Introspection and Engagement in Propertius
A Study of Book 3

Explores how Propertius' third book re-invents Latin love-elegy for the reality of Rome's new imperial age.

Jonathan Wallis (Author)

9781108417174, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 April 2018

248 pages
22.3 x 14.5 x 1.7 cm, 0.42 kg

"Wallis writes in a lively manner and ends with a succinct and polyglottal bibliography....The reader will in no way be hindered by any errors in the text." -- Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Propertius re-invents Latin love-elegy in his third collection. Nearly a decade into the Augustan principate, the early counter-cultural impulse of Propertius' first collections was losing its relevance. Challenged by the publication of Horace's Odes, and by the imminent arrival of Virgil's Aeneid, in 23 BCE Propertius produced a radical collection of elegy which critically interrogates elegy's own origins as a genre, and which directly faces off Horatian lyric and Virgilian epic, as part of an ambitious claim to Augustan pre-eminence. But this is no moment of cultural submission. In Book 3, elegy's key themes of love, fidelity, and political independence are rebuilt from the beginning as part of a subtle critique of emerging Augustan mores. This book presents a series of readings of fourteen individual elegies from Propertius Book 3, including nostalgic love poems, an elegiac hymn to Bacchus, and a lament for Marcellus, the recently-dead nephew of Augustus.

1. Turning elegy upside down: Propertius 3.1-3
2. Seeking Fides in poets and poetry: Propertius 3.6
3. Thematic experimentation: Propertius 3.9-11
4. Marriage and the elegiac woman: Propertius 3.12
5. Delays and destinations: Propertius 3.16
6. A Hymn to Bacchus: Propertius 3.17
7. In lament for Marcellus: Propertius 3.18
8. Renewing an elegiac contract: Propertius 3.20
9. Breaking up (with) Cynthia: Propertius 3.24.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature & literary studies [D]