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Drink, suspicion and comedy in Propertius 1.3*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

S. J. Harrison
S. J. Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

Propertius 1.3 famously begins with the drunken poet returning from a night out to find his puella Cynthia asleep. The sleeping Cynthia is then apparently idealised by the poet through a series of comparisons with mythological heroines, until she wakes up and shows her true and less elevated character, shrewishly nagging the poet for staying out late with another woman, and thereby destroying his illusions. Some of the wit and irony of the situation has been pointed out in previous accounts of the poem; this treatment takes a closer look at the text, especially at the mythical analogues for Cynthia applied at the beginning of the poem, and argues that part of the wit and amusement of the poem derives from its articulation of the poet's suspicions of Cynthia's infidelity. This is not a tragic or dramatic effect, but rather a clever and amusing comedy; the amusing self-characterisation of the poet as a drunken bumbler racked with lust and suspicion is fully consistent with the kind of elegist envisaged by Paul Veyne, who rightly stresses that Roman love-elegy has much more to do with literary entertainment than with the intense analysis of passion. The scene is being narrated by the poet with retrospective wit and irony against himself; to use the convenient terms employed by Winkler in his book on Apuleius, the poet as auctor (writer of the poem) provides an entertaining view of the poet as actor (character in the poem's story).

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Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 40 , 1994, pp. 18 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1. For treatments of the poem to 1983 cf. Fedeli, P. and Pinotti, P., Bibliografia properziana 1946–83 (1985) 52–4Google Scholar. Note the commentary on Book 1 by P. Fedeli (1980), and the treatment by Lyne, R. O. A. M., The Latin love poets (1980) 98–100 and 114–20Google Scholar; among the more useful of the large number of articles on this poem are Lieberg, G., GIF 14 (1961) 308–26Google Scholar, Curran, L. C., YCS 19 (1966) 189–207Google Scholar, Wlosok, A., Hermes 95 (1967) 330–52Google Scholar, Harmon, D. P., TAPhA 104 (1974) 151–65Google Scholar, and Baker, R. J. in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin literature and Roman history II (1980) 245–58Google Scholar. Since 1983 cf. the commentary by R. J. Baker (1990), and also Fedeli, P., ANRW II.30.3 (1983) 1871–5Google Scholar, Dunn, F. M., ICS 10 (1985) 239–50Google Scholar, and Noonan, J. D., CJ 86 (1990–1991) 330–6Google Scholar.

2. Veyne, P., Roman erotic elegy (1988) esp. 31–66Google Scholar.

3. Cf. Winkler, J. J., Auctor and actor: a narratological reading of Apuleius' Golden Ass (1985) 135–53Google Scholar.

4. On focalisation and point of view see the excellent bibliography gathered by Fowler, D. P., PCPS n. s. 36 (1990) 58 n. 1Google Scholar.

5. Cf. esp. Wlosok (n. 1) 335–40, and Keyssner, K. in Eisenhut, W. (ed.), Properz (1975) 268–76Google Scholar. For the frequent ancient depictions of the sleeping Ariadne and sleeping Maenad, sometimes indistinguishable given the Bacchic angle to the Ariadne story, cf. McNally, S., Classical Antiquity 4 (1985) 152–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are no recorded representations of Andromeda asleep, but her liberation by Perseus is a common theme in Campanian wall-paintings copied from earlier Greek versions – cf. Ling, R., Roman painting (1991) 131Google Scholar; Keyssner (above) 275–6 suggests that Propertius may have transferred the image of the sleeping heroine observed by the hero to the Perseus/Andromeda story from artistic depictions of other similar romantic episodes, which seems quite possible.

6. Prop. 1.3.1 cedente carina ∼ Catullus 64.249 cedentem …carinam (with the noun similarly at the end of the hexameter), 1.3.2 desertis … litoribus ∼ Catullus 64.133 deserto … in litore. For further points on Propertius' use of Catullus 64 cf. Wlosok (n. 1) 338–9.

7. Cf. e.g. Ovid, , Heroides 10Google Scholar, Ars amatoria 1.525–68, Fasti 3.459ff.

8. For this feature cf. A. S. Pease on Cicero, De natura deorum 1.40.

9. So Lyne (n. 1) 99.

10. For this sexual sense of languidus cf. Tibullus 1.9.56 and Priapea 47.4. This nuance is stressed by R. J. Baker in his 1980 article, 249–53, and repeated in his 1990 commentary (for both see n. 1), but he regards it as expressing Propertius' own sexual desire rather than his suspicions of Cynthia, although it describes her rather than him.

