Fromotiumtoimperium: Propertius and Augustus at Baiae

Abstract

This article considers the military and political alterations to the land of Campania under Augustus through the lens of Roman elegist Propertius. Styling himself as the Roman Callimachus, Propertius gives voice to the transformation of Magna Graecia under the innovations of the Augustan regime, primarily the location of the imperial fleet at the lacus Lucrinus adjacent to the resort at Baiae. Elegies 1.11 and 3.18 accomplish a literary echo of the military might of Rome alongside the development of the imperial cult while mirroring the poet’s own self-aware evolution from a poet of love to a poet of state.