[92] These poetic goals are declared in a number of ways, all of which can be explored through the figure of Briseis. First, Propertius equates the epic and the elegiac poet—and the lover and the statesman and warrior. Propertius asserts in Book 2 and elsewhere that elegiac struggles are heroic, and that a lover is a fighter. Second, Propertius explicitly inserts himself into the history of Greek and Latin literature by alluding to and incorporating other genres within his elegiac mode of expression. Finally, Propertius affirms a Callimachean system of poetics that rejects the grandiose, martial, and political. Propertius’ transformation of epic into elegiac and Callimachean poetry is a recusatio that runs throughout the Propertian corpus.

Briseis is part of a system in which the dimensions of poet, citizen, elegy, and epic are explored. Propertius 2.1 is the ideal starting point for my own exploration of this system, because with this poem Propertius sets forth his goals for Book 2 as a whole. The seemingly minor figure of Briseis unites many of the themes that are programmatically laid out in 2.1 well before Briseis appears.

Make Love and War: The Lover as Warrior in 2.1

[93]Propertius creates poetic independence for himself first by asserting that his poetic inspiration is Cynthia and only Cynthia—he is simply incapable of other forms of poetry, notably epic:

Propertius goes on to equate the “struggles” of lovemaking with the epic hero’s ordeals (luctatur) on the battlefield:

But poem 2.1 is not only a justification on the part of the author of the apolitical life and work of a poet. The poem also creates a place for love elegy in the literature of Augustan Rome. In line 17 begins a recusatio proper that encompasses the history of Greek and Latin literature. Propertius begins by stating that it is not his fate to write epic poetry (17), but if it were, his subject would be Caesar and Maecenas:

With these lines Propertius continues his sweeping review of Greek and Roman history, taking the survey down to the time of composition. He concludes by asserting that he has been unable to write about these historical events without weaving in Maecenas, and compares him to Perithous and Patroklos. In this way Propertius celebrates his patron as a hero. And by implication of course, Augustus is Achilles. On this analogy the world of the elegist becomes thoroughly heroic: Cynthia, Maecenas, and Augustus all have their Iliadic counterparts, and, if we follow the analogy through, Propertius is Homer himself.

But a Homer Propertius refuses to be. Despite his attempts at epic poetry, the poet maintains that his slender Callimachean poetics (angusto 38, 45) are not up to the task of composing hard epic narratives (duro 40):

In lines 39–40 the poet compares his poetics to those of Callimachus, who was not able to “thunder forth” the Titanomachy. In the next two lines is a reference to the Aeneid, which is still at this point a work-in-progress. Virgil is a Roman poet who could write epic; Propertius’ calling is elsewhere. In 43–44 the poet notes that every person tells stories about what they know best. The verses are structured with adversative asyndeton at the caesura, with the result that oppositions are set up between sailor and farmer, soldier and shepherd. These oppositions mirror those set up throughout the poem between lover and statesman, elegist and epic poet.

[96]Propertius associates himself with the Hellenistic poetry of Callimachus, but Propertius is not a pastoral poet like Theocritus or Virgil. His field of expertise is love:

Here, as in 13–14, the language of love and battle are mixed so as to make battle a metaphor for love and to effect an equivalency between the two. The elegist wages war, but in bed. Likewise it is glorious for the elegist to die on the battlefield of love. This idea is picked up again in the final lines of the poem, in which the poet imagines his tombstone, as though he were a fallen warrior.

The poem concludes with a return to Maecenas (73), and the hope that the patron will honor the poet once he has died:

Briseis and Cynthia: 2.8 and 2.9

I now propose to look more closely at the poems in which Briseis appears, in order to show how Propertius “elegizes” epic by elegizing Briseis. Propertius makes Briseis a central character in an ongoing recusatio that transforms epic and heroic traditions by infusing them with the agenda of love elegy. In these four poems, Cynthia can be Briseis, or she can be the antithesis of Briseis. The portrayals of both Cynthia and Briseis are shaped by the dictates of the poems’ narratives. The flexibility built into their characters allows a reinterpretation of each woman with each new episode. And yet a unity emerges that shows that the arrangement of the four poems and the portrayal of the characters are anything but random.

