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Genre and Real Life in Latin Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Jasper Griffin
Jasper Griffin
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford
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Extract

As long as poetry has existed, men. have wondered and argued about its relationship to reality. The Muses, meeting Hesiod beneath Mount Helicon, told him that they knew how to tell many lies that sounded like truth; Solon and Pindar echo the chastening refrain, and Plato and Aristotle are concerned to find new answers to the hoary problem. Poetry is in fact a very slippery stuff, which seems to turn into something else as we try to comprehend it; like Proteus, it can turn under our grasp into a raging fire—the revolutionary Marxist view, perhaps; or a wild beast—the Freudian id, as it might be; or, most commonly, into a stream of water, which flows away to nothing between our hands.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 71 , November 1981 , pp. 39 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Jasper Griffin 1981. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Hesiod, Theogony 22–8; Solon, fr. 29 West, ; Pindar, Ol. I. 30.

2 Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum, ignemque horribilemque feram fluviumque liquentem. Virg., Georg. 4. 441–2.

3 Bundy, E. L., Studia Pindarica I and II (1962)Google Scholar; and e.g. W. J. Slater, ‘Futures in Pindar’. CQ 19 (1969), 86. A balanced view: Lloyd-Jones, H. in JHS 93 (1973), 109–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (1968), 557Google Scholar; Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., Commentary on Horace, Odes Book I (1970) 73Google Scholar.

5 Griffin, J., ‘Augustan Poetry and the Life of Luxury’, JRS 66 (1976), 87–105,Google Scholar and ‘Propertius and Antony’, JRS 67 (1977), 17–26.

6 This is a widespread modern notion. We observe that many modern novels are about the writing of novels, and many modern poems about writing poetry; and Leo Steinberg had great success in the 1960's, as a critic of painting, with his dictum that ‘whatever else it may be, all great art is about art’ (cf. Wolfe, Tom, The Painted Word (1975), 81Google Scholar, for a cruel handling).

7 πολλὴ δὲ ἱστορία τοιαύτη παρὰ ποιηταἴς καὶ συγγραφεῦσι, παρ᾿ ὦν καὶ λήψῃ τὴν χορηγίαν, ἐπιφωνήσεις δὲ καὶ τῶν Σαπφοῦς ἐρωτικῶν καὶ τῶν Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου. The salutary and neglected caution of ps.-Dionysius, in his τέχνη ῥητορική (Opuscula, ed. Usener-Radermacher, , 2. 270Google Scholar. 4): ‘Sappho contains examples of the epithalamios’, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπειδὴ οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ μεταχείρισις ποιήσεώς τε καὶ πεζοῦ λόγου, ἀλλ᾿ ὤσπερ καὶ τοῖς μέτροις, οὑτωσὶ δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἐννοήμασι διενήνοχεν ταῦτα… See now the edition of Menander Rhetor by D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson (1981), xxxi–v and D. A. Russell, ‘Rhetors at the Wedding’, PCPhS 205 (1979), 104–17.

8 One is reminded here of ideas that have been powerful at times in French literature, with results that may seem suggestively similar. Thus Chateau briand in his Essai sur la littérature anglaise (Garnier edn., vol. XI, 588 ff.), in a section significantly headed ‘Shakespeare corrupted taste’, pleads: ‘Persuadons-nous qu'écrire est un art, que cet art a des genres, chaque genre a des règles. Les genres et les règles ne sont pas arbitraires …’. The bad thing about Shakespeare is that ‘il ne distingue pas les genres’, and Chateaubriand triumphantly concludes that Racine is not only a better poet but actually more natural, because he observes them. One sees how readily technicality and classicism go hand in hand. Horsfall, N. M., Échos du Monde Classique 23 (1979), 84,Google Scholar doubts whether many Romans of the Augustan period knew anything about the ‘doctrine of the genre’.

9 On Propertius I. 3 see Lyne in PCPhS 196 (1970), 60–78; Williams, G., Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry (1980), 72Google Scholar. We could construct a ‘genre’ of ‘the rape of the sleeping beauty’ (cf. AP 5. 275; Terence, Eun. 600 ff.; Ovid, Ars 3. 765 ff.), and invoke that, too, to help explain the poem …

10 Cairns, F., Emerita 45 (1977), 336CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff.

11 For instance, the well known story of the betrothal of Tiberius Gracchus to the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher: Plut., Tib. Gracchus 4.

12 , Coniug. Praecepta 29 = Moralia 142c, a lapidary sentence for Roman ideas; and Roman Questions 65 = Moralia 279 f., on the question why the Roman husband approached his bride for the first time in darkness; and Lyne, R. O. A. M., The Latin Love Poets (1980), 5 ff.Google Scholar, and Grimal, P., L'amour à Rome (1963), 105 ffGoogle Scholar. on ‘les pudeurs romaines’ about marriage. On the age of Roman brides, Hopkins, K. in Population Studies 18 (1965), 309–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Ovid, Ars 2. 688. See also Ars 3. 585: hoc est, uxores quod non patiatur amari: conveniunt illas, cum voluere, viri.

14 Dover, K. J., Greek Homosexuality (1978), 52 ffGoogle Scholar.

15 Prop. 4. 5. 33 ff., Ov, ., Amores I. 8. 73,Google ScholarArs 3. 580.

16 Cf. for instance Gordon Williams in Oxford Classical Dictionary 2 s.v. Propemptikon: ‘The genre as such and its detailed specifications were probably the invention of Menander’. It is in fact striking that the term appears in poetry before it does in rhetoric: the celebrated Propempticon Pollionis of Cinna (Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum, ed. Morel (1927), 87).

