Augustan elegy, the main topic of this volume (p. xiv), has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention in the last decades, has been approached from a bewildering array of angles and has accrued a vast amount of scholarship. It is hardly surprising that the need has arisen for an introductory discussion accessible to non-specialists and students new to the genre. This book answers this need and is, as P.A. Miller's write-up on the second leaf suggests, a worthy successor to Lyne's The Latin Love Poets from Catullus to Horace (1980).
The volume does not come with a preface or foreword by the authors and it is, initially, not easy to judge for whom the book is intended. R. Stoneman, the series editor of Understanding Classics, notes in the front matter that the book is intended for ‘a wide range of appreciative modern readers’ under which are listed: undergraduate students and ‘generalists interested in the ancient world’. A closer look reveals that the book falls somewhere in between an undergraduate primer and an introduction.
Unlike other introductions to Latin poetry, the book is not arranged according to the authors of the genre, nor is it a compendium of figures and tropes or an anthology of representative texts. It is a discussion, from different perspectives, of the genre as an actress exploring her own art.
The volume does not provide a fresh reading of the poetry, instead it aims to synthesise recent and current interpretations as well as topical problems under thematic headings. Mostly the discussion prefers to relate to the whole range of texts rather than focus on single poems or authors for in-depth discussion and analysis. On the one hand this approach produces a discussion that will be useful to anyone looking for an introduction to the field without getting immersed in the detail too early but, on the other hand, the frequent references to a great number of different texts and authors might be slightly bewildering to readers who have not yet read a great deal of the poetry. General readers will appreciate the lucid discussions unencumbered by large sections of analysis, serious students may find the lack of detail unfulfilling.
The book covers a great deal in less than 250 pages and, as expected, the discussion moves at a furious pace. The brevity of what is not a superficial discussion by any means is astounding. At every turn of the page, one is surprised by the familiarity of the next topic and by its unexpected appearance. The book covers almost every topic in the genre but, when it comes to the systematic arrangement of the topics, had to compromise slightly. Tarpeia of Propertius 4.4, for example, is discussed under ‘The puella speaks’ in Chapter 3 and she is mentioned in Chapter 5 ‘Country and City’ under the subheading ‘Defending the City’, but maybe too briefly and, of course, she should also be included in discussions on the ‘Roman myth’. Tarpeia, however, cannot be everywhere and given the complexity of the subject matter, certain choices about the arrangement of topics are unavoidable. None the less, the discussion presented, read sequentially, follows lucidly and logically and leaves the reader with a firm grip on the argument.
The layout of the book is summarised under the last section of the introduction, which is very useful for understanding the logic of the structure. Chapter 1 dispenses with the background and historical contextualisation. The eighteen pages of this chapter neatly cover virtually everything needed to orientate oneself. The chapter not only covers the main poets – including Gallus – but also includes topics which are indispensible for the rest of the discussion, such as Greek models, gender questions and anti-Augustanism, among others. The book then moves outwards, so to speak, from the author and from Rome and traces the development, death and reception of the genre. Chapter 2 deals with the author and the poetic persona, Chapter 3 is devoted to gender questions in love poetry, Chapter 4 moves to the audience and imagined audiences, Chapter 5 looks at the important theme of The City, Chapter 6 at Ovid's exile and Chapter 7 at the reception of Latin love poetry.
Large parts of the book are devoted to topical questions that would not have been present in a primer 20 years ago. The whole of Chapter 3, ‘Power and Play’, deals with gender questions and feminist approaches to love poetry. Such readings have yielded excellent results in studies on Augustan poetry and are also useful to readers of poetry from different periods and even different cultures. Likewise, Chapter 5, ‘Country and City’, which includes the pastoral obsession of the Roman poets and the importance of Rome's topography, considers themes that have received much attention lately and are topical in virtually any study of Roman culture.
Chapter 6, slightly surprisingly, is almost completely devoted to Ovid's exile. Though this might seem overly much, as anti-Augustanism (so-called) has, at this point, already been discussed at several junctures, the decision is not without logic. This chapter is used to argue that Ovid's exile poems constitute the ‘end of love poetry's development in Rome’ (p. xxiv). Chapter 6 also forms an ideal transition to Chapter 7 that considers the reception of Latin love poetry. Potentially the most interesting chapter in the book, this relatively short section on reception does not do justice to the, admittedly, vast topic. This is also the only chapter without a recommended reading list.
Unfortunately some editorial decisions make the book difficult to navigate as a reference work. The contents page gives only the chapter headings, which are not very descriptive of their contents. Having jotted down the seven section headings and thirteen subsection headings of Chapter 3 (‘Power and Play’) – 20 headings spread over only 37 pages – one gains a much better sense of the structure of the argument and one cannot help but feel that a more detailed contents page would have facilitated the reading experience.
The awkwardly organised endnotes are also slightly irritating. While references such as ‘Miller, Subjecting Verses, p.211’ (p. 216) are easy to follow, note 49 on the same page cryptically reads ‘Claassen, “Tristia”, p.174’ and one has to backtrack the references carefully to p. 213, to find that this refers to a chapter in P. Knox's A Companion to Ovid (2009, pp. 170–83). There is also no alphabetical list of works cited.
Each chapter (except Chapter 7) has a useful ‘recommended reading’ list. The selection of sources is, appropriately, not biased in favour of newer publications and includes books that might not be found otherwise by a reader new to Latin love poetry. Unfortunately the reading lists are limited to books in English and contain no articles.
It remains to recommend this volume to anyone who is not a specialist in the genre of Latin love poetry, but would like to get a firm grip on the lay of the land. It will make an excellent addition to any undergraduate reading list and may prove very useful to postgraduate students and scholars from related fields. Its lucid style makes it accessible to specialists and neophytes alike.
