Propertius book 3 notes

General notes & context:

• The only love-elegies written before the battle of Actium (dated) are Gallus

  • Elegies of Propertius and Tibullus are post, even when they are discussing pre-Actium events like the sack of Perusia

  • + elegy’s consistent argument that Roman men should serve as soldiers for love and not war must be understood on this background

  • And laments for ancestral land in Tibullus 1.1 and Propertius 4.1 and Eclogues 1 & 9

• Dating for the Amores

  • References Horace and calls Augustus ‘Augustus’ from book 2

  • And in the Remedia, Ovid talks of Propertius as if he is dead

  • Book 3 must come after Horace as it alludes to Horace Odes 3

• Book 2 might actually be two books

General notes: Propertius & violence

• Book 2 has quite a few poems that can provide a little context on Propertius’ relationship to sex and violence

  • 2.5 - ‘I will not rip the dress from your perjured body, nor will my anger smash down your closed doors, nor will I tear apart your woven coiffure in my rage, nor dare to hurt you with my harsh thumbs’ (comes across as a threat even when negated)

  • 2.8 - ‘you will not escape me: you should die together with me’

  • 2.14 - ‘this my spoils, this my conquered kings, this my chariots will be’

  • 2.15 - ‘if you are stubborn and lie down clothed, with your tunic torn away, you will know my hands. Still more, if anger provokes me further, you will show your mother the bruises on my arms’

    • Bodily form slowly revealed (exposed nipples, intertwined arms, kisses = scopophilia becomes voyeurism)

    • Sexuality and violence become intertwined too

  • Cynthia may seem to hold the power, but Propertius is always able to take that power away

    • She is whoever he needs her to be functionally (+ symbolically = his parents, household, him and his source, mistress and wife in 2.6)

• In 3.11, we see Cleopatra with arms bound and bitten by asps = quite reminiscient of Cynthia here in 2.15 (naturalisation of Roman hegemonic rule = woman & foreigner as inferior)

3.1

• Opens with ‘the spirit of Callimachus and the rites of Coian Philita (but is this book Callimachean? B4 is focused on aetia), please allow me to enter your grove, as priest from the clear spring I was first to try to mix Italian mystics with Greek dances’

  • Aware that elegy is not inherently Roman (after Punic and Macedonian wars, we find the absorption of Greek & Alexandrian culture including literary conventions) = elegy as a foreign import

    • And later girls will require foreign gifts to be enticed = love elegy / love affairs require the empire

  • Opens with the grove

    • In 2.13, we also see the grove (but the Ascraean one = Hesiod, but there just wishes to stop Cynthia from talking, not to move trees or wild beasts)

• What cave did Callimachus enter, what water he drink

  • And his verse is smoothed by pumice → shall triumph with crowned steeds (triumph as emphasising alternative success)

• Many other men will add praises to Rome’s annals but he will go down untouched road

  • Suggests his work is intended to be read in peace BUT the line concerning Bactria suggests Rome will not soon be at peace (not possible in an empire)

• ‘provide a soft garland for your poet, Pegasid Muses’

• After death, he will become even greater (thus Troy after its fall, and even Homer too)

  • Like Horace in 3.30

3.2

• Opens by pondering that song has power = Orpheus was said to have calmed wild beasts and restrained raging rivers

  • And Galatea was bent to your song, Polyphemus

  • THUS if Bacchus and Apollo are kind, could Propertius cultivate a crowd of girls?

  • BUT he does not have a home ‘supported by Taenarian columns, nor is my ceiling ivory among gilded beams…’

  • But the girl is fortunate if she is sung about in his little book

• Wealth of pyramids, temple of Jupiter at Elis, rich wealth of Mausoleum will all fall one day (flame, rain or silent weight of time)

  • ‘But a name sought from genius does not fall to time: renown from genius stands undying’

  • Again! Very Horatian opening

  • + the monuments mentioned are all non-Roman = idea of Roman art as superior to empire

• Shows interest in world outside Rome (first public map displayed in the porticus Vispania in 2BC but conceived of by Marcus Agrippa & the res gestae in the process at this time)

3.3

• ‘I was seen laying in the shade of soft Helicon…’

  • The grove motif again

  • Wishes to put his little mouth to the great springs that Ennius drank from and sing of the Alban kings, and the Curii brothers and the Horatian spear etc.

    • The description of what he could discuss here is entirely out of order (from mid 7th to 167BC to 3rd century etc)

  • BUT then Castalian Phoebus spotted me from a tree and spoke as he leaned on gilded lyre = typical god interrupting scene (is he actually in a tree?)

