A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric

Barbara K. Gold, Genevieve Liveley

• Editore: Wiley-Blackwell
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119227137
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Literature
• Categoria: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism

Provides the necessary context to read elegiac and lyric poetry, designed for novice and experienced Classics and Latin students alike

A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric explores the language of Latin poetry while helping readers understand the socio-cultural context of the remarkable period of Roman literary history in which the poetry was composed. With an innovative approach to this important area of classical scholarship, the authors treat elegy alongside lyric as they cover topics such as the Hellenistic influences on Augustan poetry, the key figures that shaped the elegiac tradition of Rome, the motifs of militia amoris ("the warfare of love") and servitium amoris ("the slavery of love") in Latin love elegy, and more.

Organized into ten chapters, the book begins with an introduction to the literary, political, and social contexts of the Augustan Age. The next six chapters each focus on an individual lyric and elegiac poet—Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, and Sulpicia—followed by a survey of several lesser-known poets and post-Augustan elegy and lyric. The text concludes with a discussion of major tropes and themes in Latin elegy and lyric, and an overview and analysis of key critical approaches in current scholarship. This volume:

• Includes full translations alongside the Latin throughout the text to illustrate discussions
• Analyzes recurring themes and tropes found in Latin poetry such as sexuality and gender, politics and patronage, myth and religion, wealth and poverty, empire, madness, magic, and witchcraft
• Reviews modern critical approaches to elegiac and lyric poetry including autobiographical realism, psychoanalysis, narratology, reception, and decolonization
• Includes helpful introductory sections: "How to Read a Latin Elegiac or Lyric Poem" and "How to Teach a Latin Elegiac and Lyric Poem"
• Provides information about each poet, an in-depth discussion of some of their poetry, and cultural and historical background
• Features a dedicated chapter on Sulpicia, offering readers an ancient female viewpoint on sex and gender, politics, and patronage

Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Guides to Classical Literature series, A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric is the perfect text for both introductory and advanced courses in Latin elegy and lyric, accessible for students reading the poetry in translation, as well as for those experienced in Latin with an interest in learning a different approach to the subject.

1
The Literary, Political and Social Contexts of Latin Elegy and Lyric

Latin elegy and lyric respond immediately to their contemporary socio-political worlds, making it vital that we understand the events and cultural tides of this turbulent period of history before we can properly understand the poetry that is produced in and speaks to this revolutionary context. At the same time, Roman lyric and elegy are also heavily influenced by the older literary traditions of the Greeks and, in order to see what is innovative and exciting about the Roman poets writing in these genres, we first need to know something of this literary background. Only when we have a sense of these background contexts can we fully value the originality of this Latin poetry, appreciate why certain themes and motifs recur in these genres, and recognize not only the ingenuity and sophistication but also the playfulness and humor of this work (see Chapter 9). By holding in mind the important fact that the Roman lyric and elegiac poets all write to some degree under the shadow of the Greek and Roman poets who had preceded them, we are also able to enjoy more fully the rich intertextual allusions that are so characteristic of these two genres.

Literary Contexts for Elegy: Genre and Canon

The earliest extant examples of elegiac poetry date from soon after the time of Homer in the seventh century bce. Surviving fragments suggest that it was used by early Greek poets to compose poems on all kinds of topics – including drinking songs and celebrations of battles. However, early elegy appears to have been associated in particular with short poems used as grave dedications and funeral epitaphs. The Roman love elegists like to remind us of this mournful connection between elegy and death, and we often find death itself as a theme in their poetry. The Roman elegists also make much of two possible etymological roots of elegy: the Greek word elegeia (λεγεα), which is derived from the traditional Greek funerary lament e e legein ( λγειν) – to cry “woe, woe” – and from the related emotion eleos (λεος) pity. Ovid, in an elegy written to commemorate the death of his elegiac predecessor Tibullus, draws an explicit etymological connection between elegy and lamentation (Amores 3.9.3–4):

Flebilis indignos, Elegia, solve capillos!
A, nimis ex vero nunc tibi nomen erit.
(Weep, Elegy, and let down your undeserving hair!
Ah, it is all too true that your name comes from this.)

Horace too declares in his Ars Poetica that: “the foremost theme of poetry in elegiac couplets is lament” (75–6). This connection between elegy and the theme of lament was a longstanding ancient tradition, then, and the Roman elegiac poets use it as a means to add themselves to an elegiac canon of such poetry stretching back hundreds of years.

