‘Nature to Advantage Dressed’: Propertius 1.2

Abstract

On the surface, Propertius 1.2 seems to propound a traditional thesis, the superiority of unadorned beauty to artifice, and to scold Cynthia for not living up to this ideal of the natural. I believe that the ideal actually asserted is more complex than mere natural beauty and in fact paradoxically entails a large measure of artifice. Artifice itself becomes the central theme of the poem as its value is radically reinterpreted.Part of the complexity comes from the fact that the ideal embraces more than physical appearance, whether adorned or not. A Catullan Parallel will illustrate. Propertius is here building upon and rivalling a Catullan poem, in a manner which has the effect of emphasizing the non-physical elements in his definition of ideal beauty. A poem on the nature of true female beauty in which the beloved is contrasted with other women and which attempts to define what is truly formosus (‘beautiful’ or ‘lovely’; cf. the insistent repetition of: forma 8 and 24, formosa 9, formosius 11) would immediately be recognized by the Roman reader as a challenge to Catullus 86, which centers on the word formosa.