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CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LOVE ELEGY
(t/) Homosexual love no longer plays the important role it played in Hellenistic
poetry. All of Callimachus' love poems were addressed to boys: Anth,
Pal. 12.43 ( — n Gow—Page) and 12.73 ( = iv Gow—Page) may be considered
classics of the genre; the latter was translated into Latin by the consul of
102 B.C., Q. Lutatius Catulus. This shows, perhaps, a taste not only for this
kind of poetry but also for this kind of love, among the Roman aristocracy of
the late second century B.C. In Catullus' book, four love poems (24; 48; 81; 99),
the last two in elegiac distichs, are addressed to a young man whom Catullus
calls 'dear flower of the ]uventii', Jlosculus luuentiorum (24.1). In their intensity
they are comparable to the Lesbia poems; if the wish to give Lesbia thousands
of kisses is sincere in poem 5, the same wish in a luventius poem (poem 48)
is probably not mere rhetoric. These are highly emotional affairs, and it should
surprise no one that we find here exactly the same topoi (e.g. the cruelty of the
beloved, 99.6) as in the other poems.
The Marathus elegies in Tibullus' Book 1 seem to form a cycle within a cycle.
The god Priapus, in his role as 'love counsellor',praeceptor amoris, lectures in
1.4 about the technique of seducing handsome boys, and Priapus' reputation
would suggest that physical love, not just a romantic attachment, is meant.
Another poem of the cycle, 1.8, presents a curious set of relationships: Tibullus,
in love with the boy Marathus, urges the girl Pholoe whom Marathus happens
to desire, to be kind to the boy; but Pholoe is apparently in love with a third
man who, in turn, longs for another woman. Tibullus pleads on the boy's
behalf (i.8.i7ff.) and even arranges secret meetings with Pholoe for him
(i.9.4ifF.). Because of this rather unusual constellation the poems have never
been clearly understood; but that seems to be the rather complicated relationship
they imply, and if anything could stimulate the jaded tastes of the Augustan
gilded set, this is it.
Homosexual love is practically absent in Propertius and Ovid, though
Ovid's friend Proculus (Pont. 4.16.32) still writes in the Callimachean manner.
Propertius' comparison (2.4.i7fF.; cf. 9.31—6; 3.19.1—10) is more theoretical
and mainly designed to show that woman is the more emotional, irrational,
intractable creature. Ovid (Ars Am. 2.683^) makes another point: 'I dislike
any kind of sex that does not relax both partners; this is why making love to
a boy appeals to me less' odi concubitus qui non utrumque resoluunt: \ hoc est cur
pueri tangar amore minus.
(e) Much of elegiac poetry is persuasive, directed towards a very practical,
very simple aim: to conquer the woman. Some poems are written to please her,
some promise to make her immortal. This is especially true in the case of
Propertius, less so for Catullus. 1
(/) The elegiac poets vary in their attitude towards politics. Catullus attacks
1
Stroh (1971) passim.
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