11. On the plot of the adultery-mime cf. Ovid, Tristia 2.497–508; on its influence on elegy cf. McKeown, J. C., PCPS n.s. 25 (1979) 71–84Google Scholar (he does not include this passage).

12. Cf. e.g. Catullus 68.135–40.

13. Cf. e.g. Apuleius, Met. 9.26, where a baker's wife noisily declaims against adultery to her husband while her lover lies hidden in the house.

14. Ovid, Met. 4.672–7; for a reconstruction of the Euripidean Andromeda cf. Webster, T. B. L., The tragedies of Euripides (1967) 192–9Google Scholar, and for its possible detailed use in Propertius 1.3 Noonan (n. 1). For the depiction of Andromeda in art and its relevance to this passage see n. 5 above.

15. Cf. Lyne (n. 1) 99.

16. Cf. Lyne (n. 1) 99.

17. For Tyro and Poseidon cf. Odyssey 11.235ff., Hesiod fr. 30.31ff. Merkelbach/West, Apollodorus, Bibl. 1.9.8; for Perimede and Achelous cf. Apollodorus, Bibl. 1.7.3 (Ovid calls her Perimele and has the most elaborate version – cf. Met. 8.590–610); for Ilia and Mars cf. Ovid, , Fasti 3.11–24Google Scholar.

18. Cf. E. R. Dodds' note on Euripides, , Bacchae 222–3Google Scholar.

19. For illustrations of such scenes cf. McNally (n. 5) plate II fig. 2 (a red-figure kylix in Boston), and a red-figure hydria in Rouen, conveniently illustrated in Lissarrague, F., ‘Figures of women’, in Schmitt-Pantel, P. (ed.), A history of women in the West I (1992) 224Google Scholar. Lissarrague‘s discussion there is illuminating on the satyr's ‘constant state of erection’ and ‘fantasies of voyeurism and rape’ (224) in such depictions. My colleague Robin Osborne will publish a full list of depictions of satyrs and Maenads together in extant vase-painting in a forthcoming article, ‘Desiring women on Athenian pottery’.

20. This point is made by Curran (n. 1) 199. rigidus is the standard adjective describing erections in Latin (cf. OLD s.v. b, Adams, J. N., The Latin sexual vocabulary (1982) 103)Google Scholar, but durus (pace Fedeli's dismissal of Curran's point in his commentary) can be used similarly (cf. Ovid, Fasti 2.346 et tumidum cornu durius inguen erat). In the Propertius passage it would seem to mean ‘making hard’, without strict parallel but the kind of poetic extension of meaning we find at Ovid, Fasti 4.364, where insana … aqua must mean ‘maddening water’, an active sense of insanus not found elsewhere.

21. For the story of Io and Argus cf. most notably Ovid, Met. 1.588–721. Like the three opening vignettes, the picture of Argus guarding Io has parallels in Campanian wall-painting deriving from an earlier Greek, model– cf. Ling (n. 5) 130.

22. For the idealised image of the wool-spinning matrona cf. Lyne (n. 1) 7. The ‘wife’ spinning at home and awaiting the absent ‘husband’ also recalls the Odyssean Penelope, as Fedeli's note on the passage implies.

23. E.g. Propertius 1.2, the immediately preceding poem; see the introduction to the poem in Fedeli's commentary for parallels in elegy.

24. On the undesirability of purple for the elegiac puella cf. Tibullus 2.3.58, 2.4.28, [Tibullus] 3.3.18.

25. On Cynthia's musical talents cf. Propertius 1.2.27–8, 2.1.9–10.

26. For this dubious aspect of lyre-playing cf. P. McGushin's note on Sallust, Cat. 25.2 and Paul, G. M., PLLS 5. (1985) 15Google Scholar.

27. E.g. Propertius 1.2.4, [Tibullus] 3.3.13.

28. Cf. e.g. Lyne (n. 1) 252–4, or McKeown, J. C.'s note on Amores 1.10.1–8Google Scholar.