  • ‘Mad one, what is there for you from such a stream? Who told you to touch the work of singing heroes?’

  • Instead, he should hope that his little book sit on a stool which a girl reads while she waits for her man (poetry of the boudoir)

  • And then uses the sea of poetry metaphor (his little boat should not be weighed down, one oar scrape the water, the other the sand)

    • Thus should stay close = in Rome!

    • BUT the opening shows him in Helicon?

• And points to a new cave with mosaics covering the walls and tamborines hanging in the crevices (doves too - birds of Venus)

  • And there the Muses address him: ‘…now will the thunder of hooves rouse you bravely to arms’

  • ‘Whether battles are waged in these plains under Marius’ standard and Rome cushed Teutonic forces or the foreign Rhine is brimming with Suebian blood…’ = fall of Gaul is configured through the pollution of the river

• And ends with Calliopea wet his mouth with the water of the streams that Philotea sought

3.4

• Opens ‘arma deus Caesar dites meditatur ad Indos et freta gemmiferi findere classe maris’ = back to empire

  • But the emphasis on wealth (dites, gemmiferi and merces) = dubious intentions?

  • BUT he will need the jewels from this ‘jewel-bearing sea’ to seduce a woman

  • ‘The Tigris and Euphrates will run under our authority…’ = again, we see the empire construed through natural elements

    • + Romanising terms such as tropaea, provincia, triumphos

  • Crassos clademque piate = need to revenge the disaster of stolen standards

    • But funny position just after omina fausta!

  • + expertae bello…prorae & ad solitum armigeri ducite munus equos = customary action! Consistent

• And wishes to see the chariot of Caesar laiden with spoils of empire, BUT he wishes to see this in the lap of his beloved (realise this is from the perspective of the lover in the audience of triumph = separated from the military)

  • ‘it is enough for me to applaud him on the sacred way’

  • Romanae consulite historiae = another’s job to write history (+ might be a line from Gallus!)

    • Who was an elegist but also prefect of Egypt = can be both!

  • + we see Propertius as poet and reader (incipiam et titulis oppida capta legam) = he reads the panegyric instead of writing it

3.5

• Sudden switch from arma deus to pacis Amor deus (Love as opposed to War)

  • And wars with his mistress are enough for him (idea of satiety again)

  • And he does not want acres ploughed or to drink his thirs from jewelled goblets (gemma again!)

• ‘we seek the enemy, and bind new arms against arms’ = constantly at war!

  • But nothing that you gain will you carry to Hades!

  • Everyone dies (captured Jugurtha with consul Marius)

• For Propertius, it is enough to have worshipped the youth of Helicon (Callimachus?)

  • But when he is old, he will turn to philosophy (even in old age, he still won;t write panegyric)

  • And ask questions of nature - eg. why the stars do x,y or z

  • And asks if the punishments of the underworld are actually just folktales and nothing exists after the pyre

• ‘let this be the end of my life: but you, to whom weapons are more worthy, return the standards of Crassus home’

  • Or does crassi here mean thick-heads, and is actually a vocative plural…

• Ends with exitus (closural) and referte domum may allude to the ending of the eclogyes

3.6

• Voice of Propertius addresses Lygdamas, his mistress’ slave, to ask him what she has said and not to lie to him

  • bibam to refer to drinking in the words!

  • And asks if she is mourning without him (is there a mirror on her bed)

  • Weaving alone and crying into the wool (like Penelope or Lucretia)

• Then, belief that we switch to her perspective and what she did say (though some believe it is only his imagination)

  • She imagines that he is happy to leave her alone and has been bewitched by another maiden’s witchy pursuits

• And then he responds, telling Lygdamas to rush back and alert her that he has not been cheating and his bed has been empty for 12 days

  • If he does, he will free him

3.7

• Poem lamenting the loss of Paetus, who sought his fortunes overseas

  • He should have listened to Propertius and been content with the fields and cow, and his own penates

  • He wanted feathers in a variety of colours

• And now imagines that Paetus speaks as he drowns

  • Prays to the gods of the sea and asks them why they kill such a young boy

  • At least allow my mother to bury my body = but will not happen

  • non habet unda deos

• But Thetis should at least have saved him who lost her own son

• For man now, the land is not enough and we must span the ocean

  • But even in the past still suffered eg. Odysseus but for a different reason

• Crossing the sea for greed holds disaster (either in form of spoils or trade!)

