composed. Because elegy and lyric respond immediately to their socio-cultural context, it is necessary to understand the events and cultural tides of the time period before we can understand the poetry produced in and from this context. Here we raise such questions as: How did Hellenistic poetry influence the later Augustan poetry? How did increasingly imperial policies influence writers like Tibullus, Propertius, Horace, and Ovid? What differences do we find in the elegists and the lyric poets in the ways they react to the political currents of their times? We also examine the influences of earlier Greek and Hellenistic poetry upon the later Roman lyric and elegiac poetry and consider the role of the early Augustan poet Gallus in shaping the elegiac tradition at Rome. Gallus, who is said by Quintilian to be the first of the elegists, is an important figure whose influence on elegy is clear but whose few extant lines give us only a small clue about exactly what kind of elegy he wrote and why he casts such a broad shadow over the later elegists.
Chapters 2 through 8 focus on the individual lyric and elegiac poets: Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Sulpicia, and other elegists and lyric poets (Lygdamus, the “Amicus” poems from the Corpus Tibullianum, and post-Augustan elegy and lyric). Chapter 2 is focused on the first century BCE writer Catullus who wrote both lyric and elegiac poetry. Catullus’ poem 68 is often thought to be the first real elegiac poem; this subjective and intensely erotic poem, which contains mythological figures but is focused on a female beloved (Lesbia), holds within it the seeds of later elegy. Catullus occupies a liminal, awkward position as the first extant author of an elegiac poem but a poet who does not write solely in elegiac meter.
Chapter 3 brings us to another poet who also does not quite fit the same mold as the main group of poets studied in this book. Horace wrote entirely lyric poetry. He was apparently Rome’s first and last lyric poet. His lyric Odes draw on Greek and Hellenistic traditions to explore distinctively Roman and Italian themes as he adapts traditional motifs and meters to celebrate the Italian countryside, life at symposia or dinner parties, sex and friendship, time, politics and patronage. His relationships with Maecenas (his patron) and Augustus complicate the political and ideological character of his lyrics, but traces of the satiric and comic edge which characterizes his early work are also evident here.
Chapters 4 and 5 cover the elegists Tibullus and Propertius who were almost exact contemporaries. Both poets wrote only in elegiac couplets, and Quintilian counts them as among the major Roman elegists. Tibullus wrote two books of elegies with a third book, the Corpus Tibullianum, added on probably in the same period, but that book contained poems written by several other poets. Tibullus’ poems proceed not in a linear fashion but by association of ideas, often with no logical transition; they have been described as dreamlike. They are often addressed to two female lovers, Delia and Nemesis (both pseudonyms) and to a male lover, Marathus. Unlike Tibullus, Propertius writes in a less associative manner and engages more clearly with his Roman world, very often mentioning politics and political figures like Maecenas. Most of Propertius’ love poems are addressed to a lover he calls Cynthia, who plays a major role especially in Book 1. He describes her in such a way as to make her seem real, giving her a “reality factor,” but most people see her as a “written woman,” part of the poetry of Propertius’ text. Like Catullus and Tibullus, Propertius names Callimachus as his poetic ancestor, using Callimachean poetics as the underpinnings of his poetry.
Chapter 6 is devoted to Ovid, who wrote in the relatively stable period of the Augustan “golden age.” His considerable elegiac corpus (extant works comprising Amores, Heroides, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, Fasti, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto) inventively reworks the model of love elegy popularized by his predecessors, “womanufacturing” a patently fictitious mistress (Corinna) to serve as the focus for his Amores, exaggerating established elegiac figures and tropes, and expanding the elegiac story-world to include more female voices and viewpoints, and a more cynical and ludic approach to life, love and literature. We focus this chapter on the evolution of core elegiac conceits and motifs across his seven elegiac works.
Chapter 7 is devoted to the only extant female elegiac poet, Sulpicia. Her poems are preserved as part of the Corpus Tibullianum. Sulpicia was a niece of the Augustan politician and literary patron, Messalla, and she was a contemporary of Horace and Tibullus. The six extant elegies written by Sulpicia (or so we think) offer the rare opportunity to experience an ancient female voice and viewpoint, and to witness the elegiac world from a unique perspective in which the mistress or puella speaks and tells her side of the story. Key elegiac motifs are therefore subject to radical revision as Sulpicia presents a very different view of sex and gender, politics (both sexual and imperial) and patronage, myth, and religion. The poetry of Sulpicia has given rise to heated critical debate in recent years concerning uncertainties about authorship, the constitution of literary canon, and (so called) “feminine Latin,” making her slender elegiac corpus particularly useful and interesting in re-evaluating modern approaches to ancient elegiac poetry.
Chapter 8 is devoted to other poets including the poets in the Corpus Tibullianum, and post-Augustan elegiac and lyric poets. These are poets who have reached us in fragmentary form or under the guise of pseudonyms and about whom we know far less than the poets discussed in Chapters 2–7. Here we look closely at the third book of the Tibullan corpus (the Corpus Tibullianum); this contains poems by Sulpicia and other poems by a supposed “friend” of Sulpicia (Amicus Sulpiciae), poems by a certain Lygdamus, by an anonymous author of a panegyric to Messalla and by another anonymous author of two poems about rumors and unfaithfulness. These poems have engendered discussion about the nature of originality, gender, aesthetics, and the nature of elegiacs; they give us further clues to understanding the genre of elegy even in their fragmentary or anonymous form.
Chapter 9 provides an overview and analysis of the key themes and topics, figures, and tropes that elegy and lyric typically incorporate; these include two “umbrella” tropes, militia amoris (“the warfare of love”) and servitium amoris (“the slavery of love”); sexuality and gender; poetic community and friendship; politics and patronage; myth and religion; Romanitas and masculinity; love as a disease, madness, or fire; magic, witchcraft, and the lena; speech and silence; time; wealth and poverty; empire and imperializing; the closed door (paraclausithyron) and the shut-out lover (exclusus amator); counting and numbers.
Chapter 10 gives an overview and analysis of the key critical approaches to elegy and lyric in current scholarship; these include autobiographical realism; psychoanalysis; gender and sexuality; narratology; reception; and decolonization. Various approaches have fallen in and out of fashion among critics and commentators, but these are the key critical and theoretical approaches that remain influential in current scholarship. They also suggest some likely areas for further development in the future.
Working with a co-author is not always easy, fun, or productive. Speaking for myself (Barbara Gold), in this case, my co-author (Genevieve Liveley) has been a terrific partner in this enterprise in every way. Writing on opposite side of the Atlantic in different time-zones and during a global pandemic has brought certain challenges to our work, but both of us have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to spend time dedicated to reading, thinking, and sharing our ideas about the Latin lyric and elegiac poets. We
