However, the journal Classical World regularly publishes textbook reviews and surveys so is a good place to begin. Online teachers’ forums such as The Classics Library (https://www.theclassicslibrary.com) host an excellent array of teaching resources too.
Survey the wide range of critical reflections and essays written and published by experienced teachers of lyric and elegy, learn from their mistakes, and borrow their best ideas. The journal Classical World includes a useful section on pedagogy.
Guide to Further Reading
William Fitzgerald’s excellent How to Read a Latin Poem: If You Can’t Read Latin Yet (2013) is an essential piece of reading for both students and teachers of lyric and elegy. Similarly, anyone interested in teaching or learning about meter should consult at least one of Llewelyn Morgan’s studies: “Metre Matters: Some Higher-level Metrical Play in Latin Poetry.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 46 (2000): 99–120; Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse (2010); and “Elegiac Meter: Opposites Attract.” In B. Gold, ed., A Companion to Roman Love Elegy (2012), 204–218. L. P. Wilkinson’s Golden Latin Artistry (1963) is also still relevant here.
In addition to their literary subject content, a number of the “Companions” and “Readers” suggested above also include relevant chapters on pedagogy. See in particular, the four pieces in Barbara K. Gold’s A Companion to Roman Love Elegy (2012): Ronnie Ancona’s “Teaching Roman Love Elegy.”; Barbara Weiden Boyd’s “Teaching Ovid’s Love Elegy.”; Sharon James’ “Teaching Rape in Roman Elegy, Part II.”; and Genevieve Liveley’s “Teaching Rape in Roman Elegy, Part I.” The journal Classical World regularly includes articles on pedagogy and the following offer some useful insights into teaching elegy and lyric: P. Katz’s “Teaching the Elegiac Lover in Ovid’s Amores.” Classical World 102 (2009): 163–167; Laura McClure’s “Feminist Pedagogy and the Classics.” Classical World 94 (2000): 53–55.
The following works of pedagogy also offer useful starting points for anyone teaching Latin lyric or elegiac poetry: Ronnie Ancona’s A Concise Guide to Teaching Latin Literature (2007); Barbara Weiden Boyd and Cora Fox’s Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ovid and the Ovidian Tradition (2010); Richard LaFleur’s Latin for the 21st Century: From Concept to Classroom (1998); and, especially useful for teaching Latin in the US, the regularly updated Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation (current edition by Little, Pearcy, et al. (2010): https://www.aclclassics.org/Portals/0/Site%20Documents/Publications/LatTeachPrep2010Stand.pdf).
1 The Literary, Political and Social Contexts of Latin Elegy and Lyric
Latin elegy and lyric respond immediately to their contemporary socio-political worlds, making it vital that we understand the events and cultural tides of this turbulent period of history before we can properly understand the poetry that is produced in and speaks to this revolutionary context. At the same time, Roman lyric and elegy are also heavily influenced by the older literary traditions of the Greeks and, in order to see what is innovative and exciting about the Roman poets writing in these genres, we first need to know something of this literary background. Only when we have a sense of these background contexts can we fully value the originality of this Latin poetry, appreciate why certain themes and motifs recur in these genres, and recognize not only the ingenuity and sophistication but also the playfulness and humor of this work (see Chapter 9). By holding in mind the important fact that the Roman lyric and elegiac poets all write to some degree under the shadow of the Greek and Roman poets who had preceded them, we are also able to enjoy more fully the rich intertextual allusions that are so characteristic of these two genres.
Literary Contexts for Elegy: Genre and Canon
The earliest extant examples of elegiac poetry date from soon after the time of Homer in the seventh century bce. Surviving fragments suggest that it was used by early Greek poets to compose poems on all kinds of topics – including drinking songs and celebrations of battles. However, early elegy appears to have been associated in particular with short poems used as grave dedications and funeral epitaphs. The Roman love elegists like to remind us of this mournful connection between elegy and death, and we often find death itself as a theme in their poetry. The Roman elegists also make much of two possible etymological roots of elegy: the Greek word elegeia (λεγεα), which is derived from the traditional Greek funerary lament e e legein ( λγειν) – to cry “woe, woe” – and from the related emotion eleos (λεος) pity. Ovid, in an elegy written to commemorate the death of his elegiac predecessor Tibullus, draws an explicit etymological connection between elegy and lamentation (Amores 3.9.3–4):
Flebilis indignos, Elegia, solve capillos!
A, nimis ex vero nunc tibi nomen erit.
(Weep, Elegy, and let down your undeserving hair!
Ah, it is all too true that your name comes from this.)
Horace too declares in his Ars Poetica that: “the foremost theme of poetry in elegiac couplets is lament” (75–6). This connection between elegy and the theme of lament was a longstanding ancient tradition, then, and the Roman elegiac poets use it as a means to add themselves to an elegiac canon of such poetry stretching back hundreds of years.
One of the first elegiac poets, the fifth century bce Greek poet Antimachus (writing around 400 bce) was famous for his Lyde, an elegiac memorial to his dead mistress – now lost but apparently filled with “lamentations” and “full of unhappy heroic stories” (Hermesianax fr. 7/45). The Greek poet Philitas wrote a similar collection of elegiac poems memorializing his dead wife (or possibly his mistress) Bittis. And the poet Hermesianax followed this trend, with a collection of poems dedicated to and named after his mistress Leontion. This collection opens with the mythical poet Orpheus grieving for his own lost wife (1–14), and with the mythical poet Musaeus lamenting the death of his wife Antiope (15–20), thereby creating a tradition and canon for the elegiac genre that stretched back into the mythical mists of time. In fact, we can see Hermesianax as effectively establishing the genre of elegy as shown here by creating for it a kind of genealogy or family tree. Hermesianax identifies Mimnermus (author of Nanno, another collection of Greek love elegies written for and named after his mistress) as the founder or inventor of the genre, and he draws up a list of the other canonical elegiac poets of ancient Greece – of course, adding his own name to the end of that list (something we see the Roman poets Propertius and Ovid do later on, too).
The surviving “canonical” Roman elegists are clearly proud of this long history attached to their genre and frequently name-check these Greek predecessors in their poetry. The Roman poet Propertius names two of his most important influences as the Greek poets Callimachus and Philitas, declaring himself happy to have chosen elegy as his genre and “to have given pleasure along with Callimachus’ little books, and to have sung, Coan poet [Philitas], in your meter” (3.9.43–4; see also 2.34.31–32). Propertius even styles himself as the new and improved “Roman Callimachus” (4.1.64: Romani … Callimachi) and describes himself as having taken the elegiac crown from Philitas (4.6.3). Propertius also prays to the ghosts of Callimachus and Philitas and describes himself as “the first to walk in [their] footsteps” (3.1.1–2). And, following in Propertius’ own footsteps, Ovid expresses the same desire for connection with this traditional Greek elegiac canon. Ovid somewhat arrogantly declares that “There’s a girl who says Callimachus’ poems are rubbish (rustica)
