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Luxury As a Theme in Latin Love Elegy LUXURY AS A THEME IN LATIN LOVE ELEGY by -/ c. E. Chandler Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Classics at the University of Cape Town supervisor: Prof RA Whitaker, University of Cape Town September 1991 The University of Cape Town has been given the right to reprodu:;-; this thesis in whole or In par( Cooyright is :ic!d by the author. The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to thank the following individuals without whose patience and assistance this dissertation would not have been. completed: Prof K. M. Coleman who supervised my dissertation initially and continued to give me valuable advice; Dr M R Mezzabotta who took me under her wing for several months; my friend Miss D. Massenz, who courageously proof-read the English portions of my text; my supervisor Prof R. A. Whitaker, . whose "gentle insistence" and constructive criticism ensured that the job got done . I extend my thanks also to the Interlibrary Loan department of the library of the University of Cape Town for their prompt and efficient service. i ABSTRACT The territorial expansion of Rome in the second and first centuries B.C. was accompanied by an influx of foreign luxuries and fashions into Italy. Roman,society and literature responded to this influx ambiguously, but the overall tone was one of disapproval. The association of luxury with women, attested dramatically at the rescinding of the lex Oppia, was firmly established in erotic literature by the latter part of the first century B.C. Latin Love Elegy provides an opportunity for studying the response of a particular genre to the phenomenon of luxury in an erotic context. After a general introduction to the role of luxury in the economic life of Republican Rome, the literary response to luxury is investigated with special emphasis on erotic literature. Following this, the elegies of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid are analysed sequentially and in detail with respect to how these poems treat luxury. It is found that luxury in Latin Love Elegy retains the ambiguity associated with it outside erotic literature, and functions as a rhetorical tool in the process of seduction. ,The attitude of the elegiac persona to luxury sheds light on the fictional lover, and demonstrates how the elegists accommodate in their poetry traditional and contemporary views of a real phenomenon. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements. .i t Ab~iract,, ............. .ii Table of Contents ........................ .· .............. .iii Chapter I: Introduction.' ..................................... 1 Chapter II: Propertius ....................................... 40 Chapter III: Tibullus. ................... 115 Chapter IV: Ovid ..... ... 143 Chapter V: Conclusion ........................................ 167 Bibliography . .................................... ........ 170 iii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION What is laid to the Charge of Luxury besides, is, that it increases Avarice and Rapine: And where they are reigning Vices, Offices of the greatest Trust are bought and sold; .the Ministers that should serve the Publick, both great and small, ·corrupted, and the Countries every Moment in danger of being betray'd to the highest Bidders: And lastly, that it effeminates and enervates the People, by which the Nations become an easy Prey to the first Invaders. Bernard Mandeville, Fable of the Bees: Or. Private Vices. Publick Benefits (ed. F.B. Kaye, 1924. Oxford Vol. 1 p. 115) Open any popular novel with a Roman setting, watch any screen or television fictionalising of the Roman World, and you will notice that invariably some reference is made to the luxurious behaviour of the Romans. Usually there are some "good" Romans to be found as well, men who are honest, efficient, and courageous. This reading of the Romans is not necessarily anachronistic. Throughout their cultural history, Europeans have tended to view the Romans as exemplifying two extremes: absolute virtue and ·absolute dissoluteness. Sometimes people have chosen to emphasise one trait to the exclusion of the other, but generally the Romans are conceived of as embodying a paradox typical of a powerful yet affluent civilisation. The pattern is a classic one, and was construed in the same manner by the Romans themselves: a courageous and rustic people acquire an empire, and are eventually corrupted by their affluence. 1 -------------------------~---------- ----------------· Since luxury is such an essential facet of Roman civilisation as we understand it, a close analysis of its occurrence in all Latin literature would be justified. An investigation on this scale would be beyond the scope of the present dissertation, but it will be a valuable exercise to examine the theme of luxury in a restricted body of literature. A convenient candidate for such an analysis is Latin Love Elegy. Even a cursory perusal of the poems of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid leaves the reader with the impression that luxury is a preoccupation of the elegists. This is hardly remarkable, since it is well known that by the Age of Augustus, the time of the elegists, Rome had absorbed a good deal of Hellenistic material culture, and in addition, as I shall show, there was a venerable tradition of the covetousness of certain types of women in love affairs. Given these two circumstances, Latin Love Elegy, being a relatively self- contained corpus, might be expected to yield interesting information on the manner in which a particular category of literature, with specific generic requirements, treats luxury as a literary theme. "The ancient economy," writes one scholar, "is an academic 1 battleground". I am unwilling to involve myself in· this debate but some appreciation of the Roman economic system in the two centuries before Christ is required. My focus will be . on the trade in luxuries and various social and cultural reactions to the phenomenon of luxury. Of particular importance will be Roman reaction to the demand, appropriation, a~d utilisati~n of luxury by women, a topic which has no small significance for a study of luxury in Latin Love Elegy. 2 Foreign Luxury in the Economic Life of Republican Rome Despite the conflicting perceptions of the economic reality behind the Roman world, I think it safe to assert that in macrocosm the Roman Empire never ceased to rest upon a subsistence economy. By this I mean that the majority of people 2 in the Empire were subsistence farmers. On the whole, many regions within the Empire probably remained self-sufficient for the bulk of their ~aw-materials, foodstuffs, and basic utensils, or, at the most, traditional and relatively simple trade-systems supplied resources that might have been lacking. One should, however, recognise at the outset that this does not represent the whole picture. Undeniably, various urban centres, such as Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, did display features characteristic of more complex economic systems. Demographic factors seem to be the most obvious causes behind the adaptation, development, and expansion of these trading-systems. Accumulation of larger populations in a spatially and ecologically restricted environment required them to organise the importation of raw materials, which in turn obliged or stimulated regions blessed with these materials to exploit and export them. Sometimes redistribution of these materials by the urban centre was a feature of the system. This basic model of development seems to work for many of the urban centres that existed in the Ancient World, although the problem remains for many as to whether population growth was a cause or an effect of this development. Perhaps it was both, a self-perpetuating dynamic which accounts for the increase in the populations of so many of 3 these early cities. Essential goods, such as food, water, and building materials, always remained a priority for importation in a city as large as Rome. This can be seen most prominently in the organisation that went into the grain supply, a perpetual concern, the political and social importance of which was paramount. Failure to secure such a supply could lead to a crisis for the entire fabric of the .Roman state. But, however important basic foods and materials were for the continued maintenance of the res publica and the status of its ruling families, they were frequently not the imported goods most required or valued by the elite for their own consumption. From about the middle of the third century B.C., the Roman elite were in a position to afford items long established as "luxuries" by the elites of other societies, and, as far as can be seen, gradually established more demand for these articles and offered a market for them. Acquisition of luxurious items took two basic forms: outright confiscation 3 under conditions of expansion, war, and conquest, and adopting,. modifying, and developing pre-existing trading-systems that trafficked in such items. Defining "luxury" or "a luxury" is not straightforward. Generally it will be what a respected or favoured sector of a population considers a luxury, i.e. that which is desirable, yet hard to obtain and therefore practically always expensive and often exotic; that which is not necessary for survival, even unnecessary for a life of comfort, but enhances one's lifestyle 4 and frequently one's prestige. Possession or use of luxuries by an individual communicates something about that individual to 4 other members of his society. But that is only one facet of luxury. There remains, in the Roman understanding of the phenomenon, a pejorative sense. Luxury, as construed by the Roman moralising tradition (a tradition which cuts across generic boundaries in literature), presented one of the most complex issues in Roman cultural experience.
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