17 Hubbard, M., Propertius (1974), 24Google Scholar.

18 ibid. 96 ff., cf. Hanslik in RE s.v. Propertius, 758. 48. Of another elegist too, Sir Ronald Syme remarks ‘The Amores enlist no persons of high rank as patrons or protectors,’ (History in Ovid (1978), 76). See also pp. 93–103, on the friends of Propertius, and p. 180: ‘For Ovid as for Propertius, “sodales” are disclosed, of about the same age and class.’

19 Cf. J. Clack in CW 71 (1971), 187. On the general question of literary patrons, see White, P., ‘Amicitia and the Profession of Poetry in Early Imperial Rome’, JRS 68 (1978), 74–92Google Scholar. I think this important article is misleading in one significant respect: a poet differed from other ‘amici’ in claiming the power to bestow immortality. That put him into a special category.

20 Cf. Stroh, W., Die röm. Liebeselegie ah werbende Dichtung (1971), 41Google Scholar.

21 F. Cairns in AJP 95 (1974), 150.

22 Contra, O. Skutsch in CP 58 (1963), 238, J. A. Barsby in Mnem. 28 (1975), 31.

23 See for instance M. P. Cunningham in CP 72 (1977), 76–8—a discussion worth pondering.

24 Ars 3. 579–80, cf. Prop. 4. 5. 33 ff., Ov., Am. I. 8. 73, Callimachus, Epigram 31 Pf., Horace, Serm. I. 2. 105.

25 Cynthia at Baiae, Prop. I. II; in the country, 2. 19; touring Italy, 2. 32.

26 Illyria, Prop. I.8; Asia, I. 6.

27 Cic., Philipp. 2. 58.

28 Virg., Buc. 10; Prop. I. 8.

29 e.g. Livy 42. 49; Kroll, , Die Kultur der ciceronischen Zeit (1933), 187Google Scholar.

30 Hor., Epode I. 11, Tib. I. 10. 3; cf. Tib. 2. 6. I castra Macer sequitur: tenero quid fiet Amori?

31 Hor., Epode I. 1, Tib. I. 3. I, Prop. 3. 4.

32 Tib. I. I. 75, Hor., Carm. 3. 26, Prop. 4. I. 135; Ov., Am. I. 9.

33 Generic composition 4.

34 cf. J. C. Yardley, Phoenix 27 (1973), 287, who cites Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 9. 2, Plut., Mor. 491 d, 52 b–c, 95 c–d, 97 a; Lucian, , Toxaris 18, 43Google Scholar.

35 Men even accompanied friends to exile: Cn. Sallustius went with Cicero as far as Brundisium and perhaps further (ad fam. 14. 4. 6. Münzer in RE s.v. Sallustius, 1912. 44); Cicero awaited Atticus at Dyrrachium and Quintus in Epirus (ad Att. 3. 7. 3; 3. 8. I, cf. also post red. ad Quir. 8). He promised to accompany Sestius, if he were exiled (pro Sest. 146). Tiberius was accompanied by a senator and at least two equites on Rhodes (Tac., Ann. 4. 15); one brave soul could claim to have accompanied Seneca to Corsica (Martial 7. 44, 45).

36 Memorably in [Virg.], Catelepton 5, cf. Prop. 3. 5. 19 ff., Horace, Epp. I. I. 10 ff. Reversed: Prop. 2. 34 b.

37 Hor., Carm. I. 29.

38 Prop. 2. 30. Reversed: Ov., Rem. Am. 539.

39 Hor., Carm., 3. I. 40, Epp. I. II. 27.

40 Virg., Georg., 2. 498.

41 Lovers are poor, Tib. I. I. 5, Prop. 3. 16, Ovid, Ars 2. 165, etc. Reversed (poverty drives out love): Ov., Rem. Am. 743.

42 Hor., Carm., 2. 2. 9–16, Epp. I. I. 43.

43 Catull. 8, II; Prop. 3. 24, 25; Ov., Am. 3. 25. II.

44 Hor., Carm. I. 34.

45 Hor., Epode I; Tibull. I. 3.

46 Hor., Carm. I. 3. Reversed (curse on a departing enemy): Hor., Epode 10.

47 Prop. I. 8, Hor., Carm. 3. 27, Ov., Am. 2. 11.

48 Prop. 3. 22, Hor., Epp. I. 11, Hor., Carm. 4. 5.

49 Catull. 9, Hor., Carm. I. 36, 2. 7.

50 Or she can spy on him (Prop. 4. 8)—or Ovid can recommend, as a cure for love, arriving unannounced, to see how unattractive she really is (Rem. Am. 341–8)

51 Catull. 96, Georgic 4, Aeneid 2 (Creusa), Aeneid 6, 472, Prop. 2. 26.

52 Prop. I. 17. 19, 2. 13. 17; Tib. I. I. 59.

53 Prop. 2. 8.

54 Prop. I. 19. II, 4. 7. 93. Variant: she can recall me from death, Prop. 2. 27.

55 Tib. I. 3. 55, Prop. 2. 28 c.

56 Aeneid 6. 450 ff.

57 Respectively: Horace, Epode I; Tibullus I. 3; Juvenal 3; Prop. 2. 16.

58 A version of this paper was read to the Roman Society on 3 June 1980.