  • But not the foreign world that kills him, but the sea

3.8

• Although Propertius sometimes wishes for peace, other times he wants battles (in the form of sex)

  • He wants her to pull his hair and scratch his face with her fingers (and later bite his neck and bruise him)

    • Enact the signs of grief but upon me, not yourself

    • ‘beautiful fingernails’ = even in the midst of the attack, he finds her beautiful

  • This shows her passion!

  • Then compares the situation to Paris and Helen (they had the greatest fights in the bedroom when Hector and the Greeks were battling outside)

    • Relationship is strained so odd choice here

3.9

• Discusses Maecenas, the horseman from the blood of kings (contrast of eques to regum?)

  • But asks him why he is sending him out on such a vast ocean of writing, his sails are not fit for that (later tumidum mare)

  • recusatio poem! Can we say Maecenas is Propertius’ patron then?

  • Everything is not fit for everyone = fit for someone else!

  • Then moves into different arts and how each artist is perfect at that one specific art eg. Lyssipos at sculpting

• But Propertius has received Maecenas’ example and is attempted to surpass him

  • Although Caesar has provided him strength to the end, Maecenas is happy to remain humble in the shadows

  • But still Propertius will not weep for the ashes of Cadmus’ city or the Scaean gates

  • It rather is enough for him to please readers among the little books of Callimachus and to have sung in his tones, Coan poet

• But with Maecenas leading, he would sing of Remus and the Parthians and Antony

3.10

• Birthday of his mistress! But she is never named

  • And all the Camenae clapped for her

  • May this day be perfect and not even Niobe weep

• She will dress herself beautifully and dress in the clothes that captured Propertius first

  • Then she should pray and then they should party!

  • And when the night has come, they should release their annual vows on the bed, and conclude her birthday (with sex)

• See the full day from the beginning (with an acrostic MANE) to the night (the whole day)

• Cynthia (whose name is associated with Apollo - born on Mt Cynthus) is treated as if deserving of sacred silence

• Ends closuraly with peragamus iter

3.11

• Opens with a question to the viewer - ‘why do you wonder if a woman governs my life and drags a devoted man under her yoke, and you make up base charges of cowardice because I cannot break the chains and snap my yoke?’

  • Sort of similar to Catullus 16 = if you call ME a coward because of the poetry I write, you’re reading it wrong (does believe women should be subjugated in the real world)

  • Should remain only in poetry and elegy

• Compares to mythical examples (like Omphale and Hercules) and even Jupiter! = Augustus better than Jupiter?

  • But is the greatest deed of Augustus just to have opposed the sexual power of a woman?

  • BUT ‘why not her who bound shamelessness onto our arms, and a woman who fucked her slaves, who demanded the walls of Rome as price for her obscene marriage (as foreign) and the Senate adjoined into her empire?’

    • Complete misrepresentation of Cleopatra

• Guilty Alexandria and Memphis so often gored at our cost = the land itself!

  • The SAND stole away the three triumphs

  • Barking Anubis opposite Jupiter, Tiber should bear the threats of the Nile (trumpet vs screeching sistrum)

  • And to cover base nets over the Tarpeian rocks

  • Domination configured through geographical and cultural invasion!

• ‘Sing, Rome, of the triumph and the lengthy day, pray safety for Augustus!’ & vocalises Cleopatra as afraid of Augustus

  • In previous books, we only hear of Augustus as the sacker of Perusia! What changed?

• The gods built these walls, the gods also protect them! A city high on seven hills

  • And many prior triumphs (eg. of Hannibal)

• And never returns to opening theme…

3.12

• Addressing Postumus, who leaves for war and thus abandons Galla (‘was the glory of despoiled Parthai such even when Galla begged you many times for you not to do this?’)

  • = destruction of Propertius’ world by imperial motivations

    • Emphasis on greed (+ soldiers described as ‘greedy ones’) but will never achieve this \/

  • Sort of threatens that he will suffer, drinking water out of a helmet (Arax = to denote location)

  • While his girl fears that he has died = he deserves a worse wife with such behaviour

• Although Rome is a teacher of luxury, no bribes will persuade Galla and she will embrace him when he returns (he should be engaging in militaris amor, not militia)

  • Postumus as another Ulysses (the irony being he is not trying to return home)

  • Nor has he overcome so much as Ulysses did to get back

  • BUT ‘Aelian Galla conquers Penelope in loyalty’ (meant to take seriously?)

