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obsessive desire most critics find to be Propertius‘s central preoccupation. Pound's
slighting treatment of Cynthia is based in his assumption that the truth of their
relationship was recorded in 4.8., the so-called ―Ride to Lanuvium.‖
In 4.8., Propertius organizes an evening of debauchery with two courtesans.
Cynthia has taken a trip to Lanuvium with a different lover to observe the annual fertility
rites on display there. The rites include the chore of feeding a deadly snake in a cave by a
young virgin. Be she impure, the snake will bite her, she will die, and the year's harvest
will fail. Cynthia and her paramour are attending only to mock this magical thinking in a
carnivalesque concupiscent display. Meanwhile, Propertius, neglected by Cynthia, is
having his revenge. Unfortunately for him, Cynthia returns early, reads him the riot act,
and winds up spending the evening in his arms, the two courtesans having been driven
out. Micaela Janan provides the best summary:
Failing of the goal in one sense or another can be amply
documented from Propertius‘s whole chronicle of his affair with
Cynthia, not just this poem; his verses schematically mirror a via
dolorosa of sexual antagonism that anticipates the elegant sorrows
of courtly love. However, 4.8 intensifies the sense of impasse by
reducing him to impotence and his mistress to violence,
degradations that the fragile congeniality of the poem's conclusion
does more to underline than to erase (as we shall see). The elegy
may be read – in this as in other respects – as a conspectus on their
entire relationship, especially since it is his collection's very last
word on the subject. Beneath the joyful comedy of this elegy lurks
an unresolved tension, rendered all the more insistent by the
uneasy proximity of Cynthia‘s ghost in 4.7 and her embittered
retrospect on their romance. Why should Propertius‘s final word
on the affair be so fraught with doubt and subterranean despair?
(117 The Politics of Desire: Propertius IV Micaela Janan)
Janan believes that Propertius‘s despair is located in his insight into sexuality. Propertius
discovers that as a mode of being in the world, sexuality is inherently flawed. 4.8, while
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