Love and Death in Latin Elegy

Love and death is a common and shared human experience that many poets of the ancient world explored in their various poetic works. The elegists of Rome famously wrote love poems in which each pined for a specific mistress or lover, and in some of these poems, love and death were simultaneously prominent themes. In this article I examine the relationship between the concepts of love and death in Propertius 4.7, Tibullus 1.3 and Ovid’s Amores 3.9. From this study it is evident that each poet, through means of their own style, depicted the ideal that love had the ability to overcome death. To support my analysis of these texts and the issues surrounding them, I refer to Papanghelis, Hinds and Maltby. While these authors consider many aspects of Proptertius’, Tibullus’ and Ovid’s works, the relationship and connection present between love and death has not been significantly considered. In order to establish each poet’s personal style I begin with a brief overview of elegiac poetry; then, an examination of each poem’s tone, word usage and thematic distinctions. I will begin the discussion with Propertius’ poems; Tibullus’ and Ovid’s poems will then be considered, first separately, and then as a pair. The concepts of love, death and those affected by the death in the poem will be analyzed. In addition, I will consider how love and death interact with each other in the poems. To further supplement the discussion, I will analyze how these three poets’ write in the same genre and about the same topics, but in different contexts and styles. This analysis leads to an understanding that each poet expressed their unique style in their poems, while maintaining a similar theme and genre, that love has the ability to overcome the unavoidable and inevitable force of death.

Chariton and Latin Elegy II

Chapter 2 establishes Ovid’s Heroides, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto as central to a number of specific features of Chariton’s novel (especially the embedded letters). Section 2.2 focuses on the Heroides and the following epistolary motifs: the processes of composition and reception; the presence of tears; the recognition of handwriting; the role of memory and possessive adjectives; and the eroticization of the letter’s materiality. These contribute to the characterization of Chaereas and Dionysius as lamenting and abandoned heroines. Section 2.3 argues that Chariton has digested a number of motifs that characterize the exilic persona in Ovid’s Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, such as the role of finger rings and various psychosocial neuroses. As in Chapter 1, thematic proximities between Chariton and the elegiac corpus are supported by strikingly close points of verbal contact.

Chariton and Latin Elegy I

Chapter 1 establishes Latin love elegy (especially Propertius) as an important frame of reference for Chariton, and explores a number of characteristics (lexical and thematic) that all constitute an extreme or ‘totalizing’ attitude towards love on the part of the lover. Section 1.2 addresses the language of wholeness and exclusion (ὅλος‎ and μόνος‎; totus and solus) on display in Chariton and elegy, which is suggestive of a direct link. Section 1.3 approaches the conceptual analogy between love and death in Chariton and elegy, and argues that Chariton looks to the Latin poets for his characterization of Chaereas and Dionysius as obsessed with death and erotically motivated thoughts of suicide (especially in connection with the lover who imagines his own funeral). Section 1.4 similarly approaches the characters of Chaereas and Dionysius as susceptible to overwhelming jealousy, the quintessential ‘elegiac passion’; as well as a number of Propertian poems, this section also argues for an extended allusion to Ovid’s treatment of the Procris and Cephalus myth as narrated in Ars 3 and the Metamorphoses. Thematic proximities between Chariton and the Latin poets are supported by strikingly close points of verbal contact.

Achilles Tatius and Latin Elegy

Chapter 4 establishes the multiple connections between Achilles and Latin love elegy (especially Ovid), which he mobilizes as a principal weapon in his redefinition of the novelistic genre. This is especially in the first two books (during which time Clitophon attempts to seduce Leucippe), but also implicates the ‘antagonists’ Melite, Thersander, and Callisthenes. Section 4.2 demonstrates the importance of the contemptor amoris theme (as represented especially in Propertius 1.7 and 1.9). Sections 4.3, 4.3.1, and 4.4 establish the erotodidactic credentials of Clinias as they relate to elegy (4.4 focusing explicitly on the theme of consent), while Sections 4.5 and 4.6 do the same for Clitophon’s slave, Satyrus (with Section 4.6 focusing on the metaphor of servitium amoris). Section 4.7 homes in on the role of vision in the novel’s symposia and those in elegy (especially Heroides 16-17). Section 4.8 draws a connection between the way Achilles and Ovid aestheticize (and even eroticize) female distress (embodied in tears and fears). Section 4.9 focuses on the idea of love as a type of ‘theft’, and kisses as alienable possessions, in Achilles and elegy (Tibullus is prominent here). Section 4.10 is an extended reading of Clitophon’s refusal to have sex with Leucippe as modelled on Ovid’s description of a bout of impotence in Amores 3.7.

Latin Elegy and the Space of Empire

This book argues that the subject in Latin elegy, beginning with Catullus, constitutes itself in relation to the dynamically expanding space of empire from the late Republic to the end of the Augustan age. The lack of fixity in the elegiac subject and space of empire go hand in hand. Questions of geographical space become questions about the de-centered, dislocated subject; in imagining geographical space our very nature as subjects comes to the fore. Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid each offers his own unique expression of the gendered subject, and their poetry runs the gamut of responses to the expanding geographical empire. First comes the dream of Roman imperium sine fine, an empire that capaciously stretches to the ends of the inhabited world. And yet, imperium sine fine requires the existence of some sort of fines, even if the fantasy demands that they be overrun. Formlessness, or worse, rapidly alternating forms, gives rise to anxieties and the desire to set down some fines, to establish where, exactly, the boundaries of empire are, what belongs “inside” and what can be relegated to “outside.” But fines, cartographically speaking, are never as stable as we want them to be, and, for a rapidly expanding empire, are always under pressure. The very constitution of the gendered elegiac subject mirrors, anticipates, runs parallel to the problems and anxieties that the map of expanding empire tries to solve, yet simultaneously reveals in its production of space.

Introduction

The introduction provides an overarching view of the book’s questions, texts, and theoretical concerns. It moves from a concrete detailing of the physical extent of geographical space the Roman empire added in the late Republic and in the Augustan age to a consideration of the effects that such an expansive increase in territory might have on a people’s worldview, relying on theories of cartography and the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan in conjunction with questions about how Romans conceptualized their world and what light the (no-longer-extant) late first-century BCE or early first-century CE map of Agrippa can shed on it. The emphasis of the inquiry is on the subject in Latin elegy (including Catullus) in poems that turn out to be chock full of geographical references. The book traces the different ways in which, and the varying consequences with which, the elegiac subject encounters the space of empire depending on gender in the works of Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid.

The Letter of the Law

This chapter studies the correspondence between Acontius and Cydippe (Heroides 20–1). The main argument is that Ovid highlights the fundamental confluence of the love letter with legal correspondence. The discussion ranges widely through comparative material from contemporary Latin elegy (Propertius in particular) to its intertextual matrix (Callimachus’ Aetia), in order to spell out the dependence of both poetry and law on precedent. Core aspects of Heroides 20–1, such as the materiality of the text, iterability, performativity, and intertextuality show that the invention of love is inextricably related to the invention of law. The chapter further investigates the triangulated relations between magic spells (carmina), love poetry (carmina), and legal statements. In its historical context, the crucial role of epistolography in the production and communication of laws in the Roman Empire is important for understanding the legal force of Ovid’s love letters.

Amor y la inspiración poética

Love’s personification has modeled the conception of love poetry since Antiquity. This article focuses on a little-known aspect of this personified figure. It will show that the process of poetic creation focused on the lyrical self is based on a profound relationship of the self with Love in its role as the inspiration of passion and writing. It will be observed how this idea begins with Greek poetics and how it was developed in three literary moments: the Latin elegy, Medieval lyric and Petrarchan poetry.