In lines 7–10 Propertius moves from epic and goes on to rethink the monumental History of Herodotus from an elegiac perspective. He encapsulates the driving theme of Herodotus’ History as it is formulated in Herodotus 1.5:

Propertius applies to love the idea that great cities fall and small ones become great and the fact that human fortune is never constant:

Troy and Thebes are great cities that are now destroyed and insignificant. If these can be overthrown, it is no wonder that love can too. Love’s fortune is cyclical, imagined as a wheel (rota 8). We may compare the following passages:

The metaphor of the wheel of human fortune is one that Herodotus and Sophocles share. The next Greek model that Propertius reinterprets is Antigone:

But as we have seen, the Antigone-Haemon exemplum is the second of three great literary models to which Propertius equates his own loss of Cynthia. The poem begins with a veiled allusion to epic and the figure of Briseis; in lines 29–40 the analogy is fully realized as the third of the three:

Here, just as in the Antigone-Haemon passage, the elegiac poet/lover interprets the model from the lover’s point of view. In the elegist’s analysis, Achilles allowed his dearest friend Patroklos to die for love of Briseis (omnia formosam propter Briseida passus 35). Even the dragging of Hektor is attributed to retroactive dolor for the taking of Briseis.

Emotional and intellectual turmoil may well be the construct that Propertius (the author) develops for the poetic persona that is the speaker of the poem. But I argue that the distortion of famous literary models is intentional and part of an ongoing recusatio, in which Propertius (the author) asserts the place of elegy in Greek and Roman literary history. Propertius has not, in a fit of jealous emotion, misinterpreted the act of dragging Hektor. The dragging of Hektor is one of the most primal and atrocious responses to grief in the Iliad. No ancient reader of the poem could mistake Achilles’ grief for Patroklos for anger over the taking of Briseis. Propertius, moreover, could have easily left out lines 37–38, which at [103]first seem almost an afterthought. But Propertius has deliberately composed and included them. In so doing, he signals even more provocatively his appropriation of epic into an elegiac world.

This appropriation of epic begins even before 2.8.29. Already in the Antigone-Haemon exemplum a conflation of epic, elegy, and tragedy has taken place. In line 23 Haemon is said to mix his bones with those of Antigone (sua cum miserae permiscuit ossa puellae). Both Richardson and Camps point out that we know of no tradition in which Antigone and Haemon share a tomb. Achilles and Patroklos, however, are a famous example of a pair whose bones are mixed in a single funeral urn. Propertius makes brilliant use of this exemplum in poem 4.7, in which Cynthia returns after death in a dream and makes this same request of Propertius. Here in 2.8 I think we have an even earlier reference to the mixing of the bones of Achilles and Patroklos. By mixing epic and tragic allusions in the Antigone example Propertius both signals his innovative use of the material but also appropriates them with his own elegiac system.

Poems 2.8 and 2.9 are together a brilliant depiction of the progression of the emotions of the abandoned lover. In poem 2.8 the analogy with Briseis is made in order to entertain the idea that Cynthia has been taken from him against her will. In 2.9 there is no such illusion, and instead Cynthia becomes a failed Briseis. Briseis is imagined as the quintessential faithful Greek bride, and Cynthia is a poor comparison:

The powerful image of the weeping Briseis (2.9.9–14) serves a number of purposes that tie in well with poems 2.1 and 2.8. First and foremost Briseis is a foil for the unfaithful Cynthia, devoted and loyal beyond all others. Briseis was there for Achilles when his father, mother, and the mother of his son were not. Second, in portraying Briseis this way, as with Penelope, Propertius transforms epic into elegy while at the same time casting his own sufferings in a heroic light.

