighboring Propertius’ own hometown, he tells us) was broken by Octavian who, in a characteristic act of violent revenge, executed the town’s leaders, slaughtered its men, and set fire to the town itself. Propertius’ kinsman managed to escape Octavian’s troops, only to be killed by bandits on the surrounding hillside, his bones left unburied, his death ultimately inglorious (see Spentzou 2013: 47–49). Propertius even dares to mention the battle of Actium (another example of Octavian’s bloody civil war victories) and to implicitly criticize the grief and heartbreak that the civil wars brought to Rome. If everyone were to follow his own example and be content to lead a quiet life full of poetry, peace, love, leisure (and plenty of wine), Propertius claims that then (2.15.43–6):

      non ferrum crudele neque esset bellica navis,

       nec nostra Actiacum verteret ossa mare,

       nec totiens propriis circum oppugnata triumphis

       lassa foret crinis solvere Roma suos.

       (There would be no cruel weapons, no warships,

       nor would our bones be rolled in the sea of Actium,

       nor would Rome, all too often beaten down with triumphs against herself,

       be so tired of tearing out/letting down her hair in grief.)

      bellaque resque tui memorarem Caesaris, et tu

       Caesare sub magno cura secunda fores.

       nam quotiens Mutinam aut civilia busta Philippos

       aut canerem Siculae classica bella fugae,

       eversosque focos antiquae gentis Etruscae,

       et Ptolemaeei litora capta Phari,

       aut canerem Aegyptum et Nilum, cum attractus in urbem

       septem captivis debilis ibat aquis,

       aut regum auratis circumdata colla catenis,

       Actiaque in Sacra currere rostra Via;

       te mea Musa illis semper contexeret armis,

       (I would commemorate your Caesar’s wars and deeds, and you

       [Maecenas] would be my next concern, second to mighty Caesar

       For whenever I sang of Mutina or Philippi, where Roman citizens are buried,

       or I sang of naval battles and Sicilian refugees,

       or of the ruined hearths of Etruria’s ancient people,

       or of the captured beaches of Ptolemaic Pharos,

       and if I sang of Egypt and the Nile, when it was dragged into Rome,

       flowing weakly with its seven streams captive;

       or I sang of the necks of kings encircled with chains of gold,

       or the prows of Actian ships sailing along the Sacred Way, then

       my Muse would always weave you [Maecenas] into these wars.)

      Unlike his poetic predecessors, who had lived through and sometimes experienced at first hand the bloody breakdown of Rome’s democratic government and its chaotic transition from Republic to principate, Ovid entered adult life at a point of relative order and stability in Rome’s recent troubled history. Unlike Horace, who had fought against Octavian during the civil war, or Propertius, who lost his kinsman in the conflict, Ovid had no personal experience of the civil wars that had dominated life for the generation before him, and he knew no other political authority before Augustus. Also significant is the fact that Ovid seems to have written and published his poetry independently – that is, largely without the sponsorship of a literary patron. He tells us in his exile poetry that, as a young poet, he received some kind of support from Tibullus’ patron Messalla and his son Messalinus (Epistulae ex Ponto 1.7), but there is nothing in his writing to suggest the influence of a politically motivated patron at work in the background. Arguably, these two factors set Ovid apart from his lyric and elegiac predecessors and offer us insight into the comparative irreverence for all things political that is the hallmark of Ovid’s own poetry.


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