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

Preface

      In our Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric, we hope to reach both students of Classics and Latin poetry at various levels and those who are interested in the ancient world in an avocational way. When I (Barbara Gold) first reached out to Genevieve Liveley about being my co-author, I don’t think that either of us had any idea how hard it would be to write about Latin elegy and lyric for people who might not know any Latin. But now that we have tackled writers like Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, and Sulpicia with exactly that audience in mind, I think that the two of us understand Latin elegy and lyric in a different and exciting way. We hope that our readers will be equally excited about this fantastic poetry and might even be tempted to learn a bit of Latin so that they could have a different sort of entry into the poetry.

      We have included lots of Latin to help illustrate our discussions and offer a pathway towards some deeper insights into this poetry, but we have included our own translations for everything. We have tried to give some historical and cultural context for each of the authors and then to open up the world of each author by looking at themes, language, and ideas in their poems as well as possible modes of reception. We are very aware that reception of this poetry or any literature will vary depending upon who is doing the reading, so we hope that our understanding of this poetry will allow other, different interpretations that will open up the poetry in interesting and unforeseen ways.

      We have included ten chapters: seven are devoted to individual authors or a set of authors, one to contexts of the poetry, one to major themes, and one to critical approaches. We have also written a preliminary chapter of Introduction on “How to Read a Latin Lyric or Elegiac Poem” and a pedagogical section, “How to Teach Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry”.

Our first main chapter covers the literary, political, and social contexts of the turbulent period of history in which most of this poetry was composed. Because elegy and lyric respond immediately to their socio-cultural context, it is necessary to understand the events and cultural tides of the time period before we can understand the poetry produced in and from this context. Here we raise such questions as: How did Hellenistic poetry influence the later Augustan poetry? How did increasingly imperial policies influence writers like Tibullus, Propertius, Horace, and Ovid? What differences do we find in the elegists and the lyric poets in the ways they react to the political currents of their times? We also examine the influences of earlier Greek and Hellenistic poetry upon the later Roman lyric and elegiac poetry and consider the role of the early Augustan poet Gallus in shaping the elegiac tradition at Rome. Gallus, who is said by Quintilian to be the first of the elegists, is an important figure whose influence on elegy is clear but whose few extant lines give us only a small clue about exactly what kind of elegy he wrote and why he casts such a broad shadow over the later elegists.

      Chapters 2 through 8 focus on the individual lyric and elegiac poets: Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Sulpicia, and other elegists and lyric poets (Lygdamus, the “Amicus” poems from the Corpus Tibullianum, and post-Augustan elegy and lyric). Chapter 2 is focused on the first century BCE writer Catullus who wrote both lyric and elegiac poetry. Catullus’ poem 68 is often thought to be the first real elegiac poem; this subjective and intensely erotic poem, which contains mythological figures but is focused on a female beloved (Lesbia), holds within it the seeds of later elegy. Catullus occupies a liminal, awkward position as the first extant author of an elegiac poem but a poet who does not write solely in elegiac meter.

      Chapter 3 brings us to another poet who also does not quite fit the same mold as the main group of poets studied in this book. Horace wrote entirely lyric poetry. He was apparently Rome’s first and last lyric poet. His lyric Odes draw on Greek and Hellenistic traditions to explore distinctively Roman and Italian themes as he adapts traditional motifs and meters to celebrate the Italian countryside, life at symposia or dinner parties, sex and friendship, time, politics and patronage. His relationships with Maecenas (his patron) and Augustus complicate the political and ideological character of his lyrics, but traces of the satiric and comic edge which characterizes his early work are also evident here.

      Chapters 4 and 5 cover the elegists Tibullus and Propertius who were almost exact contemporaries. Both poets wrote only in elegiac couplets, and Quintilian counts them as among the major Roman elegists. Tibullus wrote two books of elegies with a third book, the Corpus Tibullianum, added on probably in the same period, but that book contained poems written by several other poets. Tibullus’ poems proceed not in a linear fashion but by association of ideas, often with no logical transition; they have been described as dreamlike. They are often addressed to two female lovers, Delia and Nemesis (both pseudonyms) and to a male lover, Marathus. Unlike Tibullus, Propertius writes in a less associative manner and engages more clearly with his Roman world, very often mentioning politics and political figures like Maecenas. Most of Propertius’ love poems are addressed to a lover he calls Cynthia, who plays a major role especially in Book 1. He describes her in such a way as to make her seem real, giving her a “reality factor,” but most people see her as a “written woman,” part of the poetry of Propertius’ text. Like Catullus and Tibullus, Propertius names Callimachus as his poetic ancestor, using Callimachean poetics as the underpinnings of his poetry.

Chapter 6 is devoted to Ovid, who wrote in the relatively stable period of the Augustan “golden age.” His considerable elegiac corpus (extant works comprising Amores, Heroides, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, Fasti, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto) inventively reworks the model of love elegy popularized by his predecessors, “womanufacturing” a patently fictitious mistress (Corinna) to serve as the focus for his Amores, exaggerating established elegiac figures and tropes, and expanding the elegiac story-world to include more female voices and viewpoints, and a more cynical and ludic approach to life, love and literature. We focus this chapter on the evolution of core elegiac conceits and motifs across his seven elegiac works.

      Chapter 7 is devoted to the only extant female elegiac poet, Sulpicia. Her poems are preserved as part of the Corpus Tibullianum. Sulpicia was a niece of the Augustan politician and literary patron, Messalla, and she was a contemporary of Horace and Tibullus. The six extant elegies written by Sulpicia (or so we think) offer the rare opportunity to experience an ancient female voice and viewpoint, and to witness the elegiac world from a unique perspective in