Propertius and Antony

Abstract

In a recent article, ‘Augustan Poetry and the Life of Luxury’, JRS 66 (1976), 87, I argued that much recent scholarship has misjudged the Augustan poets in certain important respects, because it has been thought in principle possible to separate ‘literature’ and ‘life’, as if they were clearly distinguishable entities; in reality, the two affect each other in a ceaseless mutual interaction. That argument was developed as a general treatment of the βίος φιλήδονος as presented in Latin literature, and as lived in reality in a society in which Greek and Italian elements, poetical motifs and real behaviour, were inextricably intermingled.The present paper is devoted to a more particular enquiry into one poet and one type of historical figure. I argue that Propertius' presentation of himself in poetry as a lover—romantic, reckless and obsessed—is closely related to the figure in history of Mark Antony. That historical figure is itself to be seen in a long tradition of great lovers of pleasure, in which the actual lives of real men can be seen to be shaped and coloured by the influence of ‘literature’. The argument of my earlier paper does not depend for its validity upon the acceptance of the present one, but they both pursue the same approach.