The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College
One of the Two Delinquencies Gendering Ambiguous Vocality in Propertius 3.6 Kit Payne-Jaeger, Cornell University, Class of 2020
Abstract
Poem 3.6 in the Propertian corpus is the quintessential Roman love elegy in its depiction of jilted lover and jealous mistress, yet effectively unique in the textual ambiguity of its speaker’s identity. Lines 18-34 seem to be the outburst of a female speaker who is absent from the scene, but is she being quoted directly or are her words the product of the poet’s imagination? This paper argues that the passage’s rhetorical and grammatical choices, engagement with a contemporary literary tradition, and treatment of such elegiac tropes as servitium amoris and the dangerous rival in love affirm that it is the poet, rather than the puella, who is the speaker, imagining the possible words of his lover.
Though the formal framework of poem 3.6 is almost unique within the corpus of Sextus Propertius, relatively little scholarship addresses the ambiguity of its potential speakers. Per the paradigm of love elegy, it is “built upon the presumed existence of a love triangle involving poet, mistress and rival,” the rival here being a speculation on the part of the speaker.1 But, given the lack of reliable textual identification, Propertius 3.6 raises the question: who is the speaker?2 In the opening lines of the poem the answer is straightforward: the speaker is the poet, a conclusion consistent with the rest of the Propertian oeuvre and emphasized with mihi and nostra puella (3.6.1).3 At line 18, however, one encounters another mihi, a female speaker who is physically absent from the scene. McCarthy describes the dilemma of lines 18-34 as “whether we are to believe that the Ego [the poet] speaks only the first seven couplets and the last four couplets [...] or alternatively that the whole poem is spoken in the voice of the Ego and lines [18-34] constitute [...] his free speculation as to what is going on at the woman’s house.”4 That is, the speaker of 18-34 may be (1) Lygdamus, the poet’s slave, quoting the words of the actual speaker, presumably Cynthia, or (2) the poet as speaker inventing what he believes those words to be. Based on the poem’s deft deployment of conventional elegiac rhetoric and the specifics of the individual passage’s engagement with magic as literary motif, this paper will argue for the probability of the latter. The poet first demonstrates the reality of the speaker’s identity via the gendered implications of “her” mode of rhetoric. Though both male and female characters in elegiac poetry may employ particular rhetorical tools, the frequency and expert use of elegiac devices in lines 18-34 resemble more closely the technique of poet rather than mistress. Caston reminds us that “Roman elegy is full of language expressing the importance of pledges, promise, and oaths”5 — that is, legal language, with which the speaker begins: haec te teste mihi promissa est, Lygdame, merces? / est poena et servo rumpere teste fidem (3.6.18-19).6 At no other point in the corpus does Cynthia use the juridical language of testor, but here not only does she seem to use Lygdamus as witness, “she actual5 Caston, The elegiac passion, 142. 6 Latin text from Heyworth and Morwood, 66. “Is this the reward promised to me, Lygdamus, my witness? There is a punishment for breaking faith, with a slave as witness.” All translations the author’s own.
The Haley | Volume I | Issue II | July 2020
ly invokes the legal sense (te teste).”7 The poet, however, utilizes testor often, as in 1.13, where he depicts himself as a kind of legal witness to Gallus’ affections.8 This cannot, of course, be conclusive, but taken in context with the remainder of the passage, it appears a deliberate deployment of vocabulary that the experienced reader of elegy will associate with the poet, the beginning of a series of textual ploys that foreground the literal speaker (Propertius) rather than the imagined (Cynthia). These elegiac tip-offs, as it were, continue with ille potest nullo miseram me linquere facto (3.6.20).9 Miseram me is a standard elegiac exclamation — the same one, in fact, with which the corpus begins: Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis (1.1.1).10 Even in adopting the voice of Cynthia, the poet utilizes phraseologies unique to his rhetoricity and the genre in which he locates himself. Likewise, the declaration si placet, insultet, Lygdame, morte mea (3.6.23), an invitation to mock the speaker’s death, resembles the poet’s rhetorical expressions of despair more closely than Cynthia’s.11 James notes, “Cynthia is typically represented as irate rather than pathetic”; here the speaker is despondent rather than irate, implying that, with her love thwarted, she has no choice but to perish.12 Such an association of love and death is also characteristic of elegy, and of the vocality of the Propertian narrator in particular.13 In poem 1.15, he declares quis ego nunc pereo, similis moniturus amantes (1.15.40-41),14 and in 2.1 asks Maecenas to mourn him with huic misero fatum dura puella fuit (2.1.75-76).15 7 McCarthy, “Lost and found voices,” 167. 8 Sextus Propertius and William Camps, Elegies: book I, edited by William Camps (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 30-31. 9 Latin text from Heyworth and Morwood, 67. “He cannot forsake miserable me, who has done nothing.” 10 Latin text from Camps, 17. “Cynthia first seized miserable me with her eyes.” 11 Latin text from Heyworth and Morwood, 67. “If it pleases him, let him mock my death.” 12 Sharon L. James, “‘Ipsa dixerat’: Women’s Words in Roman Love Elegy,” Phoenix 64, no. 3/4 (2010): 337, accessed April 27 2018, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.2307/23074749. 13 See Baker, 1970, on the nuance of Propertian interaction with themes of love and death. 14 Latin text from Camps, 34. “[The eyes] which I now die for, warning lovers like myself.” 15 Latin text from Sextus Propertius and Lucian Mueller, Sex. Propertii Elegiae, edited by Lucian Mueller (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898), http://www.thelatinlibrary. com/prop2.html. “A hard girl was the fate of this miserable one.”
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