This volume contains papers presented at a conference entitled Greek and Roman Literature: the Erotic Connection, held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 2016, and papers that were subsequently commissioned. It is a rich collection dealing with various forms of love in Greek and Latin literature. The contributions challenge traditional views on love in the Graeco-Roman world, shed new light on much-debated issues and encourage novel and original readings on topics that are relatively under-researched or widely accepted.
The volume challenges the view that ‘romantic/true’ love did not exist in the ancient world and focuses on poetry – rather than prose, which is the dominant tendency in scholarship – in which stories of this kind of love abound. The chapters cover both major Greek and Roman poets (Homer, Sappho, Terence, Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Ovid) and minor poetic figures (the anonymous poet of The Lament for Bion, Philodemus and Sulpicia). The chapters demonstrate that ‘romantic’ or ‘true’ love is relevant for both heteroerotic and homoerotic couples throughout mainstream Graeco-Roman poetry and that the conceptions of love in Greek and Latin literature are interconnected. It is also important to note that the volume challenges much of the existing scholarship that traditionally privileges sex over love.
The volume opens with a brief introduction, ‘Introducing Greek and Latin Love: the Poetic Connection’, in which the three editors outline the content of each chapter. The chapters follow an approximate chronological order.
In the first chapter, ‘Love: Ancient and Later Representations’, an excellent beginning to the main body of the book, Thorsen addresses the apparent discrepancy between the sources and academic research on Greek and Latin love. She investigates the gaps in our understanding of notions of true love in ancient literature, both within and outside the field of classical philology; she challenges the theory that the troubadours and trobairitz in medieval France invented true love and convincingly shows that it was already known in ancient Greek and Latin texts. Finally, in an effort to draw a map in scholarship that better corresponds to the landscape of ancient love literature, Thorsen interestingly introduces what she calls the ‘homopoetic model of love’, which links the shared and common love experience to the medium that is most relevant in this context, namely poetry.
In Chapter 2, ‘There Falls a Lone Tear: Longing for a Vanished Love – Tracing an Erotic Motif from Homer to Horace’, B. Acosta-Hughes considers at length the poetic image of a single tear falling from Achilles’ eye as he laments the death of Patroclus (Il. 24.1–18). Acosta-Hughes rightly argues that this sets in motion a complex of longing, memory and love that can be traced throughout classical literature up to Horace and beyond (Call. Epigr. 2 Pf.; Catull. 50; Hor. Carm. 4.1.33–40). The ‘single tear’ is thus used to represent a particular kind of love – one that is not always sexual but undeniably passionate, and that frequently, though not always, occurs in homoerotic contexts in both Greek and Latin poetry.
In ‘Orpheus and Sappho as Model Poets: Blurring Greek and Latin Love in Lament for Bion, Catullus 51, and Horace Odes 1.24’ P. Astrup Sundt identifies an erotic pattern of rivalry between loss of and love for past poet-models. In this dynamic, which emphasises suffering, longing, death and metapoetics, Astrup Sundt argues that Orpheus and Sappho stand out as particularly significant poet-models; they both share the crucial quality that their varied homoerotic and heteroerotic associations can be reconstructed to suit the tastes and needs of later poets.
In Chapter 4, ‘Amans et Egens and Exclusus Amator: the Connection (or not) between Comedy and Elegy’, A. Sharrock critically reviews the established relationship between comedy and elegy. She forcefully shows that Attic New/Roman Comedy and Latin love elegy, and in particular the two types of lovers (the comic adulescens and the elegiac amans), are more dissimilar than is commonly assumed, especially when money is involved. Sharrock provides a wealth of material to understand the distinctive qualities of each genre, especially in terms of the type of love it espouses (comic love vs elegiac love) and the incompatibility of marriage, payment and ‘true love’. This chapter will surely serve as a point of reference in any discussion of the origins of Latin love elegy.
In ‘Rape and Violence in Terence's Eunuchus and Ovid's Love Elegies’, Brecke meticulously examines the incompatibility of ‘true love’ and violence. She convincingly shows how Ovid in certain rape narratives in his elegiac work (Am. 1.7 and 3.6, Her. 5.140–6, Ars 1.89–134) incorporates aspects of the rape scene in Terence's Eunuchus (645–6, 657–9, 819–20); she also demonstrates how violence and rape in Ovid's amatory poetry are linked in a most unsettling way to Augustan legislation on marriage and sexuality, Roman values and legends, amounting to a subtle critique of the institution of marriage and Augustus’ moralising programme.
