Book Of Propertius Research Articles

EMENDATIONS IN THE THIRD BOOK OF PROPERTIUS

Five conjectures are proposed on the text of the third book of Propertius, one a slight alteration of an idea already proposed, four mainly original contributions: 1.23 postremo for post obitum, 4.18 supra uinctos for subter captos, 8.13 seu grege custodum for custodum gregibus (custodum grege seu Heinsius), 10.13 somnos for somnum, 11.40 adulta canis for adusta nota. One additional conjecture is made in passing on the text of Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 3.4.104, where duces probably ought to be read for uiros.

The Archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia: From the End of Late Antiquity until the Coming of the Turks by Philipp Niewöhner

382 BOOK REVIEWS the tracing of the story of what that city’s name has meant across time and space (it would serve well, too, as secondary reading in a number of courses on Roman history and culture). Literary scholars will be interested in her reappraisal of famous passages from Virgil’s Aeneid 8 and the last book of Propertius’ elegies in particular (and lovers of Latin verse will find that Vout has done much in these pages to rehabilitate the reputation of the underappreciated poet Claudian; in some ways the treatment of poetic passages in this book offers a brief commentary on the history of the representation of Rome in Latin verse). Art historians will be richly served by the treatment of the depiction of the city and its environs in painting, photography, and the plastic arts. Numismatists will enjoy the author’s examination of the iconography of the city and its foundation lore on coins. Rarely has a book of this modest scope of length succeeded so admirably in offering valuable commentary on so varied an assortment of topics. There is a quality to the writing and range here that harks back to the best prose of a bygone age, though with a detailed scholarly apparatus that grounds Vout’s work in the vast tradition of classical scholarship on the city (the bibliography is especially valuable for further research, alongside the extensive notes and detailed index). By the end of Vout’s work, one will have gained a renewed appreciation for the immense difficulty attendant on any historical writing about Rome, and a broadly based, soberly presented appraisal of the efforts of both scholars and artists to “write” the city. In short, both press and author are to be warmly thanked for making available this evocative, unfailingly engrossing survey of the city and its signature hills. Those who missed the original edition will want to take advantage of the convenient new paperback printing. In the seemingly never-ending queue of works on the city and its legends, Vout’s volume should be privileged to skip the line. LEE FRATANTUONO Ohio Wesleyan University, lmfratan@owu.edu * * * * * The Archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia: From the End of Late Antiquity until the Coming of the Turks. By PHILIPP NIEWÖHNER, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 470. Hardcover, $125.00. ISBN 978-0-1906-1046-3. In the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, Anatolia was an anomaly. With the administrative seat of power situated in Constantinople, it was the only major region of the empire where Roman rule persisted until the 11th century CE BOOK REVIEWS 383 and the people still considered themselves to be Romans. As a result, Anatolia serves as a unique case study, informing us about the ways in which Roman government and society changed in the period after the collapse of the panMediterranean empire. This volume focuses on life in Anatolia from the 5th century CE through 11th centuries CE—bookends which mark the collapse of the Western and Eastern Empires, respectively. Since there is a dearth of contemporary literary sources, the results of archaeological research are key to understanding this volatile period as they provide us with a glimpse of daily life activities, cultural developments, and the ebb and flow of settlement patterns. For instance, there was a significant decline in urban population in the 5th century CE as people relocated from cities to prosperous rural settlements. Ruralization, however, was stymied from the 7th through 9th centuries by Persian and Arab incursions, which prompted the repopulation of fortified urban centers as Anatolians sought refuge from foreign invaders. A subsequent period of peace from the 9th century through 11th centuries encouraged another population shift to the countryside, resulting in the abandonment of many cities. Then, in the 11th century, fortified urban centers were revived yet again as the arrival of the Seljuk Turks caused widespread sociopolitical instability and fear for personal safety. The book opens with an introduction by the editor, Philipp Niewöhner, which discusses the history of research on the subject, as well as themes and terminology that appear in the volume. The 38 essays that follow are divided into two...

