Propertius, Cleopatra and Actium

Abstract

Essential to a recent interpretation of Propertius iii 11 are the ideas that ‘the opening verses … establish clearly an erotic context for the rest of the poem’, and that ‘the statement that, with Augustus, Rome had nothing to fear from Cleopatra personally (55) can have nothing to do with her military resources … The victory celebrated here is that of Augustus over Cleopatra as over an enchantress, powerful in love.’ These assessments are based on the opinion, several times repeated, that Propertius' introduction of himself as the elegiac lover in vv. 1-8 necessitates our viewing everything in the poem thereafter as coloured by this fact.