1. For rare treatments of 3.12 on its own terms, see Nethercut, W.R., ‘Propertius 3.12-14’, CP 65 (1970), 99–102Google Scholar; Cairns, F., Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh 1972), 197–201Google Scholar; Jacobson, H., ‘Structure and Meaning in Propertius Book 3’, ICS 1 (1976), 160–73Google Scholar; Lieberg, G., ‘Formale und inhaltliche Analyse von Properz III, 12’, Latomus 58 (1999), 785–98Google Scholar; Brouwers, J.H., ‘On the Summary of the Adventures of Odysseus in Propertius 3.12’, in Lardinois, A., van der Poel, M. and Hunink, V. (eds.), Land of Dreams: Greek and Latin Studies in Honour of A.H.M. Kessels (Leiden 2006), 215–28Google Scholar. Otherwise, scholarly interest in 3.12 comes largely from the external perspective of other poems or broader themes. Galla herself has attracted comment as the novel and sympathetic portrait of a married woman which Propertius would later develop through Arethusa in 4.3 and Cornelia in 4.11: see here Becker, C., ‘Die späten Elegien des Properz’, Hermes 99 (1971), 449–80, at 469–71Google Scholar; Fantham, E., ‘The Image of Women in Propertius' Poetry’, in Günther, H.-C. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Propertius (Leiden 2006), 183–98, at 196f.Google Scholar; and, briefly, H.-C. Günther, ‘The Fourth Book’, in Günther op. cit., 353–95. Others have been concerned with the historical identity of the addressee Postumus, and with whether he is the same figure to whom Horace Odes 2.14 is addressed: see here White, P., ‘Postumus, Curtius Postumus, and Rabirius Postumus’, CP 90 (1995), 151–61Google Scholar, and Keith, A., Propertius: Poet of Love and Leisure (London 2008), 5–7 (White argues no; Keith, yes)Google Scholar.

2. Here I follow Heyworth's recent OCT edition of the text of Propertius (Oxford 2007). As Fedeli's Teubner had done (Stuttgart 1984), Heyworth presents Book 3 as containing 24 poems, with the elegies transmitted as 3.24 and 3.25 combined as a single composition.

3. A trend of which much has been made recently by Cairns, F., Sextus Propertius: The Augustan Elegist (Cambridge 2006), 348 and passimGoogle Scholar; cf. generally Johnson, W.R., A Latin Lover in Ancient Rome: Readings in Propertius and His Genre (Columbus OH 2009)Google Scholar, for a reading that emphasises Propertius' stubborn erotic focus until the very end. It is worth noting that numerous elegies in Book 3 contain erotic material; but also that, increasingly, the poet's private life becomes a point of departure rather than a focus in itself.

4. Hubbard, M., Propertius (Bristol 1974), 75–115Google Scholar, is still influential in this context. See also Sullivan, J., Propertius: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge 1976), 70f.Google Scholar; Lyne, R.O.A.M., The Latin Love Poets: From Catullus to Horace (Oxford 1980), 136–38Google Scholar. But, in general, critical assessments of Propertius Book 3 as a collection remain in dire need of updating.

5. E.g. Cairns (n3 above), 349. Fear, T., ‘Propertian Closure: The Elegiac Inscription of the Liminal Male and Ideological Contestation in Augustan Rome’, in Ancona, R. & Greene, E. (eds), Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry (Baltimore 2005), 13–10Google Scholar, presents a provocative reading in which the recovery of his wits that accompanies Propertius' break-up with Cynthia at 3.24 allows Propertius to position his earlier erotic elegy as belonging to a permitted space of youthfully excessive behaviour.

6. Houghton, L.B.T. ‘The Drowned and the Saved: Shipwrecks and the cursus of Latin Love Elegy’, CCJ (PCPS) 53 (2007), 161–79Google Scholar.

7. Wallis, J.A.C., ‘Reading False Closure (in)to Propertian Elegy’, in Grewing, F. and Acosta-Hughes, B. (eds.), The Door Ajar: False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art (Heidelberg 2012 [forthcoming])Google Scholar.

8. For such a view of Galla, see E. Fantham (n.1 above), 195f. Maltby, R., ‘Love and Marriage in Propertius 4.3’, in Cairns, F. (ed.), Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, Vol. 3 (Liverpool 1981), 243–47Google Scholar, discusses the critical unease that has attended Arethusa's open declaration of her married status even early in Book 4.

9. Heyworth, S. and Morwood, J.H.W., A Commentary on Propertius Book 3 (Oxford 2011), 21Google Scholar.

10. See esp. Nethercut, W.R., ‘The Ironic Priest. Propertius’ “Roman Elegies,” III, 1-5: Imitations of Horace and Vergil’, AJP 91 (1970), 382–107Google Scholar.

11. On the constans fides of the (male) elegiac lover, see Cairns, F., ‘Horace, Odes 3.7’, in Harrison, S. J. (ed.), Homage to Horace: A Bimillenary Celebration (Oxford 1995), 65–99, at 73Google Scholar, with examples and bibliography.

