Latin Love Poetry Read online

  ‘I hate and I love.’ The Roman poet Catullus expressed the disorienting experience of being in love in a stark contradiction that has resonated across the centuries. While his description might seem to modern readers natural and spontaneous, it is actually a response planned with great care and artistry. It is that artistry, and the way in which Roman love poetry works, that this book explores. Focusing on Catullus and on the later genre of elegy – so-called for its metre, and a form of poetry practised by Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid – Denise Eileen McCoskey and Zara Martirosova Torlone discuss the devices used by the major Roman love poets, as well as the literary and historical contexts that helped shape their work. Setting poets and their writings especially against the turbulent backdrop of the Augustan Age (31 BCE–14 CE), the book examines the origins of Latin elegy; highlights the poets’ key themes; and traces their reception by later writers and readers. It shows that a highly developed sense of place and landscape informed the elegists’ explorations of passion and desire. In their romantic attachment to the bucolic countryside as well as to the city of Rome, their pursuit of both men and women, and their vibrant exchange with other genres and authors, the Roman love poets are seen to have explored the act of writing as much as the experience of love itself.

  DENISE EILEEN MCCOSKEY is Professor of Classics and Affiliate in Black World Studies at Miami University, Ohio, and is the author of Race: Antiquity and its Legacy (I.B.Tauris, 2011).

  ZARA MARTIROSOVA TORLONE is Associate Professor of Classics at Miami University, Ohio. She is the author of Russia and the Classics: Poetry’s Foreign Muse (2009) and Vergil in Russia: National Identity and Classical Reception (2014).

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  Latin Love Poetry offers a clearly written and comprehensive synthesis of the most important scholarship on Latin erotic elegy from the last thirty years. A worthy successor to Lyne’s The Latin Love Poets (1981), it will be this generation’s vade mecum for all those entering the field.

  —Paul Allen Miller, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, University of South Carolina, author of Latin Erotic Elegy: An Anthology and Critical Reader and Subjecting Verses: Latin Love Elegy

  This insightful new introduction to the study of Roman love poetry offers a highly engaging and detailed primer, guiding students through the complexities and pleasures of reading and responding to Latin love elegy. Focusing primarily upon the Augustan elegists, but taking in the influences of Catullus, Gallus and Sulpicia along the way, Latin Love Poetry presents an accessible and articulate roadmap for all undergraduates looking to find their way towards a better understanding of this fascinating body of work.

  —Genevieve Liveley, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Bristol, author of Ovid: Love Songs and Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’: A Reader’s Guide

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  Understanding Classics

  Editor: RICHARD STONEMAN (UNIVERSITY OF EXETER)

  When the great Roman poets of the Augustan Age – Ovid, Virgil and Horace – composed their odes, love poetry and lyrical verse, could they have imagined that their works would one day form a cornerstone of Western civilization, or serve as the basis of study for generations of schoolchildren learning Latin? Could Aeschylus or Euripides have envisaged the remarkable popularity of contemporary stagings of their tragedies? The legacy and continuing resonance of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey – Greek poetical epics written many millennia ago – again testify to the capacity of the classics to cross the divide of thousands of years and speak powerfully and relevantly to audiences quite different from those to which they were originally addressed.

  Understanding Classics is a specially commissioned series which aims to introduce the outstanding authors and thinkers of antiquity to a wide audience of appreciative modern readers, whether undergraduate students of classics, literature, philosophy and ancient history or generalists interested in the classical world. Each volume – written by leading figures internationally – will examine the historical significance of the writer or writers in question; their social, political and cultural contexts; their use of language, literature and mythology; extracts from their major works; and their reception in later European literature, art, music and culture. Understanding Classics will build a library of readable, authoritative introductions offering fresh and elegant surveys of the greatest literatures, philosophies and poetries of the ancient world.

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  Understanding Classics

  Aristophanes and Greek Comedy

  JEFFREY S. RUSTEN ∙ Cornell University

  Augustine

  DENNIS E. TROUT ∙ Tufts University

  Cicero

  GESINE MANUWALD ∙ University College London

  Euripides

  ISABELLE TORRANCE ∙ University of Notre Dame

  Eusebius

  AARON P. JOHNSON ∙ Lee University, Tennessee

  Homer

  JONATHAN S. BURGESS ∙ University of Toronto

  Latin Love Poetry

  DENISE MCCOSKEY & ZARA TORLONE ∙ Miami University, Ohio

  Martial

  LINDSAY WATSON & PATRICIA WATSON ∙ University of Sydney

  Ovid

  CAROLE E. NEWLANDS ∙ University of Wisconsin, Madison

  Pindar

  RICHARD STONEMAN ∙ University of Exeter

  Plutarch

  MARK BECK ∙ University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  The Poets of Alexandria

