No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
CHANGING THE SAIL: PROPERTIUS 3.21, CATULLUS 64 AND OVID, HEROIDES 5
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2022
Abstract
Concentrating on Propertius 3.21 in particular, this article identifies a previously unnoticed network of allusions by three Roman poets (Catullus, Propertius and Ovid) to one another and to Book 1 of Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica. It shows that these intertextual links are pivoted on the three poets’ common use of the verse-ending lintea malo in scenes of departure by sea, and on their common interest in framing other aspects of the nautical context (especially the naval equipment involved and the presence of a favourable wind) in specific ways. Highlighting the presence in all three cases of departing male lovers with traditionally compromised or otherwise dubious claims to heroism, the article argues that each of the three instances shows the poet in question interacting competitively and self-consciously with the usages of his predecessor(s) (and with those usages’ immediate contexts) and exploiting the choices made by them to serve his new context and to advertise his personal skill in the creative deployment of revered poetic models.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
I would like to thank CQ's reader for their helpful comments, and Peta Fowler and Tristan Franklinos for valuable pointers and encouragement.
References
1 Apollonius: Prop. 3.21.11 recalls Argon. 1.386; Prop. 3.21.12 recalls Argon. 1.395–6: Fedeli, P., Properzio: il libro terzo delle Elegie (Bari, 1985), 613Google Scholar; Heyworth, S.J., Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius (Oxford, 2007), 397 n. 100Google Scholar; Heyworth, S.J. and Morwood, J.H.W. (edd.), A Commentary on Propertius Book 3 (Oxford, 2010), 310Google Scholar; Prop. 3.21.14 recalls Argon. 1.423–4. Catullus: Prop. 3.21.5 (omnia sunt temptata) recalls Catull. 11.13–14 (omnia … temptare simul parati) (and ultimately Sappho, fr. 31.17); Prop. 3.21.17 (Hadriaci) and 3.21.20 (phaselus) together recall Catullus 4: Heyworth and Morwood (this note), 311. undisonos in 3.21.18 is first attested there, and could reference the trio of similar formulations in Catullus 64 (fluentisono, 52; clarisonas, 125; raucisonos, 263): Fedeli (this note), 616. There are clear allusions to Catullus 64 in the next poem in Book 3: e.g. 3.22.11–14, cf. Catull. 64.1–5.
2 I use inverted commas to denote Propertius’ poetic persona in 3.21.
3 Text: Heyworth, S.J. (ed.), Sexti Properti elegi (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar; translation: Heyworth (n. 1).
4 Heyworth (n. 1), 397 n. 100; Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 310.
5 Text and translation: Race, W.H. (ed.), Apollonius Rhodius: Argonautica (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 48–9Google Scholar.
6 In none of the three cases I discuss is there good reason to envisage more than one sail (see e.g. Catull. 64.243 and pace K. Quinn [ed.], Catullus: The Poems [London, 19732], 331); lintea and uela are poetic plurals here: cf. Camps, W.A. (ed.), Propertius Elegies Book III (Cambridge, 1966), 152Google Scholar.
7 Text: Mynors, R.A.B. (ed.), C. Valerii Catulli carmina (Oxford, 1958), 67Google Scholar; translation mine. On the colours: Weber, C., ‘Two chronological contradictions in Catullus 64’, TAPhA 113 (1983), 263–71, at 270Google Scholar; Clarke, J., Imagery of Colour and Shining in Catullus, Propertius and Horace (New York, 2003), 77–8Google Scholar; Sklenář, R., ‘How to dress (for) an epyllion: the fabrics of Catullus 64’, Hermes 134 (2006), 385–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 387–8; Á. Tamás, ‘Forgetting, writing, painting: Aegeus as “the father of letters” in Catullus 64’, Paideia 73 (2018), 1895–913, at 1908–13.
