Roman Love
• amor
• Venus
• Cupid
c.f. Greek Aphrodite & Eros
Catullus c. 84-54 BCE! Poem 85 I love and I hate: why should I do that, you may ask. I don’t know, but I feel it, and it tortures me.
Elegiac poets & poetry! • Propertius c.50-c.2BCE ! • Tibullus c.55BCE-c.19BCE ! • Ovid 43BCE-17/18CE! • Sulpicia – 1st c. BCE! (love) elegy = genre of Roman poetry ! ! !
Elegiac poets & poetry! • elegy = genre of Roman poetry! • ‘Augustan love elegy’ ! • hexameter - 6 feet (epic metre) !! elegiac couplet! • pentameter - 5 feet !! !
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Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam" edere, materia conveniente modis." par erat inferior versus—risisse Cupido" dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem.! Ovid Amores 1.1.1-4!
Elegiac poets & poetry! • elegy = genre of Roman poetry ! • hexameter - 6 feet (epic metre) !! elegiac couplet! • pentameter - 5 feet !! • Ovid Amores 1.1.1-2 - started writing epic about war - Cupid stole a foot from second line! !
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Epic vs Elegy
Elegiac couplet (hexameter and pentameter):! Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam" edere, materia conveniente modis." par erat inferior versus—risisse Cupido" dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem.! Ovid Amores 1.1.1-4! ! Epic metre (hexameter)! Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris" Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit" litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto" vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram;! Vergil Aeneid 1.1-4!
Counter-cultural elegy?
• Elegist as lover not a fighter! ! Hallett, JP 1973 ‘The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter-Cultural Feminism’, Arethusa 6.1: pp.103-124.
!
Ovid Amores [Loves] 1.9.1-12, 15-18 (transl. Green)
!
Every lover is a soldier, and Cupid holds the fort:
Atticus, believe me, every lover is a soldier.
The age that’s good for war, is also right for love.
An old soldier’s a disgrace, and an old lover.
That courage a commander looks for in a brave army,
a lovely girl (puella) looks for in a love partner.
Both keep watch: both sleep on the ground,
one serves at his mistress’ (domina) entrance, the other his general’s.
A long road’s a soldier’s task: but send the girl off,
and a restless lover will follow her to the end.
He’ll go against mountains and bend into stormy rivers,
he’ll push his way through swollen snowdrifts…
Who but a soldier or lover could endure
cold nights or dense snow mixed with rain?
One’s sent out to spy on attacking forces:
the other keeps eye on his rival, his enemy…
Ovid Amores [Loves] 1.9.31-6, 39-46! So if you’ve called all lovers idlers, forget it.
Love is all experience and ability.
Great Achilles burns for stolen Briseis –
while you can Trojans, smash the Greek wall!
Hector went into battle from Andromache’s arms,
it was the wife who placed the helmet on his head…
Mars too, was caught on the job, and trapped in Vulcan’s chain mesh:
there was never a greater scandal in heaven.
I myself was lazy and born to idle leisure:
bed and shade both softened my mind.
Love for a lovely girl soon drove the idler
and ordered him off to earn his pay in camp.
Now see me, active and fighting nocturnal wars.
If you don’t want to be idle, fall in love!
Gender dynamics in elegy
Propertius 1.1.1-7, 19-22! Cynthia was the first, to my cost, to trap me with her eyes:
I was untouched by love before then.
It was Love lowered my gaze of endless disdain,
and, bowed my head, till he taught me, recklessly,
to scorn pure girls and live without sense,
and now this madness has not left me for one whole year,
though I do attract divine hostility…
you whose trickeries draw down the moon,
whose task it is to seek revenge,
by sacrifice on magic fires, go change my mistress’s mind,
and make her cheeks grow paler than my own!
mistress - domina (girl - puella)!
Gender dynamics in elegy
• poet as slave to domina - mistress! ! Propertius 3.11.1-2: ! Why do you wonder if a woman entwines my life
and brings a man enslaved under her rule?
!
Paraclausithuron: Ovid Amores 1.6" ‘poem outside a closed door’! Doorkeeper – shameful! – bound by a harsh chain,
open that door with the hinge that’s hard to move!
