Poems Page 22

Isis time: See note to II.33a for the period of sexual abstinence observed by female devotees of Isis. The significance of April in the next line may be just that it precedes May, when the woman’s birthday supposedly falls, but some commentators note that April was sacred to Venus. Birthdays were, of course, reasons for demanding more gifts.

  Write … anything!: The instruction to the prostitute is to pretend to be writing a billet doux to another man, to strengthen her bargaining power with the one visiting her.

  Menander’s pricy Thais: See note to II.6. Acanthis’ point is that Medea brought her troubles on herself by asking Jason for love, whereas Thais played hard-to-get.

  Some barbarian: The reference is to imported slaves put up for sale in the Forum. Their feet were chalked to show they were foreign, and they might be told to jump to demonstrate their physical fitness. See also II.16b for a resentful reference to former slaves who had won their freedom and made enough money to be able to afford Cynthia’s favours.

  Scented Paestum: South of Naples. Now much visited for its Greek temples, it was renowned in ancient times for its roses.

  IV.6

  The Battle of Actium had taken place some fifteen years earlier, but the poem is nominally about the temple (already mentioned in II.31–32, qv) built on the Palatine to Apollo, who is portrayed as the chief actor in the victory.

  Philitas … Cyrenean: Yet another reference to the Hellenistic poets Philitas of Kos and Callimachus of Cyrene, on whom see notes to II.1 and II.34.

  A woman: The battle is depicted as against Cleopatra, with no mention of Antony.

  Delos: Legend had it that the Aegean island floated until Apollo was born there and fixed it still.

  His hair …: Propertius stresses that Apollo is shedding his normal role as patron of poetry to make war as an archer. The god will reassume his artistic function towards the end of the poem.

  Gutting the Greek camp: At the start of Homer’s Iliad, Apollo sends a plague on the Greek forces at Troy after Agamemnon refuses to hand back Chryseis, daughter of one of the god’s priests, whom he had captured.

  Python: ‘Apollo’s first exploit in archery was to kill the snake Python at Delphi’ (commentary by Gregory Hutchinson).

  Alba Longa: See note to III.3.

  Romulus: ‘Romulus and Remus took auguries to see who would rule Rome; Romulus, standing on the Palatine, saw twelve birds to Remus’ six.’ (Hutchinson).

  Roman waves: Although Actium was located on the shore of Epirus, north-west Greece, the area had long been controlled by Rome.

  Julius: Julius Caesar, adoptive father of Octavian/Augustus, was proclaimed as divine after his assassination in 44 BC (see also note to III.18). A comet that appeared after his death was popularly supposed to be his spirit.

  Triton: See note to II.31–32. ‘Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn’ (William Wordsworth, ‘The World Is Too Much With Us’).

  Jugurtha: See note to III.5.

  Falernian: See note to II.33b.

  Cilician: From what is now southern Turkey. Commentators say the perfume was made from the saffron plant.

  Rhinelanders: The Sygambri, who worsted Roman legions in 16 BC (see also note to IV.1) but soon submitted as Augustus’ forces approached.

  Ethiopia: Roman expeditions between 24 and 21 BC advanced well into Ethiopia.

  Parthians: See note to II.10.

  Offspring: Propertius suggests that the diplomatic deal in which the Parthians handed back Crassus’ standards was just a temporary ruse by Augustus, and he was leaving a proper defeat of the Middle Eastern people to Gaius (born 20 BC) and Lucius (born 17 BC) Caesar, sons of his daughter Julia and adopted by him. In the event, both were dead by AD 4 and the Parthians were never conquered.

  IV.7

  Lethe’s water: Lethe, meaning forgetfulness in Greek, was a river of the underworld.

  Subura: A racy Rome district noted for its tenement blocks and taverns, and – more to the point here – as a red-light quarter. It was located around what is now the lower part of Via Cavour, below the Esquiline near the Forum. Cynthia conjures up a stock-in-trade of ancient literature, the young woman who escapes from her (usually ageing) husband, client or keeper to be with her lover, but with some characteristic extra Propertian touches.

  Lygdamus: See note to III.6. Among the many abuses inflicted on slaves in classical times was the use of torture to extract information. They doubtless also suffered punishments like those visited on the unfortunate Petale and Lalage, but the whole tone of this section is deliberately over-the-top. Similarly, Cynthia’s earlier string of allegations about Propertius’ failings at her funeral is intended to sound preposterous.