8 From a large possible list, see on Catullus’ uses of Argonautica Book 1 in poem 64 e.g. Thomas, R.F., ‘Catullus and the polemics of poetic reference (Poem 64.1–18)’, AJPh 103 (1982), 144–64Google Scholar; Papanghelis, T., ‘Hoary ladies: Catullus 64.305ff. and Apollonius of Rhodes’, SO 69 (1994), 41–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clare, R.J., ‘Catullus 64 and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius: allusion and exemplarity’, PCPhS 42 (1996), 60–88Google Scholar; J.B. DeBrohun, ‘Catullan intertextuality: Apollonius and the allusive plot of Catullus 64’, in M.B. Skinner (ed.), A Companion to Catullus (Oxford, 2007), 293–313; G.C. Trimble, ‘A commentary on Catullus 64, lines 1–201’ (Diss., University of Oxford, 2010), 13, 26, 32–3, 37; Polt, C.B., ‘Apollonius, the launch of the Argo and the meaning and significance of decurrere at Catullus 64.6 and Valerius Flaccus 1.186’, CQ 62 (2012), 692–704CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dufallo, B., The Captor's Image: Greek Culture in Roman Ecphrasis (Oxford, 2013), 42–6, 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These uses cluster in Catullus’ own opening (see n. 16 below), but occur elsewhere too, as noted by R. Avallone, ‘Catullo e Apollonio Rodio’, Antiquitas 8 (1953), 8–75, at 40 (1.540–1 in Catull. 64.58), 59 (1.541 in Catull. 64.179) and 69 (1.553–4 in Catull. 64.278–9).
9 Catullus gives us the first extant examples in Latin poetry of the use of lintea (strictly ‘canvas’, ‘linen’) to mean ‘sail(s)’, possibly following Apollonius’ equivalent usage of λίνα: Lyne, R.O.A.M., Ciris: a Poem Attributed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), 289Google Scholar on Ciris 460, which echoes Argon. 1.1278 (again with lintea for λίνα). I am indebted to CQ's reader for this point and for the reference.
10 Avallone (n. 8), 64; and cf. Argon. 1.721, 1.768. The relative obscurity of Itoni makes this especially likely: cf. C.J. Fordyce (ed.), Catullus: A Commentary (Oxford, 1961), 305 (Aegeus’ use of it is ‘an absurd piece of Alexandrian erudition’) and cf. 274; D.H. Garrison, The Student's Catullus (Norman, 20043), 140, 185.
11 Ov. Her. 5.53; Sil. Pun. 1.689: Fedeli (n. 1), 614.
12 Fedeli (n. 1), 614; Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 310.
13 As noted by Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 312, who also cite Ov. Met. 6.446.
14 Demolished by Sulla in the 80s: Conwell, D.H., Connecting a City to the Sea: The History of the Athenian Long Walls (Leiden, 2008), 194–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 It is also the road that he took to go to Crete in the first place, of course: Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 312.
16 Avallone (n. 8), 14–18, 21–31; Thomas (n. 8), especially 146–60; Syndikus, H.P., Catull. Eine Interpretation. II, Die grossen Gedichte (61–68) (Darmstadt, 1990), 117–23Google Scholar, 125 n. 107, 128; Clare (n. 8), 62–5; DeBrohun (n. 8), especially 295–306; Trimble (n. 8), 13, 19–20, 26, 32–3, 37, 44–5, 52–3.
17 For these terms, see Hinds, S.E., The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse (Cambridge, 1987), 151Google Scholar n. 16, 182 s.v. ‘allusion, “two-tier”’; Thomas, R.F., ‘Virgil's Georgics and the art of reference’, HSPh 90 (1986), 171–98Google Scholar, at 188–9; Hinds, S.E., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998), 31Google Scholar; Nelis, D.P., Vergil's Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Leeds, 2001), especially 5Google Scholar (with references), 519 (index s.v. ‘two-tier allusion’); and cf. Polt (n. 8), 696–7; C.B. Polt, ‘A Catullan/Apollonian “window reference” at Vergil Eclogue 4.31–36’, Hermes 144 (2016), 118–22; and id., ‘Furrowing prows: Varro of Atax's Argonautae and transgressive sailing in Virgil's Aeneid’, CQ 67 (2017), 542–57 for some relevant examples.
18 Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 310; see nn. 1 and 8 above.
19 Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 310; though contrast Fedeli (n. 1), 614. Camps (n. 6), 152 leaves this open.