One of the first elegiac poets, the fifth century bce Greek poet Antimachus (writing around 400 bce) was famous for his Lyde, an elegiac memorial to his dead mistress – now lost but apparently filled with “lamentations” and “full of unhappy heroic stories” (Hermesianax fr. 7/45). The Greek poet Philitas wrote a similar collection of elegiac poems memorializing his dead wife (or possibly his mistress) Bittis. And the poet Hermesianax followed this trend, with a collection of poems dedicated to and named after his mistress Leontion. This collection opens with the mythical poet Orpheus grieving for his own lost wife (1–14), and with the mythical poet Musaeus lamenting the death of his wife Antiope (15–20), thereby creating a tradition and canon for the elegiac genre that stretched back into the mythical mists of time. In fact, we can see Hermesianax as effectively establishing the genre of elegy as shown here by creating for it a kind of genealogy or family tree. Hermesianax identifies Mimnermus (author of Nanno, another collection of Greek love elegies written for and named after his mistress) as the founder or inventor of the genre, and he draws up a list of the other canonical elegiac poets of ancient Greece – of course, adding his own name to the end of that list (something we see the Roman poets Propertius and Ovid do later on, too).

The surviving “canonical” Roman elegists are clearly proud of this long history attached to their genre and frequently name-check these Greek predecessors in their poetry. The Roman poet Propertius names two of his most important influences as the Greek poets Callimachus and Philitas, declaring himself happy to have chosen elegy as his genre and “to have given pleasure along with Callimachus’ little books, and to have sung, Coan poet [Philitas], in your meter” (3.9.43–4; see also 2.34.31–32). Propertius even styles himself as the new and improved “Roman Callimachus” (4.1.64: Romani … Callimachi) and describes himself as having taken the elegiac crown from Philitas (4.6.3). Propertius also prays to the ghosts of Callimachus and Philitas and describes himself as “the first to walk in [their] footsteps” (3.1.1–2). And, following in Propertius’ own footsteps, Ovid expresses the same desire for connection with this traditional Greek elegiac canon. Ovid somewhat arrogantly declares that “There’s a girl who says Callimachus’ poems are rubbish (rustica) compared to mine” (2.4.19). And Ovid’s Ars Amatoria 3.329–339 creates a new canon of great love poets which begins with Callimachus and Philitas but now also includes the Roman poets Gallus, Propertius, Tibullus, as well as (of course) Ovid himself.

As the direct references to his name in the works of Propertius and Ovid suggest, the third century bce poet Callimachus is hugely influential upon the Roman elegists (and upon Horace, too). Unfortunately, only fragments of his work survive, despite the Roman critic Quintilian describing him as the best – the princeps – of the ancient Greek elegists (10.1.58). However, we do know from Callimachus’ great reputation in antiquity that he was an exceptionally learned and erudite writer (see Hunter 2006; Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2012: 204–269). Callimachus wrote in various meters and genres but is best known for his long and multifaceted narrative poem in elegiacs, the Aitia or Causes, a series of mythological “origin stories” in which Callimachus himself takes on the role of a first-person speaker or narrator (as the Roman lyric and elegiac poets will also later do). Catullus is such a fan of Callimachus that he reworks into Latin a section of this long poem, known as the Coma Berenices or “The Lock of Berenice” (Catullus 66, reworking Callimachus fragment 110), but we need to look beyond such translation, allusion, and imitation if we are to understand the influence that Callimachus has upon Roman lyric and elegy. It is no exaggeration to say that Callimachus shapes the very DNA of Roman elegy and lyric. His influence runs deep in both genres, and ranges from the nostalgic, contemplative, and slightly melancholy first-person poetry that we encounter in much of Horace and Tibullus, to the sophisticated wordplay and witty politics found in Propertius and Ovid. We can see Callimachus’ sway in the hostility towards epic that elegy and lyric both adopt, and in the labels that elegy especially chooses to define itself: epic (and its military focus) is durus or hard; in contrast, elegy (and its focus on love) is mollis or soft – the very same style that is favored by Callimachus himself.

