Lentus spatiare: Travelling in Rome in the Ars Amatoria
By Erika Zimmermann Damer
Ovid’s interest in the topography of urban Rome appears as early as the Amores (e.g. 2.2, 3.2), but the first overview of the Augustan city occurs in Ars 1, where Ovid reformulates many of Augustus’ recently built or sponsored monuments as spaces suitable for finding women (Ars 1.1.49-50, Boyle 2003: 19-20). The speaker of the Ars catalogues porticos, theatres, the temple of Isis, Fora, the Arena, the Circus Maximus, and the temple of Palatine Apollo (1.67-88) as places that make their visitor an erotic masculine subject in urban space.
Messalla in Tibullus 1.7: Aporia or Castration as the Way of Love
By Paul Allen Miller
In poem 1.7, Tibullus celebrates the accomplishments of Messalla as an incarnation of Osiris. The occasion of the poem is the birthday of the triumphant general (1.7.1-2), and the mythic evocation of the god that occupies its center, as in a Pindaric ode, is meant to reflect the glory of the laudandus.
Women’s Travels in Latin Elegy
By Alison Keith
The Latin elegiac poets, from Gallus to Ovid, represent themselves as cosmopolitan citizens of Rome and her empire, with wide-ranging experience of travel around the Mediterranean (e.g., Gallus apud Verg. Buc. 6 and 10, Tib. 1.3, Ov. Am. 3.2), though based by preference in Rome (e.g., Gallus fr. 145.2-5 Hollis, Prop. 1.8, Ov. Ars 1.55-56). There, at the imperial center, they transact love affairs with their mistresses (e.g., Prop. 1.7-9, Tib. 1.2, Ov.
Love’s Journeys: Corcyra in Propertius 1.17 and Tibullus 1.3
By Micah Young Myers
Propertius and Tibullus typically represent their poetic personae avoiding travel in favor of pursuing the life of the elegiac amator at Rome or in the Italian countryside (e.g., Prop. 1.6, Tib. 1.1). Moreover, they discourage their beloveds from attempting journeys, expressing concern on the occasions when they do travel (e.g., Prop. 1.8, 1.11, 1.12, 2.19, 2.32, Tib. 1.9).