A Commentary on Propertius Book 3 – By S. J. Heyworth and J. H. W. Moorwood

A Commentary on Propertius Book 3 – By S. J. Heyworth and J. H. W. Moorwood

Cynthia prima fuit, Cynthia finis erit : Time and Narrative in Propertius 4

What we call the beginning often the end And to make an end to make beginning. The end where we start from. T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding V, Four Quartets The sense of beginning, then, must in some important way be determined by the sense of an ending. We might say we are able to read present moments--in literature and, by extension, life--as endowed with narrative meaning only because we read them in anticipation of the structuring power of those endings that will retrospectively give them the order and significance of plot. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot Propertius's book 4 notoriously idiosyncratic. No consistent chronology, viewpoint, or narrative seems to arrange its collection of poems; its subjects and themes are characterized by fragmentation and discontinuity; and its manuscript tradition unreliable--we cannot appeal to any manuscript authority to resolve our difficulties over the chronology and arrangement of its eleven elegies. Diverse narrative voices and perspectives tell different stories about politics, erotics, and poetics in such disorganized organization that some critics have even sought to dismiss the book as the clumsy work of posthumous editor or later poetaster. (1) Ostensibly lacking the more obvious narrative coherence supplied by the overarching story of the poet's love affair with Cynthia in the earlier books, book 4 marked by confusing temporal contradictions and puzzling narrative incongruities: here we find Cynthia not only retelling radically new version of her love affair with Propertius, but unexpectedly returning from the grave. Twice. Such incongruities are resolved easily enough if we follow scholars like Frankel, Boucher, and Veyne and resist the idea that Propertius's elegies offer any kind of 'narrative' or 'story' Indeed, Frankel (1945, 26) insists that there no sense of narrative continuity or chronology in any of the collections of the elegiac love poets, warning that Scholars who have tried to piece together the history of one individual affair have wasted their labor. Following similar line, Jean-Paul Boucher (1965, 401) also refuses to allow Propertian elegy narrative status, on the grounds that the first book no beginning, no ending analogous to that of novel and that the second is completely independent of any novel-like chronology. Paul Veyne (1988, 50) goes further still in his argument against the storytelling potential of Roman erotic elegy: To believe that our elegists tell the story of their affairs, one must not have read them. ... The poems do not present the episodes of love affair--beginnings, declaration, seduction, falling out. Time does not pass at all Indeed, Veyne (1988, 51) defines elegy precisely as nonnarrative genre, as a poetry without action, with no plot leading to denouement or maintaining any tension, and this why time has no reality in it. ... Before and after do not exist, any more than does duration, From such perspective, it matters not that Cynthia should appear dead in one poem (4.7) and very much alive in the next (4.8); in this view, neither time nor narrative plays part in Propertius's elegies. Yet theories of narrative show that even without action or plot, without telos or denouement, without continuity or chronology, both poets and readers can, and do, endow such poems with narrative meaning. (2) This, then, the tale (or, at least, one tale) of how the final events in the story of Propertius and Cynthia might be thus endowed and configured as narrative--namely the appearance of Acanthis (4.5) through whom Cynthia acquires new personal history directed by an undead lena who played no part in previous stories of her past; Cynthia's return from the grave (4.7) in which she emphatically contradicts her past as narrated by Propertius; and the final reconciliation of the lovers (4.8), in which Cynthia returns unexpectedly from fertility rite to surprise Propertius in an act of infidelity (and to surprise the reader who thought, on the basis of elegy 4. …

Virgil'sGeorgicsand the Dating of Propertius’ First Book

ABSTRACTThis article re-examines a passage in the first book of Propertius which has generally been interpreted as establishing that the collection was published after Actium. In fact, these lines do not necessarily allude to Antony's defeat, but fit even better with the situation in the years leading up to the battle. Once that has been established, the balance of evidence supports a considerably earlier date for Propertius’ first book. This prompts a re-evaluation of the direction of influence between it and Virgil'sGeorgics. Contrary to traditional assumptions, Virgil can be seen to have reacted strongly to the elegist's brilliant debut.

