‘I am not who I was’: Old age and masculinity in Maximianus Etruscus' elegies

Abstract

The Elegies of Maximianus Etruscus (sixth century CE) are first-person narratives in which the poet writes about the life cycle, making love and sex the building blocks of the story. Through his failed relationships with different women, Maximianus talks about the perception of his aging, especially the changes in his body and his eroticism, and the progressive loss of masculinity that to him comes with old age. The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between old age and gender in Maximianus' elegies from a double perspective: the perception of old age itself as a unique and personal fact, and age and masculinity as interacting social constructions that are historically constructed. We will address issues such as the emotions linked to aging, the representation of old age as a living death, the relationship of masculinity with sexuality and the importance of erection. Finally, we will place Maximianus' poems within their historical context, analyzing how they can be interpreted as a metaphor for the period in which its author lived, in which old age and loss of power symbolized the disappearance of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy and, in general, the end of the Roman Empire. A literary exercise but also a life story, this set of six elegies allows us to approach the social construction of gender and age in Late Antiquity.