Roman Love Elegy and the Eros of Empire

This book explores Roman love elegy from postcolonial perspectives, arguing that the tropes, conventions, and discourses of the Augustan genre serve to reinforce the imperial identity of its elite, metropolitan audience. Love elegy presents the phenomena and discourses of Roman imperialism―in terms of visual spectacle (the military triumph), literary genre (epic in relation to elegy), material culture (art and luxury goods), and geographic space―as intersecting with ancient norms of gender and sexuality in a way that reinforces Rome’s dominance in the Mediterranean. The introductory chapter lays out the postcolonial frame, drawing from the work of Edward Said among other theorists, and situates love elegy in relation to Roman Hellenism and the varied Roman responses to Greece and its cultural influences. Four of the six subsequent chapters focus on the rhetorical ambivalence that characterizes love elegy’s treatment of Greek influence: the representation of the domina or mistress as simultaneously a figure for ‘captive Greece’ and a trope for Roman imperialism; the motif of the elegiac triumph, with varying figures playing the triumphator, as suggestive of Greco-Roman cultural rivalry; Rome’s competing visions of an Attic and an Asiatic Hellenism. The second and the final chapter focus on the figures of Osiris and Isis, respectively, as emblematic of Rome’s colonialist and ambivalent representation of Egypt, with the conclusion offering a deconstructive reading of elegy’s rhetoric of orientalism. Acknowledgments 7 Note on Texts and Translation 9 Contents 10 List of Figures 13 Chapter 1: Reading Elegy Against the Grain 14 Introduction 14 Roman Love Elegy and Colonial Discourse 16 Chapter Descriptions 31 Works Cited 42 Chapter 2: Osiris, Egypt, and Postcolonial Ambivalence in Tibullus 1.7 46 Postcolonial Readings of Roman Imperial Texts 48 Romanizing the God Osiris 52 ‘Primitive’ Egypt and the Stereotype of the Nile 55 Elegiac Osiris as the Amator and His Mistress 57 The Via Latina and Cultural Imperialism 66 Works Cited 78 Chapter 3: Elegiac Cartography and Roman Conceptions of Space 82 Cynthia’s Imperium Sine Fine: Propertius 2.3 85 Cynthia’s Itineraria in the Monobiblos: 1.8A, 1.11, and 1.12 92 From On High: The Triumphalist View in Propertius 2.10 and Tibullus 1.7 99 Map Reading and the Imperial Subject: Propertius 4.3 103 Works Cited 122 Chapter 4: Imperial Luxury and the Elegiac Mistress 126 The Pleasure of the Text: Propertius 2.16 129 Tullus the Voluptuary and Erotic Bliss: Propertius 1.14 140 Colonial Mimicry of the East: Propertius 3.13 144 Nemesis and the Commodification of Imperial Violence: Tibullus 2.3 148 German Wigs and the Discourse of Nativism: Ovid, Amores 1.14 150 Medicamina Faciei Femineae, Ars Amatoria III, and the Urban Woman 152 ‘Going Native’: the Domina as Import Turned Roman Stereotype 155 Works Cited 166 Chapter 5: The Elegiac Triumph: Imperial Pomp and Erotic Circumstance 170 Eroticizing the Roman Triumph: Tibullus 2.3–2.5 and Propertius 2.1 173 Erotic Triumphalism and Cultural Plunder: Propertius 2.14 180 Public Triumphalism and the Threat of the Orient: Propertius 3.11 182 Cultural Plunder and the Anxiety of Influence: Propertius 3.1 186 Ovidian Triumphalism and Eastern Mollitia: Amores 1.2 and Ars Amatoria I 191 Works Cited 214 Chapter 6: Augustan Visions of Hellenism and Roman Imperial Identity 219 The Golden Age of Athens: Propertius 3.21 222 Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Oratorical Styles 226 Tullus and the Argonauts: Propertius 3.22 230 Imperial Plunder: Hellenistic Statuary and the Asiatic East 236 Rome’s Natural Right to Rule and the Chiaroscuro of Identity Formation 244 Works Cited 268 Chapter 7: Isis-Io, Egypt, and Cultural Circulation 273 Io and the Bovine Backstory of Egyptian Isis 278 Isiac Delia and the Mediation of East and West: Tibullus 1.3 281 Isis and Pelasgian Juno’s Pique: Propertius 2.28A and B 285 The Horning and Re-horning of Isis: Propertius 2.33 289 Cynthian Syncretism: Propertius 2.32 294 Abortion and the Resistance of the Colonized: Ovid Amores 2.12 and 2.13 297 Works Cited 317 Afterword: The Meroë Head of Augustus 322 Works Cited 323 Index 324