Properzio. Elegie. Libro II: Introduzione, testo, e commento (review)

Reviewed by: Properzio. Elegie. Libro II: Introduzione, testo, e commento Alessandro Barchiesi Paolo Fedeli (ed.). Properzio. Elegie. Libro II: Introduzione, testo, e commento. ARCA 45. Cambridge: Francis Cairns, 2005. Pp. ix, 1070. $300.00. ISBN 978-0-905205-42-7. At 1,070 pages, this may well be one of the longest single-volume commentaries ever on a classical text. It is also one of the most necessary. Propertius book 2 (if it is indeed one book) is perhaps the most difficult text of Augustan poetry and also, not by chance, one of the very few to have entered the third millennium without a full-scale commentary. This is not even a lengthy or diffuse scholarly work. There are 1,362 lines of poetry, and difficulties span all imaginable levels of the text: transmission, language and style, book number and structure, poem division, lacunae, and patterns of thought and argument, plus the familiar complexity of the poet's learning. The overall effect resembles more a major commentary on a fragmentary author than a standard commentary on, let us say, Horace or Ovid. Fedeli has now achieved a complete coverage of the text, but he himself considers book 2 as a companion piece to his books 1 (Florence 1980) and 3 (Bari 1985), while his book 4 (Bari 1965), not even listed in the consolidated bibliography, was a juvenile work, not a monumental commentary. Book 4 is now accessible in English through the commentary by G. O. Hutchinson (Cambridge 2006). The dynamics of recent research on Propertius is best summarized when one realizes that Fedeli 2005 has changed his mind in no fewer than 150 places vis-à-vis his Teubner text of 1984 (Stuttgart), whose title (Elegiarum libri IV) is now itself problematic, since Fedeli 2005 does not believe that the sequence of poems belongs to an individual book. It is sobering to see a monumental resource like this volume being shot through by recurring (and fully justified) doubts about the stability and reliability of the text as transmitted. The commentary, in spite of its size, is more readable and easily accessible than Fedeli 1980 and 1985: the author has given attention to issues of [End Page 105] selectivity, signposting, and organization. He still offers the strengths of his previous work, especially full coverage of topoi and a double focus on the Latin and the Greek literary background, but he has also improved on the format, adapting his segmentation of the text to the difficult progression of poetic discourse and imagery and offering lucid summaries of every individual poem or fragment before detailed analysis begins. His Italian style is as accessible and user-friendly as it can be for English-speaking users. This is both a fundamental reference work and an interim report on ongoing controversies about the structure and ordering of Propertius' elegies. The production of the work by Francis Cairns Ltd. is excellent, and Francis Cairns himself is to be congratulated (cf. ix) for what Fedeli calls (with implicit allusion to 2.1.2 unde meus veniat mollis in ora liber) his haud mollia iussa. Soft or tough, book 2 (or whatever the 1,362 lines represent) will now receive much more attention than before. It is likely that Stephen Heyworth's important, long-awaited critical edition is also approaching completion: there will be no shortage of lively discussion in the near future about editorial choices in Propertius. Alessandro Barchiesi University of Siena at Arezzo Copyright © 2007 Classical Association of the Atlantic States

PROPERTIUS 4.10 AND THE END OF THE AENEID: AUGUSTUS, THE SPOLIA OPIMA AND THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT

The tenth poem of Propertius Book 4 is the most remarkable in a collection full of surprises for its readers, and appears to mark a significant departure from his previous work. If Propertius had never written his final book of poetry, we might characterize him on the basis of his earlier books as the quintessential Latin love elegist: he rejects not only a military career, but even the less demanding task of celebrating Augustus' victories, in favour of the love elegist's self-indulgent life of leisure: cf. e.g. Prop. 2.1.39–46. In the first poem of Book 4, however, Propertius announces what appears to be a wholly different poetic programme; in place of the erotic elegies of the previous books is a new ‘serious’ purpose: Propertius will sing about national, religious and antiquarian themes, as the ‘Roman Callimachus’ (Propertius 4.1a.63–4). However, as soon as the next poem, Propertius is commanded to return to his usual theme of obsessive elegiac love for one woman, a topic described as haec tua castra (‘this is your sphere of operations’, 4.1b.135). The poems which follow in Propertius 4 tend to strike a balance between antiquarian seriousness and elegiac frivolity. For example, in 4.4, Propertius relates the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia's betrayal of Rome, connecting several contemporary urban landmarks with the poem's heroine, but he remains true to his earlier colours by presenting Tarpeia as an elegiac lover who falls in love at first sight and betrays her city out of passion.