3.13

• Discusses the expense it takes for just one night with ‘these greedy girls’ = personal motivation for this anger (not for the state)

  • Way of luxury is now too easy when the empire has been so successful

  • Ants bringing up gold and shells of Venus found in red sea, Tyre produces purple and Arabia, cinnamon (auditory doublet of Ciconum mons in 12)

  • Now even the matron dresses with wealth given by a now poor man (‘the woman’s progressively more adorned body symbolises the progressively more degenerate state’)

• The Eastern husbands are fortunate in this one law (‘whom reddening Aurora darkens with her steeds’ = the Eastern fellow is compared to the spoils)

  • Their pious wives fight to sacrifice themselves on the pyre of husband

  • But here in Rome there is no loyal Evadne or pious Penelope (what about Galla?)

• → the past was better when wealth was but a harvest and a tree

  • Only wanted a basket of flowers or grapes

  • And then they would lie on a natural bed of grass and make love

• Back then too the altars of the gods were looked after

  • ‘But now altars have disappeared from these deserted spots; everyone worships gold now that piety has been felled’

• Into mythical examples of bribery of gold eg. the death of Polydorus

• But Propertius will be viewed as a Cassandra for saying such things

3.14

• A praise of Sparta but not because of their politics but because they allow the female body to be on show

  • ‘but even more the many benefits to your female sport, because the nude female works out among the contesting males with no shame for her body’

  • And she can now hunt and ride horses and fight just like the Amazons, but ends with how Helen was said to fight with her breasts revealed and no shame

• And Spartan law forbids the splitting of lovers

  • Allowed to walk together at the cross-roads

  • Literally not true in any of the texts we have about Sparta (these texts also cannot be trusted but what information is Propertius going off of here)

• But in Rome, the girl comes out surrounded by a great mob and even the fingernail cannot scrape past = Rome should imitate the laws of Sparta

• Augustus himself goes to Sparta in late 20’s (as Romans liked to imagine themselves as proto-Romans)

  • BUT Augustus was also banning women from attending athletic games at this time = Propertius’ reasoning is entirely opposed to the princeps’

3.15

• Propertius laments that Cynthia is moping that he had a prior lover Lycinna (but he never won her over)

  • ‘since the third year has passed (no less by a lot) = why does he add that little parenthesis

  • + this reveals that Cynthia was not Propertius’ first love!

• But she should think of savage Dirce and Antiope (believes that Antiope has slept with her husband so treats her terribly)

  • But Jupiter doesn’t help her so she breaks the chains on her own and hurries off to the peaks of Cithaeron

  • The mother found Zephus and Amphion but they did not believe her until the old man looking after them revealed

• = Dirce is dragged to death by the oxen SO Cynthia should be kinder (and not let gossip shake her ears)

3.16

• Propertius laments that his beloved has asked (in a letter = communicative function) to meet her in Tibur

  • He fears that he will be hurt, but if he ignores it, her tears will hurt him more (once he sinned and was driven out for a full year)

  • But would anyone strike a lover and scatter themselves in the paltry blood, the one whom Venus herself accompanies

• But if he is to die, she will look after the body and be a protector at his stone

  • ‘May the gods ensure this, that my bones don’t sit in frequented soil, where the crowd travel with constant throughway’

  • Or even be buried in unknown sand

  • Is this really true? Especially if he wishes to be well-known after death

3.17

• A poem for Bacchus

  • ‘Lovers come together and part through you: Bacchus, lighten the mischief on my mind’

  • Ariadne as witness!

• Wishes to be able to sleep, with wine distracting him

• If so, he will sow vines and keep on guard for wild animals

• And he will speak of him - how he was born from a bolt, how he conquered the Indians with his warriors, Lycurgus, Pentheus etc

• ‘A lydian turban covers your locks, Bassaricus, your gentle neck flows with perfumed oil, and you strike your nude feet as your robe flows out’

  • Orientalist perspective on Bacchus

• He will pour wine in libation as his rite if he conquers his anxious head and can be free of proud servitude

3.18

• A lament for the death of Marcellus (epicedion)

  • Lake shut off (manipulation of the land by Romans) from shaded Avernus thunders against the steamy pools of warm water = Baiae (this is where he died)

  • On sands where Misenus fell and Hercules toiled and Bacchus was celebrated (all not Roman but celebrated by them)

  • Attempt by Rman poets to reintegrate Hercules and Bacchus (before, Marcus Antonius) into Augustus’ identity

• Marcellus died, despite his lineage, virtue and excellent mother

  • Despite the theatre so full and blessed omens

  • 20th year (23BC) but everyone must die (the highest and lowest rank)

  • Despite their strength or beauty (Achilles or Nireus)

3.19

• Seems to be responding to Cynthia’s complaint about his lust

  • However, never names her! Are we meant to assume it is her?

