Virgilian Intertexts and Ironic Pathos in Propertius 2.16

Starting from an allusion to Eclogue 1 in Propertius 2.16, the article provides a new interpretation of the entire elegy in the light of the complex intertextual play which pervades the whole poem. Eclogues 1 and 10, the Georgics and even Horace are here combined with allusions to Comedy and evoked only to be subverted and parodied in a piece of Callimachean poetry, full of ‘metaliterary’ irony.

words of Meliboeus, who, leaving his beloved country, asks himself if he will ever see again his fields, the roof of his house and his crops, his beloved kingdoms. The expression mea regna, a poetic plural4 with a hint of pride or even philosophical implications,5 symbolizes Meliboeus' rural world,6 his horizon made of simple things, even modest and poor, a reassuring everyday life which constitutes his Cosmos, now made impossible by the Chaos of History. An alert reader can not help noticing the evident allusion to this passage in Propertius, Barbarus exutis agitat vestigia lumbis et subito felix nunc mea regna tenet!7 In both texts, as Wistrand has rightly pointed out,8 a barbarus takes possession of the poet's kingdoms: Meliboeus suffers because he has lost his lands assigned to a veteran,9 Propertius 'would' suffer because another 'barbarous' man, more precisely a praetor from Illyria, has now his girl, metaphorically defined as mea regna.
Wistrand observes that Propertius, desperate after having lost his love, "gives vent to his feelings in an elegy which contains this outburst".10 He has the merit of having signalled this allusion, thus influencing also subsequent scholars, but, in my opinion, he failed to fully understand the particular effect of this 4 Regna should first of all be considered as a 'metrema' (for the term see Traina 20042, Index s.v. 'metrema'), namely a word which tends to be used in fixed positions in the line for its metrical shape, in this case for the metrical advantage of a final open short syllable in comparison with the singular form (51 occurrences of regna against the 9 of regnum in Virgil); here there is also a stylistic reason for its use, since it amplifies the meaning of the word. See Traina 20042, ad loc. and ad ecl. 4.6. 5 Cucchiarelli 2012, ad loc. 6 Virgil never uses the term regnum for Rome (see Traina 20042, ad georg. 2.498). 7 The lesson exclusis lumbis of the manuscripts (ΠΛ) has been happily emended by Sandbach 1958-59, 4, into exutis lumbis, a conjecture now commonly accepted (see Fedeli 2005, ad loc. andHeyworth 2007, 177-178), since it fully restores the sense of the distich: the slave, who in the past was obliged to show himself in the forum naked to exhibit his physical vigour when for sale, has now become a rich praetor, who possesses Propertius' kingdom. The parallels with the language and images of Prop. 4.5.51-52 quorum titulus per barbara colla pependit / cretati medio cum saluere foro and Tib. 2.3.59-60 regnum ipse tenet quem saepe coegit / barbara gypsatos ferre catasta pedes seem to be decisive. 8 Wistrand 1977, 55-58. 9 Barbarus probably more in a moral sense (since he profanes the rural world) than literally, given that, even though Caesar and Pompey admitted provincials in their legions, there is no evidence of auxiliary troops without Roman citizenship (Cucchiarelli 2012, ad loc.). 10 Wistrand 1977, 55. intertext. Formicola, in a fine and detailed analysis of this parallel, insists on the traumatic experience of Virgil's Meliboeus and Propertius, both violated by the barbaries of history, which menaces their ways of living,11 while Syndikus, quoting Wistrand, follows him in observing that the "parallel with a military plundering campaign demonstrates the depth of the poet's anger" and that "in the literature of antiquity there is little that is comparable to this kind of outburst of uncontrolled emotions".12 On the other hand, Fedeli, observing that in this poem there is "un'atmosfera tipicamente letteraria" and that the tone of the poem seems excessively emphatic and declamatory, raises the hypothesis that irony could be the right key to reading this elegy.13 This, I think, is the correct perspective which is worth applying to the entire elegy, a poem which is mainly a telling example of a Callimachean poetic lusus.14 First of all, it should be observed that the poet and the persona poetae must be kept separated, especially in the second book of Elegies, where we do not find a Propertius amans, but a poeta scribens,15 who shows contemplative distance, irony and intellectualism.16 The intertextual strategy at work in this text, as I will try to demonstrate, is a literary play which aims to charge the diction with a plurality of sophisticated and refined ironic touches in the Alexandrine manner.