Tot in Vno Corpore Formae: Hybridity, Ethnicity and Vertumnus in Propertius Book 4

The opening poem of Propertius Book 4 famously contains a programmatic statement which presents notamor(love or desire)—the staple of Roman elegy through the 20s and into the 10s BCE—as the ruling theme of the collection, but Roman aetiology:Roma, faue, tibi surgit opus, date candida ciuesomina, et inceptis dextera cantet auis!sacra diesque canam et cognomina prisca locorum.(4.1.67-69)Rome, lend your support. This work arises for you. Citizens, grant brightomens—and may the bird of augury sing favourably!Of rites and days I will sing, and of the ancient names of places.The focus on Roman origins in poem 1 itself specifically involves a comparison between the early history of Rome (the mythic past) and the poet's present (what we have come to know as ‘Augustan’ Rome). This comparison is introduced in the very opening lines of the poem:hoc quodcumque uides, hospes, qua maxima Roma est,ante Phrygem Aenean collis et herba fuit;atque ubi Nauali stant sacra Palatia Phoebo,Euandri profugae procubuere boues.fictilibus creuere deis haec aurea templa,nec fuit opprobrio facta sine arte casa.(4.1.1-6)Whatever you see here, stranger, where now is great Rome,was hills and grassland before the coming of Phrygian Aeneas.Where the Palatine shrine of Naval Phoebus now stands,the cattle of Evander once lay down as refugees.These golden temples grew from clay gods,and there was no shame in an artless dwelling.Anthropologists and sociologists have demonstrated the vital role which myths of origin, such as the poet here purports to represent, play in the formation, maintenance and expression of ethnicity in many cultures, ancient and modern. A.D. Smith even goes so far as to call such myths thesine qua nonof ethnic identity. It seems reasonable to suggest, then, that the representation of Roman origins projects Roman identity. Indeed, some scholars have recently argued for this in the case of Propertius Book 4. What is more, as I will argue here, Propertius Book 4 accentuates the complexities inherent in the particular picture of Roman identity which Roman myth transmits, and dramatises them in such ways as to challenge the unitariness of that identity at the very moment of its assertion.

Propertius 4.2: Slumming with Vertumnus?

In her recent study of Ciceronian oratory Ann Vasaly observes that particular activities are associated with the monuments, edifices, and different quarters of Rome, on the basis of the daily practice and liter? ary depiction of each location. Together, these associations constitute a of a location?that is, the network of mean? ings the place held for a Roman audience in the Augustan age.1 Atten? tion to the metaphysical topography of a place can enrich or change our appreciation of a literary work that depends in some manner on its set? ting. The fourth book of Propertius directs the reader's attention to a variety of places in the city, from the Tarpeian Rock (4.4) to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine (4.6), from the Ara Maxima of Hercules (4.9) to the recently restored Temple of Jupiter Feretrius (4.10). These elegies play a part in shaping our sense of each of these places, but they also draw upon the preexisting metaphysical topography. In 4.2 the statue of Vertumnus on three occasions refers to its specific location in a street shrine on the Vicus Tuscus and voices its preference for this particular spot over any other. In this essay I describe the literary tradition con? cerning the statue of Vertumnus and the Vicus Tuscus and demonstrate that the metaphysical topography of the location affords this aetiological poem a markedly amatory aspect, which encourages us to read it as a programmatic piece for the entire book and grants some of the narra? tor's assertions an ironic and witty flavor. The fourth book of Propertius' elegies is characterized by pervasive interplay between amatory and aetiological poetry. This interplay is created in the first elegy, which is split into two halves (4.1a, 4.1b). In the first half an authorial narrator introduces a new program of aetio? logical elegy, culminating with a promise to sing of sacred rites, festi-

