Propertius 4.10 and the end of the Aeneid: Augustus, the spolia opima and the right to remain silent

The tenth poem of Propertius Book 4 is the most remarkable in a collection full of surprises for its readers, and appears to mark a significant departure from his previous work. If Propertius had never written his final book of poetry, we might characterize him on the basis of his earlier books as the quintessential Latin love elegist: he rejects not only a military career, but even the less demanding task of celebrating Augustus' victories, in favour of the love elegist's self-indulgent life of leisure: cf. e.g. Prop. 2.1.39–46. In the first poem of Book 4, however, Propertius announces what appears to be a wholly different poetic programme; in place of the erotic elegies of the previous books is a new ‘serious’ purpose: Propertius will sing about national, religious and antiquarian themes, as the ‘Roman Callimachus’ (Propertius 4.1a.63–4). However, as soon as the next poem, Propertius is commanded to return to his usual theme of obsessive elegiac love for one woman, a topic described as haec tua castra (‘this is your sphere of operations’, 4.1b.135). The poems which follow in Propertius 4 tend to strike a balance between antiquarian seriousness and elegiac frivolity. For example, in 4.4, Propertius relates the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia's betrayal of Rome, connecting several contemporary urban landmarks with the poem's heroine, but he remains true to his earlier colours by presenting Tarpeia as an elegiac lover who falls in love at first sight and betrays her city out of passion

Exegi monumentum: exile, death, immortality, and monumentality in Ovid, Tristia 3.3

Tristia 3.3 purports to be a ‘death-bed’ letter addressed by the sick poet to his wife in Rome (3.3.1–4), in which Ovid, banished from Rome on Augustus' orders, foresees his burial in Tomi as the ultimate form of exilic displacement (3.3.29–32). In order to avoid such a permanent form of exclusion from his homeland, Ovid issues instructions for his burial in the suburbs of Rome (3.3.65–76), dictating a four-line epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb (3.3.73–6). However, despite the careful instructions he outlines for his burial and physical memorial, Ovid asserts: maiora libelli | et diuturna magis sunt monumenta mihi (‘my little books are a greater and more long-lasting monument for me’, 3.3.77–8), expressing his belief in his continued poetic afterlife. Scholars have seen this poem's concerns as above all literary, concentrating on Ovid's exploitation and development of elegiac and Augustan models which also treat the themes of death and poetic immortality. However, although Ovid's portrayal of what purports to be personal experience draws extensively upon earlier poetry, and, as we shall see, the poem gains much of its power from its engagement with the tradition that poetry alone can memorialize, previous studies have failed to analyse how Ovid consistently plays up the element that marks him out from the predecessors who had imagined their own deaths and poetic afterlives: that is, his status as an exile. Ovid's insistence on burial in his native land – from which he had been excluded in life – and his assertion of his poetic immortality in a poem which repeatedly stresses his exilic status, thus take on a markedly political angle, which had been absent or more muted in the models he exploits

Play on the proper names of individuals in the Catullan corpus: wordplay, the iambic tradition, and the late Republican culture of public abuse

The paper explores the significance of names and naming in Catullus. Catullus’ use of proper names, and in particular his play on the connotations of the names of individuals who are attacked within his poems, has not been fully explored to date, and the paper identifies several examples of such play which have not previously been recognized. The paper examines Catullan wordplay in the context of both the iambic tradition and the public abuse culture of the late Roman Republic

Vates Lesbia: images of Sappho in the poetry of Ovid.

This chapter argues that the representation of Sappho the poet appears as a coherent portrait in the poetry of Ovid, and that this portrait closely resembles that of Ovid himself. This is so even when Heroides 15, also known as Epistula Sapphus, where Sappho as poet is centre stage, is set aside. The argument emerges from close readings of passages from the earliest of Ovid’s poetic career, such as the Amores, Ars amatoria (Book 3), and Remedia amoris, and also deals with some of his latest poetry in the Tristia, written in exile, all in the context of passages in Sappho and other Latin poetry and prose

Ovid, Tristia 1.2: high drama on the high seas

In the first poem of Tristia 1, Ovid claims me mare, me uenti, me fera iactat hiems (‘the sea, the winds, the savage winter storm harass me repeatedly’, 1.1.42). This is no mere rhetorical flourish: the immediacy of the present tense becomes apparent in the second poem in the collection, which purports to be the poet's words as he faces a storm at sea. Critics tend to treat this poem as a literary exercise, focusing upon Ovid's exploitation of epic descriptions of the sea as a vast elemental force, subject to the machinations of the gods. In particular, interest has centred upon Ovid's debt to the storms which face Aeneas and Odysseus in Aeneid 1, 3, and 5 and Odyssey 5, as well as the relationship between this poem and Ovid's own version of an ‘epic’ storm in the story of Ceyx and Alcyone at Metamorphoses 11.410–748. However, this poem contains much more than the sum of its various epic models: 1.2 is programmatic for the rest of Tristia 1, not least because it can be seen as the first ‘proper’ poem of the collection, given that 1.1 is addressed to Ovid's new book of poetry as he sends it to Rome, and as such, self-consciously stands apart from the rest of the book