In a well-written and thorough analysis of the importance of love in the song of Silenus in Virgil's Eclogue 6.31–81, ‘Love and Poetry in Virgil's Sixth Eclogue: a Platonic Perspective’, B. Kayachev asserts that the notion of love conveyed in this poem bears similarities to both the Epicurean (aspiration for pleasure) and the Platonic (aspiration for beauty) concepts of love, but suggests that the meaning of love as a poetological concept should be understood along Platonic lines. Gallus’ illustrious ascent to the summit of the Helicon is comparable to the philosopher's ascent to the form of beauty: Gallus attains a deeper understanding and fulfilment of love. Using references to Epicurean and Platonic philosophy in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, Plato's Symposium and fragments of Parmenides, Kayachev uncovers an underlying programme of an erotic poetics, in which the poet's love of art as an ontological truth takes centre stage.
P. D'Andrea, in ‘Longum Bibebat Amorem: Virgilian Adaptation of Sympotic Poetry’, discusses aspects of love in Aeneid 1–4 that highlight Virgilian poetry, metapoetics and the figure of Dido as loving self and beloved other. She draws on recent research that finds echoes of Greek lyric poetry not only in Book 4 of Virgil's epic, but in all the books that lead up to it. In D'Andrea's reading, the story of Dido and Aeneas recasts aspects that nod to the discursive tradition of sympotic poetry, and Books 1–4 of the Aeneid can be seen as a sympotic unit.
In ‘Philodemus and the Augustan Poets’ A. Keith focuses on the amatory poetry of Horace (Carm. 1.33, 2.4, 2.5), Propertius (1.3, 1.9, 2.4, 2.15, 3.5) and Ovid (Am. 1.5, 3.7), examines the reception of Philodemus’ erotic epigrams in Augustan lyric and elegy, and provides fascinating insights into the development of Augustan poetry. Moreover, Keith argues convincingly that Tibullus’ relative lack of interest in Philodemus’ amatory epigrams should not be attributed to an indifference to the epigrammatic genre, since Tibullus’ debt to epigrammatic models is well documented. Keith considers some possible explanations: the involvement of Maecenas and Messalla and the elevated literary status of Latin love elegy, which may have inspired the elegists to assert a new-found literary authority independent of contemporary Greek epigrammatic models.
In Chapter 9, ‘Love and Politics in Horace's Odes 4.10’, A. Palmore considers Horace's Odes 4.10 from a political perspective informed by psychoanalysis. Drawing on the work of Jacques Lacan, he develops a theoretical framework for understanding the unity of Horace's Odes 4 through the lens of desire, which can manifest itself not only in love but also in politics and poetry. Palmore uses Odes 4.10 as a valuable case study, as Horace uses terms such as incolumis ‘unharmed’ to connect Ligurinus (an erotic desire) with Augustus (a political interest). Palmore argues that this perspective allows us to understand better the coherence of Book 4 of the Odes, particularly the position of Odes 4.10 within it as a link in the trajectory of desire throughout the collection. Odes 4.10 thus stands out as a significant intervention in the fusion of political and erotic desire in Odes 4.
In an insightful chapter, ‘Amores Plural: Ovidian Homoerotics in the Elegies’, J. Ingleheart explores Ovid's elegiac work for hints of homoeroticism and challenges the notion that he was primarily interested in heteroerotic love and either overlooked or rejected homoeroticism. Ingleheart demonstrates how important homoeroticism was to Ovid's amatory poetry (Am. 1.1, 1.2, 3.9, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris) and suggests that in poems that go beyond his interest in puellae and explore amores in the plural and across the genders Ovid is far more concerned with homoerotic passion and homosociality than has previously been recognised.
The final chapter, ‘The Beloved: Figures and Words’, is another contribution by one of the editors, Thorsen. Thorsen deals with the Greek and Latin figures and words for the beloved (meretrix, puella, domina, puer, παῖς). She traces the etymology of the word puella (‘girl’) to that of the word puer (‘boy’), which in antiquity was also associated with the grammatically gender-neutral Greek word παῖς (‘child’). Thorsen explores the numerous connections between these three Latin and Greek names for the beloved. Building on the work of A. Corbeill (Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome [2015]), she rightly posits an evolution from gender fluidity to firmer gender distinctions, favouring heterosexual combinations.
The great merit of the chapters contained in this rich and fascinating volume is their clarity and their well-chosen and unpretentious argumentation. Readers can always comprehend what the authors offer, regardless of whether one agrees with the views and arguments presented therein.
The book is reader-friendly and easy to consult. The bibliography is up to date, and the two indexes (index locorum and index rerum) are generous and helpful, providing an invaluable tool for quickly locating the themes in the volume. The book is attractively produced and elegantly presented. I noticed only a few minor typographical errors, in punctuation or orthography.
The volume is not only informative and enlightening, but also entertaining and enjoyable to read. It offers a well-rounded approach to the important theme of love in Greek and Latin poetry. Students and scholars of the ancient world as well as readers generally interested in the history of love will undoubtedly benefit. The editors are to be commended for producing an extremely useful book that will serve as an indispensable reference point for future research on Greek and Latin love and will further stimulate scholarly interest in this fundamental and fascinating subject.
