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

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


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      Augustus had ambitions not only to control the state and the public lives of Roman citizens, he also had ambitions to control their private lives. The Augustan marriage legislation, or leges Iuliae, first introduced around 18 bce and re-introduced in a lighter form as the lex Papia Poppaea in 9 CE, was therefore one of the cornerstones of Augustus’ principate. Made up of two laws (the lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus and the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis), this legislation package apparently sought to promote marriage and the legitimate procreation of children. At the same time it also made adultery a criminal offence against the state – a serious crime like murder or treason. The laws were highly controversial, and several contemporary poets have comments to make about this unprecedented intrusion of the state into private affairs. Horace refers to the laws on a number of occasions (in fact, it is his Carmen Saeculare which helps historians to date the legislation to around 18 bce) but his point of view on the topic seems to waver. In Odes 3.24 he is found calling upon Augustus to rein-in the decadent and immoral behavior of Rome’s citizens, before pointing out that state intervention probably isn’t the best way to tackle this social problem (35–6). But in Odes 4.15 (written after the legislation has been passed) we find Horace praising Augustus for his intervention and for ushering in a return to good old-fashioned family values (4.15.10–12). For the elegiac poets, though, the new marriage and adultery laws were definitely unpopular: Propertius has one of his characters (the lena) suggest that puellae should “smash the damnable laws of chastity” (frange et damnosae iura pudicitiae, 4.5.28); Ovid in his Amores (2.2) insists that his own adulterous affairs are no real crime; and in his elegiac Ars Amatoria he offers what might well be read as a “guide to the art of adultery.”

      These political moves by Augustus provide an important backdrop for the ways in which the women of elegy in particular are represented. The elegiac puella is probably best understood as a fictional construct (see Alison Sharrock 1991; and Chapters 9 and 10 in this volume). Catullus’ Lesbia, Tibullus’ Delia, Propertius’ Cynthia, and Ovid’s Corinna all conform to an elegiac stereotype: they are beautiful but vain, clever but calculating, jealous but unfaithful, passionate but cruel. Yet the most significant characteristic of the stereotypical puella is the fact that she does not belong to the group of respectable, marriageable, women as defined by Augustus’ new marriage laws. Whether we are supposed to regard the women in Latin elegy as married women engaging in adulterous affairs with their poet-lovers (as appears to be the case with Catullus and his married lover, Lesbia) or whether we are supposed to see them as high-class courtesans or meretrices (as suggested by the occasional appearance of the lena – the procuress or “madam” – in Tibullus 2.6, Ovid Amores 1.8, and Propertius 4.5), these women are definitively not “marriage material.” Indeed, that seems to be the point of the puella. She is for recreation and pleasure, not for procreation and marriage – as Propertius 2.7 (which appears to refer directly to Augustus’ marriage laws) makes clear. As such, the decision to focus upon the puella as an object of love and desire, to make her the foundation upon which the elegiac poet builds his poetry and his life, represents an unconventional and even radical move.

      In this context, it is important to remember that Roman culture does not equate erotic or romantic love with marriage or with modern, predominantly western, notions of “living happily ever after.” As Paul Allen Miller reminds us, in the Roman world it appears that “Love … was a regrettable extravagance to be tolerated in young men. They could have their flings with a courtesan or meretrix, provided they did not despoil the family fortune, but were then expected to settle down in a traditional arranged marriage and pursue a career in law, the military, or politics” (Miller 2002: 3–4). These are the kinds of love affair we find in Roman comedy, and even in Roman lyric, while in Roman epic we find that those who do put love above duty tend to come to a bad end themselves and to threaten the safety of the Roman state (Vergil’s Aeneas and Dido, for example). In choosing to celebrate their love for a puella over all else, then, the Roman elegists place their lifestyle choices in flagrant opposition to Augustus’ attempts at social and moral reform.

      Guide to Further Reading

      There are several studies that offer good starting points for understanding the social, political, and cultural contexts in which Latin lyric and elegy was originally produced, including: J.P. Sullivan, “The Politics of Elegy.” Arethusa 5:1 (1972): 17–34; Judith Hallett, “Woman as Same and Other in Classical Roman Elite.” Helios 16 (1989): 59–78; Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (1993); Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture (1996); Thomas Habinek and Alessandro Schiesaro, The Roman Cultural Revolution (1997); Thomas Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature (1998); Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (2008); Efrossini Spentzou, The Roman Poetry of Love: Elegy and Politics in a Time of Revolution (2013); Stephen J. Harrison, “Time, Place and Political Background.” In Thea Thorsen, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy (2013), 133–150. Jasper Griffin’s Latin Poets and Roman Life (1985) is a little dated now but is still useful background reading. D. O. Ross on Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy, and Rome (1975) is also still useful as an introduction to the elegiac genre, as is W. R. Johnson’s The Idea of Lyric (1982) on lyric traditions. Other useful studies of genre and canon and the relationship between Greek and Latin lyric and elegy include George Luck, The Latin Love Elegy (1959); Paul Allen Miller’s Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness: The Birth of a Genre from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome (1994); Roy Gibson’s “Love Elegy.” In S. J. Harrison, ed., A Companion to Latin Literature (2006) and Richard Hunter’s The Shadow of Callimachus: Studies in the Reception of Hellenistic Poetry at Rome (2006).

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