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GENERAL INTRODUCTION
transform Greek narrative elegies into their own preferred 'subjective' form:
Propertius 1.18 is a good example. 1 But the Romans did not commit the elegy
to one specific theme or genre: they wrote elegiac epicedia (Prop. 3.18; Ovid,
Amores 3.9) which differ in metre only from such lyric epicedia as Horace,
Odes 1.24.
This chapter will concentrate on the four famous Augustan love-poets. For
our purposes the love elegy or the book of love elegies may be considered
a creation of the Augustan age, though Catullus is sometimes included. His
poem 68 would seem to represent the prototype of the Augustan love elegy
though love is only one theme among many; it is interwoven most skilfully
with the themes of friendship, the loss of his brother, the Trojan War. Their
interrelationship is the following: Catullus' friend Allius offered him a house for
secret meetings with Lesbia; hence the poem is a token of gratitude. The death
of Catullus' brother had a serious impact on his life: it ended abruptly the
happy, playful period of his life (tnidta satis lusi,\. 17). Now that his brother is
dead, it would be time for Catullus to marry and settle down. Catullus, as his
curious wedding poems prove, understands the middle-class morality of
Verona. 2 But marriage is out of the question, for in the meantime he has met
Lesbia and fallen in love with her. Brief, superficial love affairs are no longer
possible, but neither is a conventional marriage. Finally, his brother's death in
the Troad reminds him of the Trojan War; the place has been cursed ever
since then. These are the themes, and this is the way in which they are interwoven;
no later elegist has achieved such a degree of complexity.
2. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AUGUSTAN LOVE ELEGY
(a) The elegy does not claim to be one of the elevated genres of literature; it
places itself below epic and tragedy though, it would seem, above the mime
and the satire. The elegists (Tibullus excepted) like to call their verse nugae
'trifles' or lusus 'playthings'. All the same they are proud of their work; they
look down on the profanum uulgus just like the greatest lyric poet of the age (cf.
Propertius 2.23.16°.; Lygd. 3.20) and they count on immortality. This is the
attitude of the Alexandrian literary coterie: enough to be admired by a small
group of connoisseurs which hardly included the typical Roman businessmen
and politicians, Catullus' 'rather rigid old men' (senes seueriores 5.2; cf. Prop.
2.3O.i3ff.; Ovid, Amores 1.15.iff.).
(£) The elegiac poets of the Augustan age, beginning with Gallus, write
whole books of elegies. The collection sometimes bears the name of a woman,
following the Greek tradition mentioned above. Propertius probably published
Book 1, the Monobiblos, under the title Cynthia. Tibullus' two books of elegies
1 Cairns (19G9) 131-4.
407
2 Luck (1974) 23ft".
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