20 See LSJ9 s.v. ἠλακάτη. Some scholars of ancient textiles prefer ‘spindle’: see E.J.W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles (Princeton, 1991), 263–4, endorsed by M. Del Freo, M.-L. Nosch and F. Rougemont, ‘The terminology of textiles in the Linear B tablets, including some considerations on Linear A logograms and abbreviations’, in C. Michel and M.-L. Nosch (edd.), Textile Terminologies in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the Third to the First Millennia B.C. (Oxford, 2010), 338–87, at 355–6.
21 As quoted in Ath. Deipn. 11.474b–475a; see L. Pagani (ed.), Asclepiade di Mirlea: I frammenti degli scritti omerici (Rome, 2007), 199–204 on this fragment (F 6). An important parallel for the transferred usage is ἱστός, paired with ἠλακάτη in Homer (Il. 6.491; Od. 1.357, 21.351; cf. Anth. Gr. 9.190.5), which can mean both ‘ship's mast’ and ‘beam of a loom’: see Bertolín, R., ‘The mast and the loom: signifiers of separation and authority’, Phoenix 62 (2008), 92–108Google Scholar; M.-L. Nosch, ‘The loom and the ship in ancient Greece: shared knowledge, shared terminology, cross-crafts, or cognitive maritime-textile archaeology?’, in H. Harich-Schwarzbauer (ed.), Weben und Gewebe in der Antike / Texts and Textiles in the Ancient World (Oxford, 2016), 109–32; see also n. 38 below.
22 Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 307.
23 See n. 1 above.
24 socii: Fedeli (n. 1), 613; Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 310, though for caution see Camps (n. 6), 151.
25 Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 307: ‘magnum as the first word overturns the Callimachean interest in the small scale and rejection of the large’.
26 These cluster in Heroides 10 (Ariadne): see e.g. Jacobson, H., Ovid's Heroides (Princeton, 1974), 213–27Google Scholar; Pavlock, B., Eros, Imitation, and the Epic Tradition (New York, 1990), 129–46Google Scholar; Barchiesi, A., ‘Future reflexive: two modes of allusion and Ovid's Heroides’, HSPh 95 (1993), 333–65Google Scholar, at 346–50; Knox, P.E., Ovid Heroides: Select Epistles (Cambridge, 1995), 233–57Google Scholar passim; Smith, R.A., Poetic Allusion and Poetic Embrace (Ann Arbor, 1997), 10–13Google Scholar; L. Fulkerson, The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides (Cambridge, 2005), 32, 127, 133, 137–40; Armstrong, R., Cretan Women: Pasiphae, Ariadne, and Phaedra in Latin Poetry (Oxford, 2006), 221–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 See Jacobson (n. 26), 10, 312–19, 347. Book 3 appeared in the late 20s: Camps (n. 6), 1; J.K. Newman, ‘The third book: defining a poetic self’, in H.C. Günther (ed.), Brill's Companion to Propertius (Leiden, 2006), 319–52, at 330; Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 44. On dating the Heroides in relation to Propertius’ later Book 4: Knox (n. 26), 18; S.H. Lindheim, Mail and Female: Epistolary Narrative and Desire in Ovid's Heroides (Madison, 2003), 197 n. 74; Fulkerson (n. 26), 13.
28 Text: Knox (n. 26), 51; translation mine.
29 The section Her. 5.55–74 recalls e.g. Catull. 64.53–7, 64.60, 64.126–8 (and 5.41–2 the opening of poem 64); on the importance of Theseus’ abandonment of Ariadne across the Heroides collection, see Fulkerson (n. 26), especially 28, 32–6, 122–42. Oenone's own knowledge of Theseus’ treatment of Helen (5.127–30) is relevant too: Fulkerson (n. 26), 62–3.
30 Especially for 64.241–4 cf. Her. 5.55–6, 5.61–6. Ariadne and Aegeus as opposites and parallels: Gaisser, J.H., ‘Threads in the labyrinth: competing views and voices in Catullus 64’, AJPh 116 (1995), 579–616Google Scholar, at 605; Armstrong (n. 26), 215–16; Dufallo (n. 8), 64–6; Tamás (n. 7), 1907.
31 ‘… and, whirled by their rowing, the sea grew white with foam’; cf., in Apollonius, the sequence Argon. 1.540–3 and 1.554. I assume that incanuit is correct, not incanduit: see Fordyce (n. 10), 279; Syndikus (n. 16), 123 n. 91.