  Nomas: Presumably either another slave in league with Lygdamus or a professional witch who prepared the poison Cynthia claims was used to kill her. The name is Greek, like all the slaves’ names in the poem.

  Fates: The Fates were portrayed as female deities, spinning the thread of life.

  Two destinations: The notion that people are treated in the next life according to their conduct in this one did not start with Dante and has a solid pedigree in ancient literature. Cynthia appears to say at the end of the poem that visions coming from the part of the underworld where the righteous dwell are true.

  Clytemnestra, Pasiphae: On Clytemnestra, see note to III.19. For murdering Agamemnon, she was in turn killed by her son Orestes. On Pasiphae, see notes to II.28 and IV.4.

  Cybele: See note to III.17.

  Andromeda, Hypermnestra: On Andromeda, see note to I.3. On Hypermnestra, see note to II.31–32.

  Chloris: Either the ex-prostitute that Cynthia claims is Propertius’ new lover or, like Nomas, a specialist in herbal concoctions.

  Aniene: See also note to III.16, where Cynthia orders Propertius to visit her in Tivoli. The area’s climate was reputed to prevent ivory from discolouring. Hercules was the patron of Tivoli, with a temple there.

  The boatman: Charon, on whom see note to III.18.

  IV.8

  Esquiline: Like the Aventine mentioned later, one of the seven hills on which Rome was built. Propertius also says in III.23 he had a house on the Esquiline, an area now dominated by the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The ‘new park’ apparently refers to gardens created out of an old cemetery by Maecenas, who lived in the same district.

  Lanuvio: Ancient Lanuvium, a town twenty miles south-east of Rome, and the site of a famous temple of Juno. It was reached by the Appian Way, a road that still exists. Propertius jibes that Cynthia was actually going to worship not Juno, as she claimed, but Venus, i.e. for sex with another man (the ‘beau’ who is described in slighting terms).

  Gladiator: Contrary to its modern image, the gladiator’s profession was considered the lowest form of employment in Propertius’ day.

  Magnus: If the manuscript reading is correct, an ironic name for a dwarf who performs a sort of freak-show in the entertainment laid on by Propertius for his two guests.

  Dice: Four dice were used. The highest throw (1, 3, 4, 6) was called ‘Venus’, the lowest (1, 1, 1, 1) was ‘the dog’.

  Pompey’s Portico … the Forum: Pick-up locations in ancient Rome.

  IV.9

  The Ara Maxima (literally ‘Biggest Altar’), the earliest cult centre of Hercules in Rome, was closed to female worshippers. It was built in 495 BC between the Palatine and the Tiber – possibly on the site of an earlier shrine – where the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin currently stands. Propertius may be following the historian Varro in attributing the rule to the legend that Hercules was once denied water by a female religious community on the Aventine.

  The bullocks: One of the labours of Hercules (see note to II.24b) was to seize the cattle of the giant Geryon, who lived on the mythical island of Erythea, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.

  Velabro: See note to IV.2.

  Cacus: The implication is that Cacus, as a local resident, owed a debt of hospitality to the traveller Hercules. Propertius, unlike other Latin authors, depic
ts Cacus with three heads – possibly an echo of the triple-headed Geryon. His cave is described as ‘menacing’ and ‘horrible’ perhaps because, as some ancient writers relate, he decorated it with the bones of his victims.

  Forum Bovarium: (Also Boarium). Originally a cattle market, it became known as a site for gladiatorial combats.

  The women’s goddess: A divinity associated with chastity and fertility. Her mysteries were closed to men, as was her real name, hence she was known simply as the Bona Dea (Good Goddess). The politician Publius Clodius Pulcher, brother of the Clodia who is thought by many to be Catullus’ Lesbia, notoriously gatecrashed the Bona Dea rites, disguised as a woman, in 62 BC. He was discovered and eventually brought to trial, but was acquitted, reportedly as a result of bribery of the jurors.

  Propped up the globe: Hercules once temporarily took the sky (or in some versions the earth) on his mighty shoulders from the giant Atlas (see note to III.22).

  Alcides: Son (or rather grandson) of Alcaeus, father of Amphitryon, husband of Hercules’ mother Alcmena – except that Hercules was sired by Jupiter (see note to II.22), an incident that gave rise to Juno’s hatred of Hercules, mentioned in this poem. There may also be an echo of the Greek word ‘alke’ (strength). The earlier reference to Hercules’ ‘less than god-like words’ alludes to his half-divine, half-mortal status.

