[In the following essay, Curran examines Propertius's syntax and explores how his use of parallelism, proper adjectives, synecdoche, colloquialisms, and other literary techniques led to the achievement of his desired literary effect.]

Two Distinctive characteristics of Propertian elegy, as has often been observed, are mythological allusion and a language marked by a mixture of the elevated and solemn and the colloquial. It is sometimes assumed in criticism that the mythological learning is merely decorative or, worse, a pedantic display of erudition, and many of his critics have decided that the language simply suffers from regrettable lapses from the linguistic propriety one has come to expect of an Augustan poet. In both judgments it is implied that we are dealing with elements separable from the meaning or content of the poems in which they occur. In some of Propertius' most brilliant poems, however, mythological allusion and colloquial language have essential functions in articulation of structure and modulation of tone. In many poems, comprising a whole category of Propertius' work, the tension between the artifice of the erudition and the natural colloquialism of the language is central to the meaning. One of the best specimens of this type of poem is the third elegy in the first book, where language and learning are used with consummate art, first to present an imaginative vision of the ideal, bordering on fantasy, and then to subject that vision to soberer, ironic reconsideration and to assert a contrasting reality and intimacy.¹

The poem can be conveniently divided into four parts: a comparison of the sleeping Cynthia with a series of mythological heroines, followed by a brief reference to the poet's own condition and the hour (1-10); his emotional response to the sight and abortive attempt to take advantage of the opportunity offered him (11-20); the affectionate caresses and humble advances he makes to the sleeping girl, ending in her waking up (21-34); and the bitter abuse and accusation Cynthia on being awakened heaps on the poet for having deserted her all evening (35-46).²

The first section is a single long sentence, introducing the mythological heroines, each in her own couplet, a compressed, two-line exemplum. These are not at first set in any context, for we are given no indication of where we are, or what the poem is about. Instead, the exotic and romantic world of myth and legend is conjured up before our eyes, and we are invited to contemplate it for its own sake in scenes that flash by. It is quite legitimate to speak of the creation of a separate world, because all interest is at this point focused on the heroines themselves. For six lines there is deliberate postponement of the object of the comparison and whether this be a person, situation, or occasion. From the exempla we can gather that the poem is to be about a woman and that she is recumbent, sleeping, abandoned, exhausted, possibly even making love, being rescued, drunk, or hysterical, or in some merely similar state; we are given no inkling which, but are simply invited to contemplate this heroic world. It will be the major concern of the rest of the poem to define and redefine just what the relevance of this vision of the heroic world is to the reality of Propertius and Cynthia.

This is quite unlike the beginning of another poem on a very similar occasion (2.29) and quite unlike the two poems preceding the present poem, which also make important use of mythology. In 2.29 there is a business-like, matter-of-fact explanation of the situation, time, and motives, in advance and without mythological exempla.³ Moreover, 2.29 uses words and expressions completely alien in tone and character to the language of 1.3, such as mea lux, inepte, i nunc, and amica. In 1.1 and in 1.2 Cynthia is introduced immediately, a context is established, and only then is she compared, or contrasted with, the heroines of mythology. In these two poems the world of elegy, with its circumscribed borders, is subsequently expanded in order to encompass the great world of the epic and the heroic. In 1.3, on the other hand, there is a reversal of this technique: the larger world is evoked at the beginning and then reduced to the narrower focus of elegy. Whereas 1.1 begins with the highly personal announcement, almost an outburst, of the poet's anguish and its cause, and 1.2 begins in a tone of impatient scolding, 1.3 begins in a calmer and more objective way. Propertius here distances himself to some extent from the situation, draws back, as it were, to leave the field entirely to the ladies, as he recites his learned comparisons; this role of observer rather than agent, or participant, takes on greater significance as the poem develops. The heroines of legend hold the center of the stage through the opening couplets. Instead of saying, "I came upon Cynthia sleeping and she was like x, y, and z," the poet first populates his world with x, y, and z, without indicating their relevance, and only then brings Cynthia into it.

The tone of this beginning differs markedly from what is to come and is a function of structure, vocabulary, allusiveness, and literary reminiscence. The artificiality and autonomy of this strange world is first established by contrived and repeated syntax and word order. The first three couplets are variations on the same syntactical theme, each consisting of the following elements:

1. an adjective identifying the subject by patronymic or geographical allusion;
2. a second adjective describing her and suggesting her physical state;
3. an ablative phrase of noun and rhyming epithet in the hexameter, which describes the situation;
4. another ablative phrase of noun and modifier in the pentameter, which describes the surroundings;
5. an intransitive verb;
6. a correlative adjective.