12. On this general point, the observation of Nethercut (n.1 above), 102, is very helpful: ‘We should note that Propertius does not distinguish between the fides of married women and the straightforward interchange of affection all lovers ought to cultivate.’

13. The supposed infidelity of (Propertian) elegiac women is dealt a mortal wound by Cynthia's apologia in 4.7 (although she would say that, wouldn't she?); and is, perhaps, finally killed off by the last elegiac woman of them all—the faithful Cornelia of 4.11.

14. The names of the two characters are significant, though perhaps not in the way that much of the discussion about them would suggest. Cairns (n.1 above), 16-20, suggests that Postumus might be the senator and proconsul C. Propertius Postumus, and thus a relative of Propertius; see also White (n.1 above). But Heyworth and Morwood (n.9 above), 222, are surely right in pointing out that both Postumus and Galla are common names typically used generically in literature—a seeming generality as the poem begins, then, which sets up the ‘surprise’ revelation of an apparently real identity when Galla becomes Aelia Galla in the poem's last line (a revelation I return to in the middle of my discussion). Furthermore, both names Postumus and Galla bring with them literary associations. As we will see (pp.120f. below), Galla suggests an elegiac connection though the Gallus of Propertius Book 1, (and) through Gallus the elegiac poet; Postumus, by contrast, directs attention outside elegy, not only through his participation in public Augustan affairs but also through a suggestion of the lyric Postumus who is addressed at Horace Odes 2.14 (on this connection, see again White [n.1 abovel and Keith [n.1 above], 5–7).

15. For variations of this topos in the context of Propertius and Cynthia, see especially 1.6, 1.8, 1.11-12, 1.17, 1.19,2.19.

16. And his mistress is sleeping alone (2.29.24); I return to this at the end of my discussion.

17. See esp. Greene, E., ‘Elegiac Woman: Fantasy, Materia and Male Desire in Propertius 13 and 1.11’, AJP 166 (1995), 310-18, at 313–18Google Scholar.

18. For treatments of Horace Odes 3.7 in the context of Propertius 3.12, see Pasquali, G., Orazio Lirico (Florence 1920), 463–70Google Scholar; Cairns (n.11 above); Davis, G., Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse (Berkeley 1991), 43–50Google Scholar.

19. Cairns (n.11 above), 68-70.

20. Harrison, S.J., ‘Horace, Odes 37: An Erotic Odyssey?’, CQ 38 (1988), 186-92, at 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points out that the oceanic separation of Asterie and Gyges brings the Odyssey into play—a parallel that becomes explicit later in Propertius 3.12 through the direct comparison of Postumus and Galla with Odysseus and Penelope, and through a (highly tendentious) paraphrase of Odysseus' wanderings at Prop. 3.12.24-37; on which see Brouwers (n.1 above). It is worth noting that Odysseus' own paraphrase of his adventures at Od. 23.310-41 is already rather tendentious, particularly in respect of Circe (321) and Calypso (333-37).

21. See the (typically reserved) survey of varying approaches to Hor. Odes 3.7 in Nisbet, R.G.M and Rudd, N., A Commentary on Horace Odes Book III (Oxford 2004), at 113–15Google Scholar; see also the brief summary of approaches in Cairns (n.11 above), 68f. Some readers emphasise a tone of moral conservatism (e.g. Bradshaw, A., ‘Horace and the Therapeutic Myth: Odes 3.7; 3.11, and 3.27’, Hermes 106 [1978], 156–76Google Scholar; Santirocco, M., Unity and Design in Horace's Odes [Chapel Hill 1986], 125–28Google Scholar); but others—adopting an approach firmly disapproved by Nisbet and Rudd—suggest that the Horatian narrator actually sympathises with the seducers, and especially with Enipeus (e.g. Owens, W.M., ‘Nuntius uafer et fallax: An Alternative Reading of Horace, C. 37’, CW 85 [1992], 161–71Google Scholar).

22. Davis (n.18 above), 47.

23. Cairns (n.11 above), 68-75; Davis (n.18 above), 45,48. Cf. also Horace's poking at elegiac clichés in his ode addressed to Tibullus (Odes 133). Horace's use of conspicuously elegiac language is important, too, in terms of his own lyric project: in one sense, Horace appeals to elegiac symbols in Odes 3.7 in negotiating himself away from the excessive and weighty publicness of his ‘Roman Odes’ (Odes 3.1-6).

24. It is a significant connection, too, that Paetus' death occurs in the context of a betrayal of fides at Prop. 3.735f.

25. See here Harrison (n.20 above), 187, for both the relevance of the Odyssey to the poetic motif of separated lovers, and for the identification of this motif as particularly elegiac.

26. Heyworth and Morwood (n.9 above), 229.

27. Cf. Günther (n.1 above), 368f., with reference to Arethusa in 4.3.

28. At 1.9.9-12 Propertius makes quite clear the effectiveness of his own particular type of elegiac verse in wooing women.