The elegizing of epic, however, as we have seen in 2.1 and 2.8, involves more than rewriting epic narratives to focus on romantic love. The Roman elegist is also asserting a system of poetics that is modeled on learned Alexandrian poets like Callimachus and Theocritus. Propertius often displays his own learnedness and familiarity with Alexandrian poetic techniques by means of sophisticated allusions to Greek and Roman poetry that operate on multiple levels. The death of Achilles does not take place within the confines of the Iliad, but in the Aethiopis. In the summary form in which we have it, there is no episode in the Aethiopis in which Briseis laments Achilles as she does here, but in this or some other tradition she must have done so. Quintus of Smyrna (3.551) contains a similar scene, and probably drew on the same source as Propertius.

[106]Poem 2.9 presents Briseis as above all a creature of lament. At first the devoted Briseis is merely a foil for the faithless Cynthia, with whom the lamenting woman seems to have little connection. But as I have argued above, the poem tests the applicability of the analogy, which may be more fitting than it seems at first glance. In poems 2.20 and 2.22, Cynthia is very much a lamenting woman who, as an abandoned lover, expresses all the tortured emotions that the Greek lament tradition and the Roman elegiac love tradition share. In 2.9 we may already see traces of the affinity between these two poetic systems in the combination of Briseis and Cynthia.

Epic and Elegy, Love Song and Lament: 2.20 and 2.22

But of course in Roman elegiac poetry it is generally the male lover who laments and loves, and the mistress who is cold and impenetrable. In a famous example Catullus compares himself to a flower that has been “touched” by the plough (11.23–24). In Propertius Book 2, the roles are, on the surface, (re) reversed: Propertius becomes the warrior figure Achilles, and Cynthia is either the lamenting Briseis or Andromache (2.8, 2.20.1–2, 2.22.29–32), or else a failed Briseis or Andromache (2.9). The analogy between the lover and the fighter that is so prevalent in 2.1 and other poems throughout the Propertian corpus fits [107]perfectly into this scheme. Through the shifting signs of the metaphor heroic values are reinterpreted and reassigned.

Thus poems 2.20 and 2.22 are in many ways a pair that balance and contrast 2.8 and 2.9. In the first two poems Cynthia has found another lover; in the second pair, Propertius is the one who is suspected and then proved (by his own admission) to be unfaithful. Now Propertius is the deceitful one (fraude 3). In 2.9 Achilles is associated with two women whom he has widowed, and I have argued that Propertius hints already there that he too has multiple associations. But in 2.20, as I will now go on to explore, he swears that that is not the case, declaring that he has una fides (18).

In this poem Cynthia laments, and surpasses even Briseis and Andromache in her grief:

The final exemplum is steeped in both lament and epic traditions. Here Propertius refers to Niobe, whose twelve children Artemis and Apollo killed after Niobe boasted that she was a more successful mother than Leto. Although Briseis and Andromache are the prototypical lamenting women from the standpoint of Propertius Book 2, Niobe is the traditional figure of lament from the standpoint of the Iliad. In Iliad 24 Achilles urges Priam to share a meal with him after he has ransomed the body of Hektor. Even Niobe, he says, had to eat:

Even more significant for this discussion, however, is the Iliadic context within which the story is told. Just before Achilles cites the example of Niobe, he and Priam weep for sons and fathers. Just after this episode, as 24.620 already predicts, the funeral of Hektor begins with its succession of laments by Hecuba, Helen, and Andromache. And it is with this funeral that the Iliad comes to an end. When Propertius compares Cynthia’s lament to Niobe’s, he also evokes some of the fullest expressions of lament in archaic Greek literature.

These four exempla, when taken together, are a reintegration of lament and love song, epic and elegy. Homeric poetry already incorporates women’s lament traditions within its epic framework. Propertius simply recreates, from the [110]opposite direction, something that epic already does. Homeric poetry incorporates lament into epic; Propertius reinterprets elegy as lament and in doing so incorporates epic into lament. In order to achieve this reinterpretation, Propertius adopts the techniques of Alexandrian poets whose “slender” poetics transform weighty epic hexameters into finely crafted and delicate elegiacs. Propertius combines the substance of epic with the poetic techniques of Callimachus and creates Roman love elegy.

Footnotes