What I ask is nothing – make an entrance, a little crack
half-open, that a body gets through sideways.
Love has thinned my body with such long usage,
and given me limbs that lose weight.
Love and Hate in Elegy
• • • •
passionate love
misogyny and violence
cf. Catullus’ invective against Lesbia
Amores 1.5 - Corinna struggles
Violent Love: Ovid Amores 1.7.49-66 I held her by the hair I grabbed at her brow
marked those delicate cheeks with cruel nails.
She stood there, stupefied, with pale and bleeding face,
as if cut from everlasting Parian marble.
I saw her terrified body, her limbs trembling –
like a breeze blowing through the poplar leaves,
or a soft west wind troubling the slender reeds,
or the tips of the waves touched by a warm southerly:
at length, the brimming tears flowed down her face,
as water runs from the melting snow.
Then for the first time I began to realise her hurt –
the tears I had made her shed were my blood.
Three times I tried to kneel at her feet in supplication:
three times she pushed away those repulsive hands.
Well, don’t hesitate, girl – revenge will lessen the grief –
go at my face with your nails straightaway.
don’t spare my hair or my eyes:
Anger adds what you will to weak hands:
!
Violent Love - a joke?: Ovid Amores 1.7.49-68! I held her by the hair I grabbed at her brow
marked those delicate cheeks with cruel nails.
She stood there, stupefied, with pale and bleeding face,
as if cut from everlasting Parian marble.
I saw her terrified body, her limbs trembling –
like a breeze blowing through the poplar leaves,
or a soft west wind troubling the slender reeds,
or the tips of the waves touched by a warm southerly:
at length, the brimming tears flowed down her face,
as water runs from the melting snow.
Then for the first time I began to realise her hurt –
the tears I had made her shed were my blood.
Three times I tried to kneel at her feet in supplication:
three times she pushed away those repulsive hands.
Well, don’t hesitate, girl – revenge will lessen the grief –
go at my face with your nails straightaway.
don’t spare my hair or my eyes:
Anger adds what you will to weak hands:
don’t let so much as one sad sign of my wickedness remain,
put your hair back in place like it was before!
Ovid’s Art of Love
• Elegy with didactic
• Didactic genre
– hexameter
– serious subject matter
– Hesiod Works and Days, Lucretius Nature of the Universe, Vergil Georgics
Art of Love: the programme
First, then, you fledgling troopers in passion's service, 35
Comes the task of finding an object for your love.
Next, you must labour to woo and win your lady;
Thirdly, ensure that the affair will last.
Such are my limitations, such the ground I will cover,
The race I propose to run.
Ovid’s Art of Love
• rejecting the Muse
• experience as authority for knowledge
• Book 1 ‘teaches’:
– Where to find women
– What to say to them
– What to do to your own appearance
Ovid’s Art of Love
• The narrator: praeceptor amoris
• technique: 1.1-8
Should anyone here in Rome lack finesse at love-making, let him
Try me - read my book, and results are guaranteed!
Technique is the secret. Charioteer, sailor, oarsman,
All need it. Technique can control
Love (Amor = Cupid) himself! As Automedon was charioteer to Achilles,
And Tiphys Jason's steersman, so I,
By Venus' appointment, am made Love's artificer, shall be known as
The Tiphys, the very Automedon of Love.
Ovid’s Art of Love: warning off the prudes
Aid my enterprise, Venus! Respectable ladies, the kind who
Wear hairbands and ankle-length skirts, (stola, stolatae)
Are hereby warned off. Safe love, legitimate liaisons
Will be my theme. This poem breaks no taboos.
(1.31-35)
Lewd?
But: remember Augustan Marriage Laws, 18 BCE
Julia exiled 2 BCE
Art of Love published 1 BCE
Ovid and exile
– Exiled to Tomis in 8 CE
Ovid and exile
– Exiled to Tomis in 8 CE
• Carmen and error (Tristia 2.207)
• Metamorphoses (epic in 15 books) completed 8 CE
• Elegiac ‘calendar poem (Fasti) left incomplete
• Exilic poetry: Epistulae ex Ponto, Tristia
• carmen? Art of Love? Metamorphoses?
• error???
• d.17/18 CE