Subtle variations in the word order provide a counterpoint to the underlying parallelism of structure:

Qualis Thesea iacuit cedente carina
   (f)      (c)      (e)       (c)       (c)

languida desertis Cnosia litoribus;
    (b)       (d)         (a)       (d)

qualis et accubuit primo Cepheia somno
   (f)        (e)         (c)        (a)       (c)

libera iam duris cotibus Andromede;
  (b)          (d)       (d)

nec minus assiduis Edonis fessa choreis
                  (c)       (a)       (b)       (c)

qualis in herboso concidit Apidano …(1-6)
  (f)           (d)         (e)        (d)

The language is heightened by the poetic proper adjectives, forms very rare in prose. The Greek names are exploited both for their romantic allusiveness and for the somewhat exotic flavor of their sounds. They contain consonants not native to Latin (Thesea, Cepheia), a Greek nominative (Andromede), a non-Latin initial consonant cluster (Cnosia), and instances of a long vowel followed immediately by another vowel (Thesea, Cepheia, and an imported common noun, choreis). The solemn tone of the opening lines is further enhanced by other elements of language and vocabulary: synecdoche in carina for nauis; choreis for the prosier and more thoroughly Latinized chorus; fessa, an epic, especially Vergilian, word used by Propertius in his first two books only in this poem, whereas its synonym lassa is used some six times in these two books and frequently by Ovid in his elegiacs and has a stark vulgäres Gepräge;⁴ and the epic phrase spirare quietem.⁵

The character of the literary reminiscences contributes further to the elevation of tone. The fact that they constitute a list and the formulaic flavor given to the language by the repeated syntactical pattern recall the brief catalogue of heroines in the Underworld in the eleventh book of the Odyssey. But there is another strand of the Greek epic tradition they evoke even more vividly. Because of the subject matter, the great heroines of the past, and because of the anaphora of qualis, they call to mind the great fragmentary Hesiodic catalogue of women, in which each heroine was introduced by the words [n oin].

Only after the world of heroines has been carefully built up and given a life of its own is Cynthia brought into the poem. The language and syntax stress her place as the fourth and climactic member of the catalogue:

talis uisa mihi mollem spirare quietem
  (f)                  (c)        (e)         (c)

Cynthia non certis nixa caput manibus …
    (a)             (d)   (b)              (d)

She is introduced as the equal of the heroines, entering the heroic world on its own terms and becoming, for a brief time, part of it. As the syntactical formula used of the other heroines is employed for Cynthia, however, there is a slight difference in all but one of its elements: (a) is not here really a geographical allusion, (b) is not an adjective but a participle, (c) is accusative rather than ablative (but still rhymes), (d) does not really indicate location, (e) is not an intransitive verb, and uisa mihi is an entirely new element, which, as we shall see, is of considerable importance. Thus the general correspondence of the formula associates Cynthia with the others, but avoidance of exact conformity prepares for a difference between Cynthia and them. Although Cynthia is the name Propertius gives his mistress throughout his works and it appears many times and in a variety of contexts, its use here is special, and its importance is enhanced by the sound pattern c … n … n … n … c … n … c … n in Cynthia non certis nixa caput manibus, a pattern introduced in the very first couplet with cedente carina and Cnosia. Propertius has a number of other ways of identifying her, or addressing her: domina, puella, femina, lux, uita, illa, and tu, all involving subtle distinctions in tone and degree of intimacy. His reason for making Cynthia the first word of the first poem in the collection is obvious; its use in 1.3 for the first time since 1.1.1 is almost equally significant. She is presented to us here as Cynthia, the one appellation that associates her most directly with the world of myth, because it, too, is an allusive name and fitting to stand beside the names Cnosia, Cepheia, and Edonis. By naming her thus, Propertius transports her directly to the heroic world of myth he has just constructed by means, in part, of the same kind of proper nouns and adjectives. It differs only slightly from these in that it is not, strictly speaking, a patronymic or geographical name.⁶

