TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

example of the lengths to which a lover must go to successfully seduce his beloved.
Romans would have expected Propertius to relate the story about the golden apples laid
in Milanion‘s path by Atalanta as a trick in their foot race where marriage was the
promised wager. Instead of this story, Propertius remembers the bravery Milanion
displayed as she confronted wild animals and the Centaur Hylaeus during the run: ―There
are many such cases in Propertius, in which he subverts expectations as to the emphasis a
particular myth should take‖ (Katz xxxii). Katz lets us know that what Propertius is
affecting to achieve during his misdirected mythological allusions, is a careful subversion
of scholastic rhetorical models. Taking scholastic exercises like ―praising custom‖ or
―refusals to accept obligation‖ as his starting points, Propertius incorporates literary and
personal elements into his implicit critique of their usual deployment in the construction
of a climate of sentiment that reifies empire and its rulers. Katz points out that
Propertius‘s poems deploy complex modes of personal address when these mythological
excursions give vent to personal observation. By using informality to address Cynthia in
moments of intense emotion ―as a means to innovate the development of a tone,‖
Propertius can oppose the language of intimacy and earnestness. Once insouciant parody
has been established, Propertius addresses the causes of war directly, using the same
informality. Here in 3.7, his friend, Paetus has died at sea while on mission.
Money, you are the cause of life's problems!
Because of you, we travel to death too soon.
You offer cruel sustenance to men's vices:
seeds of trouble grow from your root. (3.7.1-4)
Pound's sensitivity to the reason for Propertius‘s shifting modes of address, from lover to
republic, allows him to develop a ―germ of humour‖ about the topic of intimacy and
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