Firstly, it should be noticed that Propertius, a poet notoriously indebted to Virgil, usually alludes to the Eclogues for the similarity of stylistic register and especially for their erotic themes,17 but here the situation and the tone of the model are markedly different: Propertius has selected this passage from Eclogue 1 not, as usual, for the erotikon pathema, but for an intense sense of nostalgia (for home), which, 'trespassing' the limits of the genre, has been 11 Formicola 1985, 245. 12 Syndikus 2006, 280, note 117, and281, respectively. 13 Fedeli 2005 See Colaizzi 1993, 126 ("beginning with 2.1, Propertius frequently discusses poetics with a sophisticated air absent earlier in his work, offering a new voice whose apparent private and public concerns supplant those of his earlier distinctive persona, the miser amator") and 127 ("The personae of poet and lover thus are far more separated in Book 2 than in Book 1"). 16 See La Penna 1951, 3. 17 For the relationship between Propertius and Virgil see Fedeli 1998, 319-321 (with bibliography). Eclogues, for their love theme, are the Virgil's most imitated work by Propertius (see Fedeli 1988, 320), as it is evident in Prop. 2.34, where, in his tribute to Virgil, the elegiac poet devotes 6 lines to Aeneid, 2 to Georgics and 10 to Eclogues (one for each poem) marking the prominence of pastoral genre in his love poetry. See Thomas 1996, 263-264. changed into an ironic pathos for the beloved girl, in a suggestive example of Callimachean poikilia, that generic enrichment18 which is a peculiar trait of Propertius' carmen mixti generis.19 Mea regna in Virgil is a hyperbole (a modest rural farm is defined as a 'kingdom'), with a slight metaphoric value (Meliboeus, a shepherd in his lands, is like a king in his kingdom); Propertius goes further in making this metaphor even more audacious: if Meliboeus' realm was a physical place, his homeland, Propertius' kingdom is identified with a person, Cynthia, a capricious and unfaithful girl.20 Metaphor, as usual, reflects a system of values and the everyday life-experience of the speaker,21 but here we should rather insist on the different tone of the two characters and on literary motifs which pervade the compositions: Meliboeus, a personage particularly inclined to pathos,22 is yielding to emotion, melancholic as he is about his imminent departure from his home, destined to be soon invaded by a barbarian; Propertius 'plays' with literature, transferring (and 'elegizing') this metaphor into the language of militia amoris23 and, at the same time, reducing the pathos of the model into an intellectual, witty and ironic linguistic 'gesture' .24 The drama of land expropriation in Eclogue 1 has become nothing more than a funny situation in Propertius 2.16: a former barbarian slave, obliged in the near past to exhibit himself naked,25 has now become immediately a rich praetor,26 who has deprived the poet of See Fedeli 2006, 20: "Propertius' verses should be considered as a carmen mixti generis, as there were so many different genres and authors that influenced him". 20 On Propertian audacia, especially in creating bold metaphors, personifications and pathetic fallacy, see Postgate 18842, lxxv-lxxvi. 21 On this function of metaphor see Lakoff and Johnson 1980. 22 Perkell 2008 On militia amoris in Propertius, see Maltby 2006, 158-160 (with bibliography at 158, note 12). 24 We can include this elegy among the examples of Propertius' 'ironic erotic' , on which see Johnson 2012, 48-50. 25 Fedeli 2005, ad loc., underlines a point of irony in the change of status of the slave. 26 The unity of this poem has been contested (Havet 1916, 55-58, Sandbach 1958-59, 3-5, followed by Heyworth 2007, 177-179, but contra Hubbard 1974, 61-62, Wistrand 1977, Fedeli 2005, Lee and Lyne 2009), with the consequence that the praetor of line 1 would not be the same character as the barbarus of line 27. I agree with Fedeli 2005, ad loc., who, suggesting that we do not have to find realism in this situation, also observes that the term praetor can hardly be applied to whom has covered an important position in the administration of a province. 'his kingdom' , his beautiful puella, or, if we want to find an even more prosaic meaning for regna, who has occupied his bed.27 The mechanisms of intertextuality can be very subtle and various aspects should be considered when comparing parallel passages. First of all, it can be here hypothesised that possibly Propertius with the expression et subito felix, while indicating the unexpected fortune of the slave who has become a praetor and Cynthia's lover,28 is also alluding to the equally unexpected and quick expropriation of lands in Mantua, which made foreign soldiers 'happy' because of their new 'fertile' (alluded to by felix?) properties; but another and more evident point of contact must be highlighted: the word barbarus in both texts is placed as the first word of a hexameter line. In addition, this very Virgilian line (ecl. 1.71) is quoted by Propertius in another elegy, namely 1.22.5 cum Romana suos edit Discordia cives, in which he imitates, again in a hexameter, the Virgilian line-ending (also repeated at Aen. 12.583), striking