There is a certain static quality about the world of the heroines, which is only in part owing to the fact that they are all recumbent. They have the stability, permanence, and immutability of works of art, whether or not Propertius had particular paintings or statues in mind.⁷ The heroines lack the animation and movement of real life. Cynthia, as she is described in the fourth couplet, mediates between the immobile, artificial world of myth and art and the real world. On the one hand she is explicitly associated with the impressive, but impassive, figures of the heroines, and Propertius uses of her breathing the description frequently applied to verisimilitude in statues and paintings⁸ On the other hand she is non certis nixa caput manibus.⁹ This instability and imminent threat of movement provide a contrast of potential vitality with the heroines frozen like works of art and mark the beginning of the transition from the static world of myth and art to the world of motion and change, the real world of Propertius and Cynthia with its violence, jealousy, and recrimination. Although Propertius has emphasized the static qualities in his pictures, there is, because of the myths he chooses, an element of paradox and deliberate exaggeration in the comparisons. However imaginary they may be, the world of myth contains heroic voyages and rescues, violent combat and noble death, abandonment on desolate shores, and ecstatic orgies in the company of the god. Cynthia, who has a reality the heroines lack, endures trials that are trivial by comparison with theirs.

As poet, Propertius is the creator of the poem and of its imaginary world, but he is also an actor within the poem and as such is now drawn into its dramatic action. His role in the first section is entirely that of the observer, but even here his arrival constitutes an intrusion upon the peace and dignity of the scene. Motion, only anticipated in the attitude of Cynthia's hands, enters the poem in the slaves who shake torches and in Propertius' own drunken stumbling. Indeed the frank admission of his drunkenness in 9, following the careful qualification of uisa mihi in 7, begins to raise doubts about the initial vision; we realize that it is seen through the eyes of a lover who is quite drunk.

As so often happens in Propertian elegy, the mythological is an ideal to be emulated by the real, and the exempla suggest a clear course of action for Propertius in the circumstances in which he finds himself. The identification of Cynthia with the heroines entails a complementary identification of Propertius with the appropriate gods and heroes. He extravagantly fancies himself Bacchus discovering Ariadne on Naxos after she has been abandoned by Theseus. The Ariadne exemplum quite properly stands first, for it is the most important and most extensively relevant in the total economy of the poem. Several times outside the exemplum itself Propertius suggests further comparison of himself with Bacchus, especially the Bacchus of poem 64 of Catullus. Corresponding to the thiasos that accompanies Bacchus in Catullus 64.251-56 is the band of slaves shaking torches who excort the drunken Propertius (note the echo of Catullus' quatiebant in quaterent in 10). Like Bacchus (incensus amore, Cat. 64.253), Propertius is on fire with love (correptum ardore, 13), and we shall see that he has garlands to give Cynthia, the corollae in 21 recalling Ariadne's Crown. In Catullus, just before the arrival of Bacchus, Ariadne is described as in the throes of torment:

multiplices animo uoluebat saucia curas …
(64.250)

Cura was the last thought of Cynthia before she fell asleep. The mention of Bacchus himself in 9 and 14 is, of course, not inconsistent with the identification of Propertius with the god; indeed the explicit reference confirms the identification. The Ariadne exemplum may also be alluded to obliquely in the next two exempla: Andromeda is called libera, the feminine form corresponding to and anticipating the masculine Liber in 14,¹⁰ and there is the obvious connection of Maenads with the thiasos of Bacchus.

In the context of the second exemplum, Propertius would play Perseus to Cynthia's Andromeda. The deep repose of the rescued Andromeda seems to be less on his mind, however, than her surrender to her saviour on her wedding night. Surely accubuit must carry some of the same sexual connotation here that it does elsewhere in Propertius.¹¹ By using this word here, he boldly fuses the moment of Perseus' discovery of Andromeda with the consummation of their marriage, ignoring the time Perseus had to spend in dealing with Andromeda's suitors and kinsmen. The close connection of Perseus' discovery and his romantic success augurs well for Propertius and suggests that similar success will follow just as inevitably in his own case.

In the context of the third exemplum, the ferocity and violence usually associated with Maenads are discreetly suppressed in favor of the more sensuous overtones of the situation (notice especially herboso as the girl sinks exhausted into the deep grass). Indeed, this exemplum at first seems to set the stage for that drama, so often played out in mythology, of a girl or nymph, alone and asleep in the country, who is discovered by a vigorous god or hero. As for Maenads in particular, Pentheus was not alone in his suspicions of sexual license on their part.

The first section of the poem, then, offers us a highly idealized mythological analogue, so far only slightly qualified by the hint that the inspiration may be as alcoholic as it is poetic, for the more prosaic situation of a visit to a sleeping mistress.