The influence of Callimachus (and the continuing influence of the wider Greek and Hellenistic literary canon) can be tracked through to the last of the Alexandrian poets writing in the first century bce, where the baton is handed over from Greece to Rome. We even know which poets were involved in this handover. The Greek poet Parthenius, who famously taught Greek to Vergil, composed a number of short elegiac poems, including an elegiac lament for his dead wife Arete (now lost) and an elegiac book of short, sad, love stories titled Erotica Pathemata or Sufferings in Love. Parthenius dedicated this book of poetry to his friend and fellow poet Cornelius Gallus – the poet who successive generations of Roman elegists would come to name as the founding-father of their own Latin canon of elegists.

Gallus, writing in the 40s bce was evidently a popular elegiac poet – apparently publishing a five book collection of elegies under the title Amores – but he was also a popular soldier and politician, and this popularity seems ultimately to have led to his premature death (see Raymond 2013). Gallus served as Augustus’ prefect in Egypt, but his many prominent successes there appear to have inspired the emperor’s jealousy and Gallus was forced to commit suicide in 26 bce. His poetry seems not to have been officially banned by Augustus, however, and helped to establish the reputation of the elegiac genre in Rome as politically bold and rebellious in spirit – although not actively “anti-Augustan” (see Kennedy 1992). Gallus’ political fate did not deter his elegiac successors, fortunately. Propertius continued to compose and publish elegy, and in the same year that Gallus committed suicide Tibullus published his first book of elegies. In the following year, Ovid began work on his own three-book collection of elegies – titled, like Gallus’ work, Amores.

Too little of Gallus’ own writing has survived for us to be able to do more than speculate on the content of his own elegies – although a combination of sorrow and love appears to be the theme of at least one surviving fragmentary line, in which Gallus declares himself to be “Sad, Lycoris, because of your misbehavior” (Tristia nequit[ia … .]a, Lycori). Yet his influence upon the shape of the elegiac genre in Rome is unquestionable. Propertius explicitly names Gallus – along with fellow Roman elegists Calvus (whose poetry similarly does not survive) and Catullus (who also writes lyric poetry) – as he ambitiously declares a connection between his own work and this venerable canon of earlier Roman elegists (2.34.87–94):

haec quoque lascivi cantarunt scripta Catulli,
Lesbia quis ipsa notior est Helena;
haec etiam docti confessa est pagina Calvi,
cum caneret miserae funera Quintiliae.
et modo formosa quam multa Lycoride Gallus
mortuus inferna vulnera lavit aqua!
Cynthia quin etiam versu laudata Properti,
hos inter si me ponere Fama volet.
(So too did the poems of playful Catullus sing
through which Lesbia is better known than Helen herself;
and so too did the pages of learned Calvus confess,
when he sang of the death of poor Quintilia.
And just recently, how many wounds has Gallus washed in
the waters of the underworld, dead because of Lycoris’ beauty.
Yes, Cynthia will live, praised by the verses of Propertius,
if Fame grants me a place among these poets.)

In Amores 3.9, Ovid’s elegiac tribute to the poet Tibullus following his death in 19 bce, Ovid presents this same sequence of elegists – Calvus, Catullus, and Gallus – coming forward to greet Tibullus when he too arrives in the Elysian Fields of the afterlife (Amores 3.9.61–4). And in his autobiographical Tristia (which literally translates as “Sorrows” or “Sad Songs”), Ovid adds his own name to a distinctively Roman elegiac canon that begins with Gallus, then continues through Tibullus and Propertius, until it reaches Ovid himself (Tristia 4.10.51–4):

Vergilium vidi tantum, nec avara Tibullo
tempus amicitiae fata dedere meae.
successor fuit hic tibi, Galle, Propertius illi;
quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui.
(Vergil I only saw, and to Tibullus selfish Fate
gave no time for friendship with m...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: How to Read and Teach a Latin Elegiac or Lyric Poem
• Chapter 1: the literary, political and social contexts of latin elegy and lyric
• Chapter 2: catullus
• Chapter 3: Horace
• Chapter 4: Tibullus
• Chapter 5: Propertius
• Chapter 6: ovid
• Chapter 7: Sulpicia
• Chapter 8: Other Elegiac and Lyric Poets
• Chapter 9: tropes and themes in elegy and lyric
• Chapter 10: Critical Approaches to Elegiac and Lyric Poetry
• Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement