Joshua Paul, Boston University
This paper argues that Propertius employs the Furies as guardians of proper generic limits. This role is an intuitive extension of their religious role as defenders of natural boundaries: the Furies protect xenia, safeguard a rigid hierarchy within the family, and even keep celestial bodies in their proper orbits (Heraclitus Derveni Papyri D89). In the elegies of Propertius, we observe a unique development in which the elegist places the Erinyes front and center in passages of hypothetical or realized generic transgressions. The role of the Furies in the elegiac negotiation and renegotiation of generic limits has not yet been fully appreciated. This paper constitutes an exciting opportunity to study how Propertius tests the proper generic boundaries of love elegy (Hinds 1992) through invocations of the Furies.
In the early elegies of Propertius, the Furies often mark a boundary between Latin love elegy and incompatible genres such as tragedy and didactic. In Elegy 2.20, for example, Propertius reassures Cynthia that he will never leave her. In a jussive subjunctive, predicated upon an unthinkable condition, the elegist invites the tragicae Erinyes (Prop. 2.20.29) to torment him if he should abandon Cynthia, whose very name is a byword for love elegy (Heyworth 2012). The epithet tragicae further designates the Furies as the prerogative of a completely different genre, one Propertius repeatedly rejects (Richardson 1977: 390).
So, too, in Elegy 3.5, does Propertius imagine a time when, old and gray, he will ponder such unromantic Lucretian questions as earthquakes, rainbows, and the apocalypse (Fedeli 1985: 175). The capstone of this foray into philosophy is the existence of the underworld, whether the “Furies of Alcmaeon” exist (Alcmaeoniae Furiae, Prop. 3.5.41) and whether Tisiphone’s hair “rages” (furit, Prop. 3.5.40). Again, Propertius only considers the existence of the Furies in a hypothetical situation decades removed from the present reality of singlehearted devotion to love elegy. Propertius also limits the Furies to the tragic figure Alcmaeon.
In Book 4, Propertius deviates away from love elegy and towards Callimachean aetiological elegy. Indeed, Propertius openly declares his subject matter as sacred rites, the gods, and old place names (Prop. 4.1a.69), all the while ignoring the warnings of Horos, “the boundary man” (ὅρος), to stay in his proper lane (Debrohun 2003: 11). Unsurprisingly, then, the Furies appear most vividly in their capacity as metaphorical lines in the sand in the book in which Propertius engages in the highest degree of generic experimentation (Hutchinson 2006: 1).
My argument about the generic valence of the Furies has important ramifications for contemporary scholarship on Latin love elegy. Heslin (2018) has observed that Propertius engages with myth in a kind of literary polemic against Vergil, emblematic of bucolic, didactic, and epic poetry. This paper argues for a more introspective approach to the relationship between mythology and genre. Propertius invokes the Furies to raise or reject the possibility of a potential generic ascension (Harrison 2007) from “trivial” love elegy to the heights of tragedy, didactic poetry, and aetiological elegy.