Propertius and Tibullus: early exchanges

This paper sets out in section I the most useful evidence we possess for the dating of Propertius Book 1, Tibullus Book 1, and Propertius Books 2a and 2b.2 The evidence squares with a sequence of publication: Prop. 1, Tibull. 1, Prop. 2a, Prop. 2b, which is what, in my view, literary considerations suggest. The most important, or at least most interesting, of these considerations are the signs of response and counterresponse between the two poets. I detect spirited ripostes by the poets, one to the other. Section II examines some Tibullan responses to Propertius Book 1, and section III some Propertian responses, in ‘Book 2’, to Tibullus Book 1.

Redressing Elegy'sPuella: Propertius IV and the Rhetoric of Fashion

Much recent criticism of Roman love elegy, especially Propertian love elegy, has been concerned with the exposure of elegy'segoandpuellaas poetic constructions whose ‘partially realistic’ characteristics and actions serve as metaphorical representations of the poet's writing practice and poetic ideals. As Duncan Kennedy has pointed out, however, this discourse of representation has already threatened to create its own limitations of applicability, as it privileges the ‘partial realism’ of love elegy's first-person narratives, in which an authorial male narrator (ego) writes of his female subject (puella), at the expense of the more openly unrealistic representational strategies of works such as Ovid'sHeroides and Fastior, the more immediate concern of this article, the fourth book of Propertius' elegies.

Propertius 2.8 and 2.9 as counterparts∗

The author seeks to present a broader examination of those elements of form and content which are common to poems 8 and 9 from the second book of Propertius’ Elegies and which provide a reason for considering these two poems as counterparts. Particular attention is focused on how the motifs of the wheel of fortune and death for love are handled, and to mythological references which are present in both elegies in the form of the exempla from the Trojan and Theban Cycles. The author's aim is to demonstrate how it is possible to broaden the interpretation of a single poem by means of comparative analysis with its counterpart.

A note on the structure of the pieces numbered 1–25 in Propertius Book 2

This note offers an answer to the problem of apparent disorder in Book 2 of Propertius by disclosing a principle of order that underlies it. The observations that follow tend to confirm the internal unity of some elegies, to indicate the divisions to be perceived at some points between one elegy and the next, and to suggest the probability or otherwise of some conjectured transpositions. They may also aid interpretation by suggesting what movement within an elegy was intended by the poet to be felt.The area of observation has been restricted to Elegies 1–25 because it is possible to show that within that area an identifiable principle of composition has been applied consistently. It cannot be assumed without further consideration that a principle found to be applicable within the defined area is applicable outside it, even in this book, still less in the other books of the Elegies.

Causation And The Authority Of The Poet In Ovid's Fasti

The two central themes of Fasti are twice (1.1, 4.11) linked in this way. The association, which at once gives the poem the appearance of having a literary ancestry in the aetiological tradition, might have seemed inevitable: any verse narrative account of a festival is very likely to contain an αἲтιоν of it. Callimachus' hymns illustrate this assertion, and there are clearly defined hymnic elements in Fasti to bear out the comparison, for example the listing of Venus' ⋯αεтαί and Πρáξεις at 4.91ff. and the instructions to the devotees of Pales at 4.731–48. 4 To state the obvious fact that the poem combines Roman antiquities with Alexandrian aetiology, a blending of which more straightforward examples are to be found in the fourth book of Propertius, is only a prelude to establishing what Ovid really achieves in Fasti. Traditional elements are, as I hope to show, cunningly exploited to create ‘counter–effects’ and to subject the material to the constantly varying and wide–ranging influences of the poet's literary background. Though the notion of causa is central to Fasti, the poem is much more than an amalgam of such influences as the aetiological prose works of Varro and (possibly) Verrius Flaccus with the aetiological poetics of Propertius 4.5 These sources combined to provide material for the foundation of the finished structure, which was to be the creative manipulation of these antiquarian and literary stimuli directed at providing a vehicle for the regular themes of the Ovidian persona.

The Structure of Propertius Book I and Some Textual Consequences

The Structure of Propertius Book I and Some Textual Consequences