  • But women’s lust rules them more!

  • More quickly would flames settle in burning corn and rivers return to the head of their spring

  • And the Syrtes be a welcoming harbour and the Malea kind to sailors

• Witness to this is Pasiphae who dressed in the false horns of that wooden cow

  • Myrrha too who burnt for her elderly father

  • Medea too & Clytemnestra

  • Scylla too who was punished by the man she loved (Minos, who now judges in the underworld)

3.20

• Another poem concerning a man who has left his beloved at home to travel (this time for profit in Africa)

  • He might even be seducing another now THUS she should be seduced by him!

  • She is beautiful, has skills of chaste Pallas, repute shining from her grandfather and well-established house

• First night! = cannot be Cynthia (have slept together before)

  • But now suggests treaties be made and oaths and contracts confirmed so he does not get fucked over

  • Anyone who breaks these oaths, should be sorrowful in love and be cast out by the mistress (in love but never having the pleasure of love)

3.21

• To try and escape Cynthia, he suggests that he go to learned Athens

  • The long distance may release him from oppressive love (has tried everything else)

  • ‘Now go, comrades, push the ship into the water’ = the one place he despises!

    • But also represents him turning to different poetry (the ship of elegy)

• He shall thus be conveyed onto the Adriatic sea and will pass into the Ionian and then climb the long arms of Theseus’ way

  • Will find Plato’s academy or Epicurus’ garden

  • + doctas Athenas & docte in 26 & 28 = new form of artistic activity like aetiology

  • Or will savour Menander’s wit

• If he dies, he will perish naturally, not broken by a base love

• The third remedy is now distance (tried wine and other women)

3.22

• Very different tone here as he now urges Tullus to come back home!

  • Cyzicus and the waters of the Propontis have been pleasing Tullus (+ the shore of swan-famed Cayster and Atlas holding the whole sky or the head of the Gorgon, stables of Geryon and Hercules)

  • + following the path of the argonauts

• HOWEVER all of this yield to the land of Rome

  • ‘whatever is best, nature placed it in this spot’

  • have the Anio Tibur, the Clitumnus, the flow of the Marcius, the Alban lake and the grove = idea of water as symbols of the place

  • And no horned snakes or strange monsters or chains of Andromeda or savage Bacchants = Greek culture as destructive, whereas before it was enlightening

  • Also the idea of Greek mythology (and poetry) as inferior to Roman (as Tullus would not be seeing any of these monsters or bacchants)

• ‘here is your origin, Tullus, and here your beautiful home, here honour must be sought by you for your worthy family, here are citizens waiting for your speeches, here is a pregnant hope for a son and a perfect love of a wife to come’

3.23

• Mourns that his learned tablets have been taken and the beautiful words written on them too! = symbolises the rupture of relationship!

  • Loss of tablets = loss of poetry suggests poetry as a physical object (idea of the poetic book)

    • Also see this in Catullus 42 where an ugly girl steals his hendecasyllables

  • Tablets themselves were taught how to please girls and speak charming words

  • + no gold made them special (made of wax and common boxwood)

• Always loyal (like the mistress?) but now imagines they are being used by the mistress

  • ‘I am angry since yesterday you were delayed and slow. Is some other girl more beautiful to you?’

  • OR is wishing that another man will come tomorrow!

  • OR even worse, some man is using them to write his accounts!

• So then asks if someone will return them to him for lots of gold! Write that the master lives on the Esquiline (true?)

  • Does remind us that Propertius is still in Rome (his attempts to leave failed evidentally as he is still writing elegy)

3.24 / 25

• Final goodbye to Cynthia and opens with ‘your trust in your beauty is false, woman, once made too proud by your eyes’

  • He praised her too much = increased her arrogance

    • Idealised her = was just a fantasy

  • But he could not leave his homeland nor could a witch help BUT finally ‘the sandbanks crossed, my anchor sunk’ = he has left !

  • And now his wounds heal and he prays to the altar of Good Sense

• 25 - he was the laughing stock at the table and all come mock him for being a slave for 5 years (the city talks!)

  • She may cry but he knows her tricks

  • He also says goodbye to the threshold that weeped at his words (paraclausithyron) and the door

  • Almost curses her that she grow old and wrinkles come upon her beauty and thus she will be shut out and lament that she treated him how she did

• ‘Learn to fear the end of your beauty!’

• And that is the ‘end’ of their relationship (in the goodbye that we hear Cynthia for the first time!)

  • Cynthia as simply ‘puella’ (she does not need an identity for her role in the poetry)