In the second section (11-20) a shift in attitude and tone causes the tension between ideal and real to be more sharply felt. The poet's attitude becomes more self-conscious and self-critical. We must distinguish here between the point of view of the lover at the moment of the visit, intoxicated by wine and desire, and the more critical point of view of the poet at the time of writing. In the first section, the moment is made to seem presented more or less unalloyed, just as it presented itself, we are led to believe, to the overheated imagination of the lover. But now sober reflection on the incident and on his own reaction to it leads to a more realistic appraisal of his situation and behavior. The shift in tone accompanying the shift in attitude is in the direction of increasing intimacy and directness, as the language begins to be more natural and colloquial. Elision, scrupulously avoided in the first section, occurs four times (11, 13, 16 bis); the first diminutive of the poem appears (ocellis, 19); ausus eram (17) is used colloquially for audebam or ausus sum.¹²

In the development of the action, observation begins to give way to involvement. Already inspired by the parallels he has found for his encounter with Cynthia, Propertius is further encouraged to emulate his mythological counterparts. The influence of Amor and Liber, durus uterque deus, incites him:

subiecto leuiter positam temptare lacerto
 osculaque admota sumere et arma manu …
(15-16)

The erotic deliberateness of the language here must be emphasized, for it has often been overlooked by readers seduced by the dignity and delicacy of the opening lines and not recognized as part of the tonal contrast between the two passages. What is only suggested earlier by the indirect method of mythological allusion is here stated more openly, under a very thin veil of euphemism. Enk is right when he says, ad loc., "locus lascivior quam pudici philologi nobis persuadere conantur." The phrase sumere arma, which ironically picks up the tone of the opening couplets, seems to be a mock-heroic euphemism, but there can be little doubt of its specific meaning here when we consider admota manu and the condition of Cynthia as Propertius has described it. All three heroines of the opening couplets are portrayed in Roman art with their clothing disarranged and with at least one breast uncovered.¹³ This detail would have been caught immediately by the Roman reader and would give admota sumere arma manu its reference. If a literary parallel for these particular erotic preliminaries is required, we find exactly the same pair of actions in Plautus Bacch. 480: manus ferat ad papillas, labra a labris nusquam auferat; Plautus goes on to describe the third step, but Propertius, with the decency and reticence characteristic of his work and of elegy in general in such matters, does not. The expression durus uterque deus, employed of gods who are mere objectifications of Propertius' own impulses, is just as lasciuus; it is surely a sly allusion to his aroused physical state.¹⁴ This is all calculated to strike the reader as the prelude to something little short of rape.¹⁵

It becomes immediately clear, however, that in the accomplishment of his desire, Propertius is neither god nor hero:

non tamen ausus eram dominae turbare
 quietem,
expertae metuens iurgia saeuitiae.
(17-18)

He is quite incapable of living up to the heroic examples he has set himself; he just doesn't dare. This is no helpless, innocent girl, confronted by an irresistible Bacchus, or a Perseus who faces monsters and armed mobs of kinsmen to win his beloved. It is the Roman domina before her timid lover, the formidable Cynthia of 1.1. The comparison of Cynthia with an Edonian Maenad begins to seem even more apt. As Orpheus found out, Edonian Maenads are particularly dangerous women for poets to slight."¹⁶

The revelation of Propertius' timidity and Cynthia's violent temper undermines the heroic dignity of the opening couplets with their idealization of Cynthia and redefines the relevance of the exempla to the situation. Propertius encourages comparison of the two sections of the poem by two verbal links. Liber, durus (14) picks up libera iam duris (4). By its sound and metrical position turbare quietem (17) echoes the epic phrase spirare quietem (7) and recalls the initial vision, but by its commonplace phrasing and meaning it throws into stronger relief the contrast between the epic world with its serene and accessible heroines and the real world of capricious and hot-tempered mistresses. There is more than a trace of the unpleasant and petty in iurgia, and in expertae we hear the weary voice of the lover who has learned from experience to expect the worst.

Propertius quite appropriately uses the device of a new exemplum to round off this section demonstrating the inadequacy of the first three exempla in their original formulation. Now he is like Argus gazing intently upon Io (19-20). This exemplum, quite different from the others in its effect, to some extent supersedes them and to some extent is a commentary upon them. Earlier, Cynthia had only seemed (uisa mihi) in his drunken imaginings to be like the heroines. There is no such qualification in the present comparison, which is a wryly humorous recognition of the real state of affairs. The implications, whether Io be conceived of as a heifer or simply as a girl with horns,¹⁷ poke gentle fun at both Cynthia and Propertius. Although her temper may make her something less than the heroines, this affectionate teasing invests her with a naturalness and humanity that they lack. The slightly grotesque character of this exemplum, when it is compared with the earlier ones, implies an ironic realization on Propertius' part that his own technique of mythological parallels involves assuming poses that are exaggerated and theatrical. As the Argus exemplum serves to redefine the relevance of the earlier exempla, so its own meaning will be fully understood only in conjunction with what follows in the poem.