as it is for its effective juxtaposition discordia ciues.29 But there is more. In Latin poetry barbarus is placed at the beginning of the hexameter, over and above these two passages, only in Horace, Epod. 16.11 barbarus heu cineres (in a sequence with the same rhythm of Virgil's hemistich),30 in a poem which is thematically close to Virgil's Eclogue 1.31 If for Virgil and Horace the ulcus of the civil war is still open, Propertius sublimates this theme in the realm of elegy, completely self-contained and exclusively focussed on love and poetry.32 That the quotation from Virgil has an ironic nuance is confirmed by the general tone of this elegy, a composition where the allusions to themes and situations of Comedy33 also set the effect of a series of other allusions to various more serious, and often pathetic, passages, quoted only to be subverted through the elegant (and again Alexandrian) technique of oppositio where the two appositions, divided between the two halves of the pentameter and by the effective asyndeton aduersatiuum, underline the different meaning of the arrival of the praetor: a praeda for Cynthia, a cura for the poet. The words are wisely selected from the poetic vocabulary to evoke different, strident atmospheres: praeda referred to a person to be exploited evokes the atmosphere of Comedy,35 cura, an elegiac word (which, differently from here, usually indicates affection and not anxiety),36 in association with maxima seems to recall a Virgilian stylistic feature, the 'pathetic apposition' ,37 which, deprived of the pathos of the model, here adds an ironic touch.  Giangrande 1967, 85-97 (who shows how this kind of allusion was practised not only by Alexandrian poets towards Homer but also between themselves) and Thomas 1986, 185-188, 198, who, in a useful typologization of allusion (especially in Virgil's Georgics) proposes to call it 'correction' -the oppositio is in many cases an erudite correction of the model -also noting (187)  Frag. 2 (Morel and Baehrens) Lydia doctorum maxima cura liber, but here the context is not pathetic -cura has a positive meaning (see Manzoni 1995, 72 where mea maxima cura (in Aeneas' words) is even closer to the Propertian allusion (mea is varied in mihi).
If it is true that cura alone is a common word in erotic-elegiac poetry, it is no accident that in order to find a use which recalls even more closely this Propertian passage we have to look again at Virgil, more precisely at Eclogue 10, a poem which constitutes a telling example of generic enrichment, indebted as it is to Latin love elegy and especially to Gallus' poetry. In ecl. 10.22-23: 'Galle, quid insanis?' inquit 'tua cura, Lycoris perque niues alium perque horrida castra secuta est.' Lycoris, Gallus' cura,39 conquered by another man (still a miles), has followed him to an inhospitable place, facing the hurdles of cold and winter, while Cynthia, wisely, will not follow her man since she is not attracted by honour and fame: Cynthia non sequitur fasces nec curat honores (v. 11); on the contrary, as Propertius himself suggests, comically here in the shoes of a detached praeceptor amoris, she will send the rapacious praetor back to other Illyriae, other places to plunder. Commentators have rightly observed the pointe of irony in the quasi-philosophical figure of Cynthia, who, detached from political power, is only interested in money, as explained in the following pentameter which, after an 'epic' hexameter, clarifies, with a vivid image and in comic language, her value system (semper amatorum ponderat una sinus).40 Here, the intertextual relationship is a subtle, complex mechanism of diffraction, a play of mirrors in which the Virgilian passages are evoked only to be changed, filtered as they are through the distorting lens of irony.
There is, indeed, not only irony but also an evident 'meta-literary irony' if we read line 11 in the light of the famous makarismos of georg. 2.490-496: 39 There is here a double interlinguistic pun, on which see Cucchiarelli 2013, ad loc.: "CURa LyCORis, perhaps echoing Theocritus ἁ δέ τυ κώρα (id. I, 82): one would then have the suggestion cura/κούρη = κώρα/Lycoris". The pun cura/κώρα was presumably already in Gallus' poetry. See Keith 2012, 289. 40 The pentameter ironically lowers the stylistic register of the previous hexameter also recurring to the verb ponderare, which is comic in origin, rare and almost exclusively prosaic (Fedeli 2005, ad loc.).  The ironic allusion to this highly philosophical passage is evident if we consider that fasces before Propertius is attested only 5 times41 and that only in this passage from Virgil (which is the closest in meaning) is put en relief between the penthemimeral and hephthemimeral caesuras. This makarismos is further quoted, again to be parodied, by Propertius at 1.12.15 felix qui potuit praesenti flere puellae, a trivialization of georg. 