The thematic principle around which the elegiac collections were organized was the love affair. Each book of the canonical elegists was devoted to a single beloved of the opposite sex. Like all generic laws, this is more a rule of thumb than an unalterable decree of nature. Cornelius Gallus is the first true elegist, in that all four of his books were devoted to his beloved, Lycoris, and were written in elegiac couplets. Unfortunately, while Gallus looms large in the poetry of Vergil, Propertius, and Ovid, his poetry has all but disappeared. Tibullus wrote two books of poetry. The first is devoted to Delia, but also features three pederastic poems (1.4,1.8, 1.9) dedicated to a certain Marathus. Tibullus here is following Hellenistic precedent in which erotic poetry written in elegiac meters was generally homoerotic in nature. Catullus did the same, writing erotic epigrams about his love for Juventius, as well as poetry on a variety of other subjects. Tibullus dedicates his second book exclusively to his travails with the ominously named Nemesis. Both books of Tibullus’ poetry also feature poems dedicated to his patron, Messalla Corvinus. The first three books of Propertius are devoted to his love for Cynthia, yet they too are liberally sprinkled with poems addressed to Propertius’ patron, Maecenas, with programmatic poetic statements, as well as with poems such as 2.7 and 3.4, which are at least as political as they are amatory. Ovid’s Amores recount the course of his affair with Corinna. Thus, with certain exceptions, the works of the elegists are distinguished by their being thematically organized around the recounting of the events, if not the history, of a poet’s all-consuming love affair with his mistress in what presents itself (however ironically) as a confessional mode.
Catullus’ mistress, Lesbia, is the central focus of his most famous poetry too. Nonetheless, much of that poetry is not written in elegiac couplets, and much of what is written in them is on topics other than the poet’s affair. Yet it is precisely the Lesbia poems that are adduced by Propertius and Ovid when Catullus is presented as the founder of love elegy. Moreover, where the polymetrics’ influence on the elegists is widely conceded, the epigrams’ condensed style, rough prosody, and eschewal of narrative, mythological elaboration, and other devices of Alexandrian learning were of more limited impact (Lyne 1980; 103; Ross 1975: 116; Quinn 1959 [1969 reprint]: 57).
World History