In his third section (21-34) Propertius tries a different approach. The most he has the courage to do is to make a series of affectionate gestures that are not quite caresses for Cynthia, all of them gentle and stealthy, so as not to waken her, and to arrange about her sleeping body the presents he has brought her from the feast. The language becomes still plainer and more natural. There are more diminutives: corollas (21), capillos (23),¹⁸ and again ocellos (33). The elisions continue (25, 29), and there are other colloquial touches: the syncopated form duxti (27) and the verb portarent (29). Most important is the abrupt modulation from the objective third person to the second at the beginning of this section, as Propertius turns from narration to the reader to apostrophize Cynthia herself. All of this serves to increase the feeling of intimacy and tenderness. Tone and language thus compound the striking contrast between this passage and the opening lines of the poem. It is here that the tension between the heights of idealization and the ironic recognition of the reality is greatest. Here there are no mythological figures, no exotic Greek names, no gods to personify psychological impulses and states. All is intimacy and tenderness.

The tempo of the poem, somewhat measured from the stately beginning, becomes even slower in the description of Propertius' hesitant approaches to the sleeping Cynthia, his fumbling, repeated services, and the delayed progress of the lingering moon. The impression of heavy, slowly passing time is achieved by the succession of ponderous, rhyming imperfects in 19-24 (haerebam, soluebam, ponebam, gaudebam, poma dabam), by anaphora (et modo … et modo, 21, 23), and especially by the repeated epanalepsis (munera … munera, 25-6 and luna. t. una, 31-2). All conspire to produce a vivid effect of muted, carefully prolonged sensuousness and infinite tenderness. The patient and painstaking repetition of simple actions is also perhaps meant as a realistic touch in the portrayal of one who is drunk, or gradually passing from drunkenness to sobriety.

And yet, the indirect approach proves as futile as the surprise assault. Nothing he does affects or even gets through to her. She remains apart and inaccessible, dreaming her own dreams, enclosed in the static world of sleep and myth in which we saw her at the beginning of the poem. The recipient of the lover's gifts is not Cynthia, but sleep itself, and it is ingrato; the gifts roll, unnoticed and unappreciated, from her bosom:

omniaque ingrato largibar munera somno,
 munera de prono saepe uoluta sinu …
(25-6)

The only thing she is conscious of lies in a dream world, closed to Propertius, and he can only be fearful of what is going on there:

ne qua tibi insolitos portarent uisa timores,
 neue quis inuitam cogeret esse suam …
(29-30)

(A reasonable fear, for this is exactly what Propertius has told us he proposed to do himself at the beginning.) For all the good it does him, he might as well be making offerings before the statue of a woman or a goddess. In describing the draping of the garlands and bestowal of other gifts upon an unresponsive recipient, Propertius introduces a subtle variation on the traditional theme of the exclusus amator and his vigil outside his mistress' closed door, in which the lover decorates the doorway. Here he is, of course, not literally locked out, but most of the other elements of the motif are present: the late hour, the drunkenness, the garlands and gifts, the combination of desire and frustration, the overwhelming feeling of isolation, and, most important, the suspicion that his beloved is in another man's arms.

The rejection of the notion of a direct assult and the change to a gentle, indirect approach is marked, as we have seen, by the Argus exemplum, although its full relevance becomes clear only now that we have witnessed the failure of the indirect approach. Unlike the earlier exempla, this last one puts the primary emphasis on the hero rather than the heroine, and it is a more accurate illustration of Propertius' true position with regard to Cynthia. Now his model is not an active agent like Bacchus, or Perseus, but a mere observer, a watchdog. The new exemplum not only looks back to epitomize Propertius' inability to emulate the kind of direct action suggested to him by the earlier exempla and by the urgings of Amor and Liber; it also foreshadows his behavior in the lines immediately following it. The poet does not imply any series of one-to-one correspondences with the story of Jupiter, lo, Juno, Argus, and Mercury, but uses elements of it selectively to suggest two essential aspects of his position: jealousy and impotence. Although Juno herself plays no direct part in the comparison, the task of Argus was motivated by her suspicions, and this ever-watchful guard appears in mythology only as her agent, little more than an extension or personification of the goddess' fierce jealousy. Io stands first in Propertius' brief catalogue of heroines who are victims of the jealousy of a goddess (the goddess being Juno in every case except Andromeda's) in 2.28.17-24, and lo is the first of the many heroines in Ovid's Metamorphoses who are persecuted by the jealous Juno. Allusion to this well known myth of jealousy is therefore an apt way of anticipating Propertius' revelation in 30 of his own jealous suspicions of what is going on in Cynthia's dreams.

More important is the note of impotence and isolation. The one and only thing Argus does is watch; his task consists not of real action but merely of endless observation of Io, awake and asleep. In spite of the constant proximity, indeed intimacy, the relationship between Argus and Io is nothing but one long, unreciprocal confrontation of watcher and watched, nothing but the mere process of gazing and being gazed at. I spoke earlier of the Propertius of the opening lines as an observer who was not yet involved in the action, but was detachedly reciting a list of learned comparisons. Now that he has begun to play a role in the dramatic development of the poem, first rejecting direct action and then attempting indirect action, he turns out still to be a mere observer. What action he does take elicits no response whatsoever from Cynthia. He doesn't even wake her up; the moon does that. In her sleep she is completely isolated from him. It is perhaps relevant to recall, before leaving this exemplum, that in Propertius' mind Io also meant isolation from Cynthia in another way. He disapproved of Cynthia's devotion to the cult of Isis (whose identification with Io he exploits), in particular because its periodic requirement of sexual abstinence kept him from his mistress' bed.¹⁹

The last section of the poem is Cynthia's outburst on awakening and represents the most forceful action in the whole poem. Propertius himself is not capable of anything like this. She attacks him with the fury of an enraged Maenad or a betrayed heroine. Her violent response is in sharp contrast to the mollis quies that had impressed him earlier. Some of the language the poet puts in her mouth continues the naturalness of the central sections of the poem: there are elisions (37, 44), the syncopated verb form consumpsti (37), and the colloquial expressions namque ubi (37) and ei mihi (38). There is greater significance, however, in the histrionic language of her tirade a little later, which recalls the opening couplets, for it is in this way that Propertius offers a final, consummately ironic interpretation of the relevance of the initial heroic vision. Cynthia's speech is a miniature of the heroine's lament in neoteric epyllion.²⁰ Her description of her wretched evening in terms and details that mirror that vision is an implied rejection of the way Propertius had originally conceived it. The solemn form of her curse (tales … quales, 30-40) reminds us of the formulaic qualis … qualis … qualis … talis of the catalogue of heroines. There is a return to the use of allusive Greek names in Orpheae lyrae (42). More important than the simple fact of allusiveness is the particular allusion, for the reference to Orpheus and the echo of the epic fessa (5, 42) bring us back to Thrace and its Maenads. Somnum (41) and sopor (45) pick up Andromeda's somno (3), and the epic flavor of lapsam sopor impulit alis (45) suggests the elevated tone of the opening couplets of the poem. It is the description of Ariadne, however, rather than that of Andromeda or the Maenad, that Cynthia's language first and most vividly evokes:

languida desertis Cnosia litoribus
(2)

languidus exactis ei mihi sideribus
(38)

Purpureo … stamine (41) recalls the thread by which Ariadne saved Theseus, and externo (44) suggests the foreign lover Theseus.²¹ Cynthia's deserta (43) echoes the same word as used of Ariadne's situation (2).

At the beginning of the poem, Propertius' imagination, fired with wine, had carried him to the desolate shore of Naxos, the craggy coast of Libya, and the lush banks of the Apidanus. For these exotic landscapes Cynthia is made to substitute the prosaic, urban haunts of the commonplace exclusus amator. Propertius had fancied himself a Bacchus or a Perseus, but in Cynthia's eyes he is only a disappointed Lothario, seeking solace with his second choice for the evening. Cynthia is, of course, only drawing her own inferences about how Propertius has spent his evening, but he is given no chance to deny her charges and has already admitted that he has arrived very late at night from an elaborate and bibulous party. The initial vision, with its romantic dignity and its augury of success, has been almost completely destroyed. Propertius has lacked the courage to act with the confidence of god and hero, and his indirect tactics of silent worship have also failed. At the end of the poem Cynthia herself is made to recall the vision, only to contradict it. And the last word is not the poet's, but hers.