  SUSAN A. STEPHENS ∙ Stanford University

  Roman Comedy

  DAVID CHRISTENSON ∙ University of Arizona

  Sappho

  PAGE DUBOIS ∙ University of California, Berkeley

  Seneca

  CHRISTOPHER STAR ∙ Middlebury College

  Sophocles

  STEPHEN ESPOSITO ∙ Boston University

  Tacitus

  VICTORIA EMMA PAGÁN ∙ University of Florida

  Virgil

  ALISON KEITH ∙ University of Toronto

  Published in 2014 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

  6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

  www.ibtauris.com

  Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

  Copyright © 2014 Denise Eileen McCoskey and Zara Martirosova Torlone

  The right of Denise Eileen McCoskey and Zara Martirosova Torlone to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

  ISBN: 978 1 78076 190 9 (HB)

  978 1 78076 191 6 (PB)

  eISBN: 978 0 85773 473 0

  A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

  Text design, typesetting and eBook versions by Tetragon, London

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  Contents

  Illustrations

  Introduction

  I · Beginnings and Backgrounds

  II · Author and Ego

  III · Power and Play

  I
V · Readers and Writers

  V · Country and City

  VI · Love and Exile

  VII · Death and Afterlife

  Conclusion

  Notes

  Recommended Reading

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  To Professor L. Richardson, jr, who prefers Propertius

  —DENISE EILEEN MCCOSKEY

  For my daughters Christina and Francesca

  with unconditional love

  —ZARA MARTIROSOVA TORLONE

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  ‌Illustrations

  2.1 Catullus at Lesbia’s (1865) by Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema.

  3.1 Pygmalion and Galatea IV: The Soul Attains (1878) by Edward Burne-Jones.

  5.1 Tibullus at Delia’s (1866) by Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema.

  5.2 Propertius and Cynthia at Tivoli by Auguste Jean Baptiste Vinchon.

  5.3 The Rape of the Sabine Women (1627–1629) by Pietro da Cortona.

  6.1 The statue of the Roman poet Ovidius Publius Naso.

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  ‌Introduction

  I hate and I love

  Catullus 85

  High off of love, drunk from my hate

  Eminem, ‘Love the Way You Lie’

  OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO, the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, commonly known as Catullus, expressed the turbulent experience of being in love in a stark contradiction that has resonated with artists and audiences across the centuries: ‘I hate and I love.’1 At first glance, Catullus’ blunt statement seems to give direct access to his emotional state, encouraging readers to connect their own experiences to Catullus’ plight. ‘I know exactly what Catullus means’ is a response shared by many readers. Yet such a rush to identify with Catullus obscures recognition of the ways he has gone about producing such a feeling; in other words, we often take our identification with Catullus’ condition as completely natural, when it is a response that has been planned with great care and artistry.

  In this book, we want to ‘denaturalize’ the process of reading Latin love poetry by exposing how Roman love poetry actually works – a task akin to looking behind the curtain in Oz. In laying bare some of the devices used by the Roman love poets, as well as the literary and historical contexts that helped shape their work, we do not want to diminish the pleasure of reading Roman love poetry by weighing it down with ‘too much analysis’; rather, we strive to make the experience richer and even more satisfying by allowing readers not only the pleasure of their initial reactions to Roman love poetry, but also the satisfaction of seeing the roads that have led them there – as well as the traps they may have fallen into along the way.

  Our study of Latin love poetry requires from the outset recognition of the differences between ancient and modern conceptions of literature, for literary genre in antiquity was defined not by subject matter or style, but rather by metre, a recurring pattern of long and short syllables in lines of set length. Love poetry in antiquity was composed in a range of metres before becoming closely associated with the elegiac couplet by the Augustan period (27 BCE–14 CE).2 Roman love poetry from the Augustan era was thus treated in antiquity as a distinct genre called ‘elegy’, a form practised by three of the four poets in our study: Albius Tibullus, Sextus Propertius and Publius Ovidius Naso, the last generally referred to as Ovid. Because of his use of a range of metres, Catullus was not, strictly speaking, a Roman elegist, although he played a monumental role in creating the genre of Roman love poetry and so remains essential to our study. We also include in this work poetry that, from a modern perspective, encompasses a subject matter far removed from conventional love poetry: Ovid’s poetry from exile. Such poetry fits our approach not only because its metre puts it firmly in the category of Augustan elegy, but also because it extends the emotional turmoil of human love affairs to the poet’s longing for Rome itself.

  To help situate our study of Latin love poetry, we want to begin by outlining some of the historical and cultural contexts in which it flourished.