2.490 felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, a nobilissimus versus (as Augustine defines it in ciu. Dei 7.9), which for its quasi-proverbial nature was a common possess not only of educated readers but also of the common people.42 This parallel is particularly significant if we consider that Virgil is here proposing the lifestyle of the farmer as an ethical model, a way to happiness in opposition to the evils of city life. This motif also recurs in Prop. 2.16, where the poet, following a topos of Augustan poetry (inserted in the poem in a brusque and desultory manner, as often in Propertius),43 dreams of a Rome not dominated by money and power, where love would not be bought with gifts.44 The ironic tone of these themes is confirmed by another allusion, still in the same elegy (2.16.7-8), when the poet plays with another proverbial philosophical intertext, namely Hor. carm. 1.11.6-8 (sapias … carpe diem), which is recalled only to be parodied:45 The Horatian carpe diem has become, on the lips of the poeta praeceptor, a practical invitation to catch and shear the stupid 'rival-sheep' (a comic metaphor as well as that of messis for a wealthy man),46 rich as he is in luxuriant fleece: the agricultural linguistic meaning of the verb carpo, suggestively used by Horace in a metaphorical way to add graphic vividness to the image (it implies the metaphor of flower or fruit),47 is made more evident in Propertius' imitation, where, governing the metaphorical pecus, it equals tondere,48 probably also with an erudite allusion to the technical meaning a lanificio:49 comic language and motifs trespassing into the elegy have also assimilated and trivialized a more elevated Horatian model.50 that the first book of the Odes could have been published separately in the early 20's (see Hutchinson 2008, 138-140 and now Biddau 2017a, 117-144 and Biddau 2017b. 46 See Fedeli 2005, ad loc. The adjective stolidus is also a clear point of contact with Comedy, occurring only one further time in elegy (Ovid. Tr. 5.10.38), but 9 times in Plautus and 2 in Terence. See Yardley 1972, 137, note 11. 47 On the semantics of the Horatian carpe diem, see the fine analysis by Traina 19862, 227-251, who observes (237) that carpere implies a dramatic process (it is synonymous with lacero, distraho, lanio and uexo) and that it means 'to take a pinch' , with a tearing and progressive movement from the whole to the parts: such as plucking a daisy or eating an artichoke (or, I add, 'to pluck a chicken' , stripping off feather after feather). It should be noted that carpere, recalling the Greek καρπίζω, a similar sounding verb also employed in philosophical contexts (e.g., Epic., Epist. ad Men. 3.126), "might suggest to Horace's readers the words of a serious and austere philosopher" (Nisbet and Hubbard 1970, ad loc.), a serious diction, here ironically subverted by Propertius. 48 Fedeli 2005, ad loc. The expression carpe pecus is also highlighted by its placement at line end and by the repetition of the same syllable at the end and at the beginning of two contiguous words, the so-called 'ribattuta' (for the definition see Simonetti Abbolito 1995, 158); this syllabic encounter was perceived by ancient readers (see for instance Servius, ad Aen. 2.27 dorica castra) as a vitium orationis, since it sometimes creates a cacemphaton. For a discussion of this figure, not avoided by Virgil, but reserved for special effects, see Dainotti 2015, 77-78. 49 See Traina 19862, 234, who  namque (fatebor enim) dum me Galatea tenebat, nec spes libertatis erat nec cura peculi51 since the line end nec cura+genitive noun before Propertius is only attested in this Virgilian passage.52 There is also here an elegant Kontrastimitation, given that in Virgil the genitive is objective, in Propertius subjective. This syntactical change contributes to subverting the situation too: Tityrus, whilst possessed by the capricious Galatea, was, like a (temporary) elegiac lover, unable to do anything, let alone to take care of his peculium, an act that would have acquired his freedom (as in the end, once abandoned by his girl, he will succeed in doing), Propertius, on the other hand, being a true elegiac lover, is completely devoted to his girl and can not -and perhaps does not want to -be healed by the cura theatri, a remedium that by extinguishing the fire of love would exclude him from his regna, and from the genre of elegy.

Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to Stephen Harrison, Alexandre Pinheiro Hasegawa and Amneris Roselli, for their scrupulous and acute reading of this article.
because Jupiter does not always neglect the prayers of desperate lovers and sometimes punishes periuras puellas. Fedeli 2005, ad loc. 51 The anaphora of nec could also be here a point of contact between these two texts, acting as a 'figure of allusion' . On this function of repetition, see Wills 1996. 52 As for the simple collocation cura peculi, there is only another occurrence in all Latin poetry, namely Hor. Ars 330-332 an, haec animos aerugo et cura peculi / cum semel imbuerit, speremus carmina fingi / posse linenda cedro et leui seruanda cupresso?, which, as already noted (Brink 1971, ad loc.), recalls Virgil's Eclogue 1, in another case of oppositio in imitando: if for Tityrus the cura peculi is a means of acquiring his freedom, in Horace, employed as a metaphor for Roman avarice (as aerugo for envy), represents a negative attitude, which constitutes an obstacle to poetic creativity.