Yet the first and most important exemplum keeps its validity, now that it has been reinterpreted in the course of the poem. If Propertius has been shown to be no Bacchus, he has some claim to be likened to Theseus. Although it may be faintly comical exaggeration for Cynthia to call herself deserta in a poem in which the same word has been used earlier of the tragic situation of Ariadne, the Ariadne story is brought to the reader's mind again, and now there is only one role left for Propertius to play in it: he is in Cynthia's eyes the villain, not the divine rescuer he had romantically imagined himself to be. It is his fault that she has been left alone for the evening; what counts is not that he has returned (as Theseus did not), but that he left her alone in the first place. The poem leaves him as a discredited Theseus, as it had begun (ominously, one is tempted to say, although that is too strong a word) with an adjective derived from Theseus' own name. The climax of Ariadne's lament in Catullus' poem is the qualis-talis curse she puts on Theseus (Catullus 64.200-201) and this is just the form of curse uttered by Cynthia in her overdramatization of her plight.²² At the end of the poem we thus appreciate the extensive relevance of the Ariadne exemplum. Its function at the beginning was the idealization and elevation of a not unfamiliar situation in a love affair. Then its significance was strongly qualified in the developing contrast between the ideal and the reality of lover and mistress. At the end its relevance is reinterpreted and reaffirmed, and it emerges as a unifying motif in the poem as a whole.

Notes

¹ After submitting this paper, I read A. W. Allen's "Sunt Qui Propertium Malint" (J. P. Sullivan, ed., Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, Cambridge, Mass. 1962, 107-48), an expanded version of his article "'Sincerity' and the Roman Elegists" (CP 45, 1950, 145-60), and learned that his new material includes a discussion of Propertius 1.3. Allen, too, argues that the use of mythological exempla is not "simply a decorative and ennobling device" (130). He develops the contrast between mythological idealization and realism very differently, however: "The realistic character who burst in upon the sleeping girl has faded away when confronted with the quality of mythic beauty incorporated in her" (133); "…the realistic character of the lover fades into the unreality of dream, while Cynthia remains in a world beyond time" (134); "realism provides terms for describing what is temporary, mythology for describing what is permanent" (134).

² E. Reitzenstein divides the poem in a slightly different way in "Wirklichkeitsbild und Gefühlsentwicklung bei Properz," Philologus, Suppl.-Bd. 29.2 (1936), 46. He treats 31-4 as a Verbindungsstück between the part of the poem dealing with Propertius and the part dealing with Cynthia, and subdivides 35-46 after 40.

³ For a discussion of the differences between 1.3 and 2.29, see Reitzenstein, op. cit. (supra, n. 2) 46 ff.

⁴ B. Axelson, Unpoetische Wörter, ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der lateinischen Dichtersprache (Lund 1945) 29.

⁵ Cf. Iliad 2.536 … and Lucretius 5.392 spirantes … bellum.

⁶ For Apollo or Diana, Cynthius or Cynthia would be a geographical epithet; in Cynthia's case the allusion is not, of course, directly to Mt. Cynthus.

⁷ All three heroines appear in Roman painting, although Andromedas are never, so far as I know, sleeping. For examples of special types of each having particular relevance to this poem, see infra, n. 13.

⁸ Cf., for example, Verg. Aen. 6.847: excudent alii spirantia mollius aera; G. 3.34; Mart. 7.84.2.

⁹ For incertus in the sense "unsteady, unstable," cf. Sall. Hist. fr. 1.98; Sen. Q.N. 6.9.3, Phaedra 374, Ep. 95.16; Stat. Theb. 9.531; Mart. 2.66.2.

¹⁰ Perhaps Propertius is alluding to Libera as one of Ariadne's titles, although the identification of Libera with Ariadne, rather than Proserpina, is very rare; Ariadne seems to be called Libera only in Ovid Fasti 3.512 and in Hyginus Fab. 224.

¹¹ Cf. 2.3.30; 30.36; 32.36; 3.15.12; 4.4.68; and H. E. Butler and E. A. Barber, The Elegies of Propertius (Oxford 1933) ad 1.3.3.

¹² See P. J. Enk, Sexti Propertii Elegiarum Liber I (Monobiblos) (Leyden 1946) ad loc. and in "Observationes de sermonis cottidiani vestigiis apud Propertium obviis," Mnemosyne. 3rd. Ser. 8 (1940) 318-19.