  The Rise of Augustus

  Throughout the early part of the first century BCE, the Roman state weathered a series of brutal conflicts, including what is often called the ‘Social War’ (91–88 BCE), a war initiated by Rome’s Italian allies and resolved only by the extension of Roman citizenship throughout these territories. The Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro (known to English readers as Vergil or Virgil) references the persistent bloodshed at the close of Book 1 of his Georgics by poignantly warning that a farmer may turn up javelins, helmets and even bones as he ploughs, a passage that ‘juxtaposes Italian fecundity and Italian death’.3 Such images serve as a powerful reminder of how unsettled the relations remained between the Romans and other groups in Italy as Roman expansion took hold. Many authors we today consider ‘Roman’, in fact, were born in other parts of Italy – or later, in other parts of the Empire – and we can often witness in their writings a tension between their pride in Roman identity and their loyalty to their original hometown, a dynamic especially evident in Propertius’ love poetry.4

  Following the Social War, Rome provided the backdrop for two large-scale political rivalries, that of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, which ended with Sulla’s victory in 82 BCE, and that of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (known today as Pompey the Great) and Gaius Julius Caesar, which ended in Munda in 45 BCE following Pompey’s shocking beheading on Egyptian shores in 48 BCE. Fearing Caesar’s growing power and what they thought was his latent contempt for Republican structures of government, a group of Roman senators assassinated Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BCE, the famous Ides of March. Caesar’s death initiated another decade of violence when a triumvirate including Caesar’s young great-nephew Gaius Octavius (also called Octavian) and Caesar’s loyal general Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) joined together to challenge Caesar’s assassins, finally defeating the assassins’ army at Philippi in 42 BCE. Following this victory, Octavian and Antony soon turned against one another. While Antony headed east, joining forces with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, Octavian cornered Antony’s wife and brother, Fulvia and Lucius Antonius, in a siege at Perusia (modern Perugia) in Italy in 41–40 BCE, a stand-off that ended in the vicious slaughter of some three hundred Perusian senators and massive land confiscations.

  The alliance between Antony and Cleopatra became the target of considerable scrutiny back at Rome, and Octavian used it to turn public opinion against his one-time ally, casting Antony as overwhelmed by passion and Cleopatra as the dominant partner of the two.5 Antony’s public liaison allowed Octavian to conceal the civil nature of the conflict, for Octavian progressively framed the internecine feud with his fellow Roman as war against an outrageous foreign queen.6 In 31 BCE, Octavian met Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, a sea battle from which the two lovers fled. Octavian then pursued them to Egypt, although they both committed suicide rather than surrender. With the demise of Antony, Octavian became the sole inheritor of Caesar’s mantle (he is almost always referred to as ‘Caesar’ in contemporary literature) and he would ever after attribute the origins of his power to his victory at Actium.7 Assuming the title of princeps (‘first citizen’), Octavian was later awarded the title ‘Augustus’ (‘revered one’) in 27 BCE, the designation by which he remains more commonly known today. During his lengthy time in power – about forty years in all – Augustus would set in motion a gradual, albeit fundamental, transformation of the Roman Republic into what we today consider the Roman Empire.

  The Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (generally known as Horace) uses the phrase ‘your era, Caesar’ (Odes 4.15.4) when praising Augustus’ achievements, an idea echoed by Ovid in his later exilic poetry when he writes of ‘your times, Caesar’ (Tristia 2.560).8 Such terminology underscores the powerful notion that the rise of Augustus had initiated a distinct new era – the rebirth of a veritable ‘Golden Age’, an age originally associated with the reign of the god Saturn in Roman myth.9 In Virgil’s work, the prediction of a Golden Age appears for the first time in the so-called ‘Messianic’ fourth Eclogu
e (4–45), written in 40 BCE, a poem that ‘came to be considered […] the quintessential formulation of the aspirations of the [Augustan] age.’10 Similarly indicative of the optimism of the age, the Romans later celebrated the ‘Secular Games’ in 17 BCE, a joyful welcoming of the new era or saeculum that coincided with the appearance of a comet.11

  In justifying his authority, Augustus increasingly turned to a series of narratives from early Roman history, a mobilization of ideas about civic origin that reflected the ‘need in post-Actian Rome to re-establish the rules for who could belong to the community and identify who was Roman and who was not.’12 In particular, Augustus associated himself closely with figures like Aeneas, the legendary Trojan whose arduous voyage to Italy is portrayed in Virgil’s epic Aeneid, and Romulus, Rome’s mythic founder.13 Augustus apparently even considered taking the name Romulus as a title (Suetonius, Augustus 7.2, 95.2), and Romulus himself, as we shall see, appears throughout Augustan art and literature, including love poetry. Yet references to Romulus were risky given that his act of civic foundation involved the murder of his twin brother, Remus, and so might insinuate a disturbing propensity for fratricide from Rome’s earliest times, a painful premise for a Roman audience still recovering from its own bouts of civil conflict. Like many Augustan symbols, then, allusions to Romulus stand poised on a razor’s edge.

  In addition to proclaiming his alleged restoration of peace and prosperity, Augustus also placed considerable weight on his role as a moral reformer, a leader who returned to Rome its traditional values, including piety and respect for the gods. The perpetuation of the next generation loomed large in Augustan ideology, and the princeps devoted special attention to the institution of marriage. Indeed, ‘family’ became a central concept through which the new princeps articulated his ideas of religion, stability and statehood14 – his own familial troubles (as we shall see in Chapter 6) notwithstanding.