  Stygian gloom: Another of Hercules’ labours was to capture the underworld hound Cerberus. He also killed the Nemean lion, whose mane (mentioned a few lines further on) he then wore round his neck. Hercules refers to the fact that the labour to acquire the apples of the Hesperides took him to North Africa.

  Lydia: On Hercules’ temporary enslavement to the Lydian queen Omphale, see note to III.11. His talk of cross-dressing, along with a similar remark by Vertumnus in IV.2, have provided rich pickings for gender studies in Propertius’ work. Hercules sometimes appeared as a figure of fun in ancient literature, including Aristophanes’ Frogs (405 BC).

  Tiresias: He accidentally saw Minerva bathing and was blinded as a consequence, but was consoled with the gift of prophecy. In mythology, after Perseus killed the Gorgon Medusa, he gave her head to Minerva to put on her shield.

  Cures: See note to IV.4.

  Sancus: A Roman god associated with trust, honesty and oaths, who had a temple on the Quirinal Hill. The first-century-BC Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus says his worship was imported to Rome in early times by the Sabines. Several ancient authors identify him with Hercules. There are doubts over the text here, however, and some scholars believe the penultimate couplet is spurious.

  IV.10

  The subject is the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, supposedly founded by Romulus and situated on the Capitoline Hill, where it was rebuilt by Augustus. Here were stored the prestigious ‘spolia opima’ (literally ‘rich spoils’) – arms and other trappings that a victorious Roman commander stripped from the body of an opposing leader whom he had killed in single combat. Propertius details the three occasions, beginning with Romulus, when this was recognised as having occurred. Some ten years before his poem was written, the proconsul Marcus Licinius Crassus personally killed a Carpathian ruler in battle, but was denied the spolia opima on the grounds that his command derived from Octavian. The incident shows Octavian’s sensitivity to kudos going to anyone but himself. Propertius offers his own etymology of the name Feretrian at the end of the poem, but its true significance is not known.

  Acron: The king of the now disappeared Sabine city of Caenina led a reprisal attack on Rome following the Rape of the Sabine Women (see note to II.6).

  Cossus: Aulus Cornelius Cossus, consul in 428 BC, killed Lars Tolumnius, king of the Etruscan city of Veii, about ten miles northwest of Rome, of which it was an early rival. Tolumnius had initiated a war against Rome that ended with Veii’s destruction.

  Nomentum … Cora: Sabine towns. The ‘three acres’ was the amount of land given to each Roman settler following the capture of Cora.

  Claudius: Marcus Claudius Marcellus, an ancestor of the man whose death is lamented in III.18. In 222 BC he defeated a Gallic force at Casteggio (ancient Clastidium) near the modern Italian town of Voghera (what is now northern Italy was regarded in ancient times as part of Gaul). Virdomarus, the Gallic leader that Claudius slew, is identified as such by his ‘Belgian’ shield, his torque (a neck ornament) and his trousers – a garment whose wear, as Roberto Gazich notes in his Italian translation of Propertius, was ‘unknown to the Romans’. On Brennus, see note to III.13.

  IV.11

  Paullus: The speaker from beyond the grave is Cornelia, a historical character who was daughter of an otherwise unknown Cornelius Scipio and of the much better known Scribonia – later married for a time to Augustus (making Cornelia the emperor’s step-daughter). Cornelia married Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, a senior Roman politician. A mention that she died in the year of her brother’s consulship (16 BC) would give us an approximate date for the poem, indeed for the publication of Book Four, but some scholars have questioned whether the couplet in question is authentic. The poem is a kind of expanded tomb inscription, addressing Cornelia’s widower and children, but is also a rhetorical self-defence before the judges of the underworld to ensure her an honoured place in the next life.

  The boatman: Charon. See note to III.18.

  Aeacus: In Greek mythology, Aeacus and his half-brothers Minos and Rhadamanthus were judges in the underworld, determining the treatment accorded to dead souls. The Furies, who pursue the guilty, are also portrayed as present, but elements of the scene reflect Roman legal proceedings.

  Sisyphus …: See note to II.17. Ixion was tormented on a wheel. On Tantalus and Danaus, see note to II.1, and on Cerberus, note to III.5.