¹³ For Ariadne, see C. L. Raggianti, Pittori di Pompei (Milan 1963) 127; for Andromeda see L. Richardson, Jr., Pompeii: The Casa dei Dioscuri and its Painters, MAAR 23 (1955) plate 53; lo too is depicted with one breast bared in L. Curtius, Die Wandmalerei Pompejis (Leipzig 1929) fig. 157; for a sleeping Maenad see G. E. Rizzo, La Pittura ellenistico-romana (Milan 1929) plate 112. I wish here to express my indebtedness to Prof L. Richardson, Jr., for valuable suggestions concerning Roman painting.

¹⁴ Although rigidus is commoner in this sense, durus is probably so used in Cat. 16.11 qui duros nequeunt mouere lumbos (cf. W. Kroll, C. Valerius Catullus⁴, Stuttgart 1959, 36 ad loc.) and certainly in Ovid Fasti 2.346 tumidum cornu durius inguen. It seems to be used in a similar sense in Cels. 2.7.16 durae mammae (i.e. of the breasts of a woman during pregnancy).

¹⁵ Cf. Allen, op. cit. (supra, n. 1) 133. Rape in fact occurs in a poem of Paulus Silentiarius (A.P. 5.275) describing a somewhat similar situation. I do not wish to discuss in detail whether Paulus was imitating Propertius or the two poets made independent use of a common model. It is tempting to conjecture, however, that both poets employed the same model and that Paulus' version is closer to the original than Propertius'. Propertius would then be exploiting his readers' knowledge of a Greek original in which a lover comes upon his sleeping mistress and unhesitatingly rapes her. This would mislead his readers as to what to expect and heighten the contrast between the diffident Propertius and his more violent model.

¹⁶ Cf. Ovid Meta. 11.69.

¹⁷ lo was more often conceived of as a girl with horns (for example, Aesch. P.V. 568; Herod. 2.41; for Io in Roman painting, see note 13 above) than as a heifer (Aesch. Suppl. 44, 299; Ovid Meta. 1.610-12). Propertius' ignotis cornibus implies that he here thinks of lo as the former. However, on other occasions when he mentions her, he seems unable to make up his mind whether she is a horned girl or a cow. In 2.28.17-24 uersa caput suggests a horned girl, but mugiuerat and uacca a heifer; in 2.33.7-14 Io-Isis seems to be a horned girl in 9 and 13, but the coarse double entendre in 8 (see Butler and Barber, op. cit., supra, n. 11, ad loc.) and the mooing, grazing, and cud-chewing of 10-12 imply a heifer; in 3.22 a horned girl is implied in 35, a more extensive transformation in 36.

¹⁸ Not perhaps a true diminutive, since there is no corresponding non-diminutive form, as there is for ocellus and corolla, but, coming as it does after ocellis and corollas in the same emphatic metrical position in the two preceding hexameters, it has the affective force of a diminutive.

¹⁹ Cf. 2.33a.

²⁰ Cf. Cat. 64.132-201.

²¹ For purpureo … stamine as a recall of the Theseus exemplum see T. A. Suits, Studies in the Structure of Propertian Elegy, Books I-III(unpub. diss., Yale University 1958) 73. Suits takes externo as a reference back to the Andromeda exemplum, but it seems to fit Theseus better, since the foreignness of the hero is more important in the Ariadne story than it is in the Andromeda story. Perseus, it is true, is just as much a foreigner as Theseus, but in the Ariadne story the heroine betrays her own people for a stranger (cf. Cat. 64.132 and 171-6). Catullus, in his use of the very rare externare twice of Ariadne (64.71, 165), seems to be punning on a popular etymology which connected it with externus (cf. Kroll, op. cit., supra, n. 14, 154 ad 64.71 and A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine³, Paris 1950-51, s.v. sterno). In 2.24.43-4 Propertius calls Theseus and his son, Demophoon (who emulated his father in betrayal of a foreign girl), hospes uterque malus.

²² It is not only in the case of the curse that Propertius had Catullus 64 very much on his mind when he wrote this poem. In addition to the similarities noted earlier in this paper, one should observe the following. In line I Propertius echoes the vocabulary and alliterative pattern of 64.53 (Thesea cedentem celeri cum classe tuetur) and of 64.249 (cedentem maesta carinam). In 64.61 Ariadne is likened to the statue of a Bacchante; Propertius, as we have seen, compares Cynthia both to Ariadne and to a Bacchante. In addition to the qualistalis curse, two other lines from the lament of Catullus' Ariadne are echoed in this poem:

perfide, deserto liquisti in litore, Theseu?
(64.133)

Cnosia Cecropiae tetigissent litora puppes
(64.172)

languida desertis Cnosia litoribus
(Prop. 1.3.2)