32 On this core theme, and the Argonauts’ (and Jason's) thematic connections with Theseus, see e.g. J.C. Bramble, ‘Structure and ambiguity in Catullus LXIV’, PCPhS 16 (1970), 22–41; D. Konstan, ‘Neoteric epic: Catullus 64’, in A.J. Boyle (ed.), Roman Epic (London, 1993), 59–78, at 65–76; Weber (n. 7), 267–9; Zetzel, J.E.G., ‘Catullus, Ennius, and the poetics of allusion’, ICS 8 (1983), 251–66Google Scholar, at 259–62; Gaisser (n. 30), especially 591–3, 596–7, 613; Clare (n. 8); E.M. Theodorakopoulos, ‘Catullus 64: footsteps in the labyrinth’, in A.R. Sharrock and H. Morales (edd.), Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations (Oxford, 2000), 115–41, at 125–9; Sklenář (n. 7), 390–1; DeBrohun (n. 8), 309–10. One specific parallel relevant to this article is in the description of their respective ships: 64.9, cf. 64.84.
33 ‘For she herself also fashioned the swift ship’: Thomas (n. 8), 149; Syndikus (n. 16), 120; Gaisser (n. 30), 583; Clare (n. 8), 62 with n. 11; Trimble (n. 8), 26; Polt (n. 8), 701–2; Dufallo (n. 8), 43; Polt (n. 17), 120.
34 ‘… the breeze now renders the journey smooth and favourable for the sailors’.
35 Heyworth and Morwood (n. 1), 310.
36 The indicative secundat steps beyond Apollonius’ optative ἐπιπνεύσειε: ‘Propertius’ does not have to pray for a fair wind: he can feel one right now.
37 Cf. Oenone's criticisms at 5.109–13. Given Paris’ profile, a sexual pun here should probably not be ruled out: cf. Adams, J.N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 46, 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar (rigidus used of the erect penis in Petron. Sat. 134.11; Mart. 11.16.5; Priapea 4.1, 45.1).
38 Catullus’ fondness for uagus—Fordyce (n. 10), 310; Quinn (n. 6), 329—may be a target too. The manoeuvre also works in Greek: Ovid's recharacterized mast becomes the third of a trio of terms involved that are central to the vocabulary both of sailing and of weaving: just as λίνα denotes both the ‘sail’ and the ‘thread’, and ἠλακάτη both the ‘masthead’ and the ‘distaff’/‘spindle’ (see n. 20 above), ἱστός is both the ‘mast’ and the ‘loom’ itself (see n. 21 above): an apt choice by Ovid here given the importance of weaving to Catullus 64 (see n. 43 below).
39 From archaic Greek poetry onwards: e.g. Nagy, G., Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond (Cambridge, 1996), 64–6Google Scholar.
40 See e.g. Jacobson (n. 26), 319–48; Fulkerson (n. 26), especially 55–66 on Heroides 5; Armstrong (n. 26), 221–41; J. Goodsell, ‘Generic experimentation in Ovid's Heroides’, in M. Borg and G. Miles (edd.), Approaches to Genre in the Ancient World (Newcastle, 2013), 59–78; Drinkwater, M.O., ‘Irreconcilable differences: pastoral, elegy, and epic in Ovid's Heroides 5’, CW 108 (2015), 385–402Google Scholar.
41 As well as elegy and bucolic poetry: see in detail Drinkwater (n. 40), especially 395–6.
42 Silius may in fact take the allusive thread (or part of it) a stage further: the shaping of his similar line (summo iam dudum substringit lintea malo, Pun. 1.689), where Fabius Maximus is being compared with an experienced mariner who ‘reefs his sail at once on the topmost mast’ at the approach of a potentially troublesome wind (Corum/Caurum) may (just possibly) indicate a response to, and inversion of, the favourable, gentle winds in Ovid (aura leuis) and Propertius (aura; Silius’ summo would replace Propertius’ extremo).
43 See Gaisser (n. 30); Theodorakopoulos (n. 32), 129–34; Robinson, T.J., ‘Under the cover of epic: pretexts, subtexts and textiles in Catullus’ carmen 64’, Ramus 35 (2006), 29–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sklenář (n. 7).