29. See e.g. D.F. Kennedy, The Arts of Love: Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge 1993), 31-33; Sharrock, A.R., ‘Constructing Characters in Propertius’, Arethusa 33 (2000), 263-83 (esp. 270f.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greene, E., ‘Gender and Genre in Propertius 2.8 and 2.9’, in Batstone, W.W. and Tissol, G. (eds.), Defining Genre and Gender in Latin Literature: Essays Presented to William S. Anderson on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (New York 2005), 211–38Google Scholar.

30. The widespread association of different types of (drinking-)water with genres of writing is particularly prominent at the start of Book 3: see esp. 3.1.5f. and 3.3.1-6, 51f. On the potential generic symbolism of the Araxes (the Araxes is, significantly, depicted on Aeneas' emblematically epic shield at Virgil Aen. 8.728) see Richardson, L., Propertius Elegies I-IV (Norman 1977), 369Google Scholar; Heyworth and Morwood (n.9 above), 224.

31. Cairns (n.1 above), 201; see also Brouwers (n.1 above) on the connections between this episode and the poem as a whole.

32. For weeping as an elegiac trait in both lover and beloved, cf. e.g. 1.3.46 (Cynthia) and 2.14.14 (Propertius). At 4.3.26 the weeping of Arethusa (whom Galla in many ways foreshadows) marks her too as an elegiac character. See here Heyworth and Morwood (n.9 above), 222, on Prop. 3.12.1; Cairns (n.11 above), 73, with bibliography.

33. On the significance of Gallus especially in Propertius Book 1, see now Cairns (n.3 above), 104-45.

34. Generic categories become further confused when Propertius includes his eroticised catalogue of Odysseus' epic wandering at 3.12.24-37—a sequence that must recall Propertius (programmatic?) engagement with Homeric epic in the opening poem of Book 3, at 3.1.25-34 (the Odyssean sequence in 3.12 also epicises in retrospect the opening ‘elegiac’ separation of Postumus and Galla; see n.20 above). On the generically ‘odd’ nature of the Odyssean catalogue in this elegiac poem see Cairns (n.1 above), 200f.

35. Cf. Maltby (n.8 above), 247, on the cultural value of representing marriage in Prop. 43: ‘In her faithfulness to her openly acknowledged husband Arethusa, like Cornelia in 4,11, can be seen as representing the loyal wife of the Augustan ideal.’

36. Syndikus, H.P., Die Lyrik des Horaz (2 vols.: Darmstadt 1972–1973), ii.98–102Google Scholar; Cairns (n.11 above), 68-72.

37. Davis (n.18 above), 44.

38. See generally Gibson, R.K., Excess and Restraint: Propertius, Horace, and Ovid's Ars Amatoria (London 2007)Google Scholar, for the characterisation of lyric and elegy along thematic lines of centrality and extremity, respectively.

39. See the excellent discussion of Oliensis, E., Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (Cambridge 1998), 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Cairns (n.11 above), 71 (my emphasis).

41. The way here in which elegy asserts a moral superiority over lyric in essence repeats a claim it has already made over epic: see Wiggers, N., ‘Reconsideration of Propertius II.1’, CJ 72 (1977), 334–41Google Scholar.

42. Owens (n.21 above).

43. Harrison (n.20 above), 191.

44. See textual discussion in Heyworth, S.J., Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius (Oxford 2007), 346f.Google Scholar

45. See e.g. Fedeli, P., Sesto Properzio: il libro terzo delle Elegie (Bari 1985), 398Google Scholar.

46. E.g. Jacobson (n.1 above), 162, asserts [t]hat Postumus is another Ulysses cannot be taken seriously'; see also Brouwers (n.1 above), 220, who argues that Postumus is not equated with Ulysses through any heroism on his part but rather only because of ‘the admirable behavior of Galla’.

47. The inevitability of infidelity in such situations will be reasserted once again at 3.20, when Propertius will cast himself as the successful seducer of a girl whose uir—like Postumus in 3.12— has left her behind in pursuit of wealth abroad.

48. See n.21 above.

49. E.g. Janan, M., The Politics of Desire: Propertius IV (Berkeley 2001), 103Google Scholar, writing rhetorically with reference to 4.7, uses in part elegy's reliance on a ‘traditional’ ideal of fides to undermine the apparent distinction between the elegiac puella and the kind of matronal woman symbolised by Galla: ‘How different, in truth, is the elegiac ethos from the mos maiorum?’

50. This perspective is well explained by Cairns (n.11 above), 74.

51. In Cynthia's own words, in fact: non ego tarn facilis, ‘I am not so easy’ (2.2933).

52. In this way, the thematic pattern of 3.12 also reverses the pattern expressed back at 1.11. 17f.: there, a concession that he believes Cynthia to be faithful gives way, all the same, to Propertius' fixation on infidelity; now, by contrast, the implicit suggestion of infidelity that underpins the opening of 3.12 is displaced by the emphatic example of faithfulness on Galla's part.

53. So too with Catullus' emphasis on an ‘eternal bond of sacred friendship’ (aeternum hoc sanctae foedus amicitiae, 109.6) in his ‘final’ Lesbia poem; and with the sudden introduction of a married persona (and the theme of chastity) in Ovid Amores 3.13.