  Spanish bronze: Rightly or wrongly, Propertius descends Cornelia from both the men known as Scipio Africanus, who won major victories against the Carthaginians (see also note to III.11). The younger Scipio also destroyed the city of Numantia in the Tarragona area of Spain – at one point considered a threat as great as Carthage – in 133 BC.

  The king of Macedon: Propertius also descends Cornelia (wrongly, say scholars) from Aemilius Paullus, who in 168 BC defeated Perseus (not to be confused with the mythological figure of the same name) to end the kingdom of Macedon in northern Greece, whose most famous monarch was Alexander the Great. Perseus claimed descent from the Homeric hero Achilles. I have paraphrased an almost certainly corrupt manuscript text.

  Claudia: A statue of the goddess Cybele was transported from Asia to Rome in 204 BC, but the ship ran aground in the Tiber. Claudia managed to free it, an action seen as proving her chastity, which had been called into question. Similarly, Aemilia was a Vestal Virgin, on whose watch the sacred fire in Vesta’s temple appeared to go out, laying her open to punishment. While praying to Vesta, she placed part of her dress on the altar, which caused the fire to flare up again, vindicating her.

  Garments of a fruitful spouse: Women who had three children were entitled to wear special clothing.

  Afterword

  When today’s readers think about the great Latin love poets, they probably think of Catullus, whose intense chronicle of a failed affair has struck a chord in modern times; or Ovid and his hilarious manual on seduction techniques; or even Horace, with his wry reflections on life from his country retreat. One writer they may not think of is Propertius, who was part of the same poetic wave in the first century BC and whose best work competes with anything produced by the others, but who has been treated less kindly by posterity. This book seeks to go some way to correcting that bias and to make a case that Propertius has something to say to us.

  What little we know of the life of Sextus Propertius is based mainly on deductions from things he himself says in his poems. He was born in Umbria, central Italy, probably in or near Assisi, whose most famous son he was until eclipsed by St Francis more than a thousand years later. Roman inscriptions kept in the town museum make clear the Propertius family was prominent in the area. In the nineteent
h century, a Roman dwelling was excavated under the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi and was dubbed the ‘House of Propertius’, although there is no proof that it belonged to the poet’s family. The main evidence is a Latin graffito, which – thanks to the precise Roman system of dating – we know was scrawled on a wall there on 24 February, AD 367, and which says: ‘I have kissed the house of the Muse’. Researchers have taken this as a reference to Propertius and have speculated that the house was a kind of tourist attraction four centuries after his lifetime. A rival claim from the nearby town of Spello to be the poet’s birthplace is now largely discounted.

  From a reference he makes to the time when he assumed adult male clothing, something Roman boys did in their midteens, the date of Propertius’ birth is usually put in the 50s BC, which was approximately when Catullus died. In 41 BC, the region plunged into violence when forces loyal to Octavian, later to become the Emperor Augustus, laid siege to the city of Perugia, not far from Assisi, to put down a rebellion. The revolt related in part to confiscations of land to provide farms for veterans who had fought on the winning side in the civil wars that had long convulsed the Roman world. Poem I.22 tells us that Propertius lost a relative in the fighting, while Poem iv.1 says his family had some of its estates appropriated, reducing its wealth. The poet’s father died around this time. His mother sent him to study law in Rome, a normal first step in a political career for well-born men. But Propertius had no taste for politics, and dedicated himself to poetry.

  His first book of verse has long been dated to around 29 BC, although Peter Heslin, who has written the introduction to this book, has argued in a separate article that it was probably published somewhat earlier, before the watershed Battle of Actium (31 BC). Propertius’ second volume (which some experts think in its present form is a conflation of two books) seems to have come out in the mid-20s, his third by about 22 and his fourth and final book in 16 or 15 BC. His poetry was clearly highly popular and soon brought him into the circle of the famous literary patron Maecenas, a close aide of Augustus, and certainly also to the attention of the emperor himself. The date of Propertius’ death is unclear. Some assume it must have come soon after 15 BC, but I am not the only reader to see clear signs in the poet’s fourth book that he had written himself into a dead end. The American author John Williams, in his epistolary novel Augustus, imagines Propertius in about 10 BC as having given up poetry and retired to his native Umbria. In any case, by AD 1 or 2, Ovid is referring to him in the past tense with the implication that he is dead.