nth pr f t, nth f n r t: T nd N rr t vn Pr p rt 4

Genevieve Liveley

Helios, Volume 37, Number 2, Fall 2010, pp. 111-127 (Article)

P bl h d b T x T h n v r t PrDOI: 10.1353/hel.2010.0005

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Cynthia prima fuit, Cynthia finis eritTime and Narrative in Propertius 4

GENEVIEVE LIVELEY

What we call the beginning is often the endAnd to make an end is to make a beginning.The end is where we start from.

T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding V,” Four Quartets

The sense of a beginning, then, must in some important way be deter-mined by the sense of an ending. We might say we are able to read

present moments—in literature and, by extension, life—as endowed withnarrative meaning only because we read them in anticipation of the struc-

turing power of those endings that will retrospectively give them the order and significance of plot.

Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot

Propertius’s book 4 is notoriously idiosyncratic. No consistent chronol-ogy, viewpoint, or narrative seems to arrange its collection of poems; itssubjects and themes are characterized by fragmentation and discontinuity;and its manuscript tradition is unreliable—we cannot appeal to any manu-script authority to resolve our difficulties over the chronology and arrange-ment of its eleven elegies. Diverse narrative voices and perspectives telldifferent stories about politics, erotics, and poetics in such disor ga nized or -ga ni za tion that some critics have even sought to dismiss the book as theclumsy work of a posthumous editor or a later poetaster.1 Ostensibly lack-ing the more obvious narrative coherence supplied by the overarching storyof the poet’s love affair with Cynthia in the earlier books, book 4 is markedby confusing temporal contradictions and puzzling narrative incongruities:here we find Cynthia not only retelling a radically new version of her loveaffair with Propertius, but unexpectedly returning from the grave. Twice.

Such incongruities are resolved easily enough if we follow scholars likeFränkel, Boucher, and Veyne and resist the idea that Propertius’s elegiesoffer any kind of ‘narrative’ or ‘story.’ Indeed, Fränkel (1945, 26) insiststhat there is no sense of narrative continuity or chronology in any of thecollections of the elegiac love poets, warning that “Scholars who have

HELIOS, vol. 37 no. 2, 2010 © Texas Tech University Press 111

tried to piece together the history of one individual affair have wastedtheir labor.” Following a similar line, Jean-Paul Boucher (1965, 401) alsorefuses to allow Propertian elegy narrative status, on the grounds thatthe first book “has no beginning, no ending analogous to that of a novel”and that the second “is completely in de pen dent of any novel-likechronology.” Paul Veyne (1988, 50) goes further still in his argumentagainst the storytelling potential of Roman erotic elegy: “To believe thatour elegists tell the story of their affairs, one must not have readthem. . . . The poems do not present the episodes of a love affair—beginnings, declaration, seduction, a falling out. Time does not pass atall.” Indeed, Veyne (1988, 51) defines elegy precisely as a nonnarrativegenre, as “a poetry without action, with no plot leading to a denouementor maintaining any tension, and this is why time has no reality in it. . . .Before and after do not exist, any more than does duration.” From sucha perspective, it matters not that Cynthia should appear dead in onepoem (4.7) and very much alive in the next (4.8); in this view, neithertime nor narrative plays a part in Propertius’s elegies.

Yet theories of narrative show that even without action or plot, with-out telos or denouement, without continuity or chronology, both poetsand readers can, and do, endow such poems with narrative meaning.2

This, then, is the tale (or, at least, one tale) of how the final events in thestory of Propertius and Cynthia might be thus endowed and configuredas narrative—namely the appearance of Acanthis (4.5) through whomCynthia acquires a new personal history directed by an undead lena whoplayed no part in previous stories of her past; Cynthia’s return from thegrave (4.7) in which she emphatically contradicts her past as narrated byPropertius; and the final reconciliation of the lovers (4.8), in which Cyn-thia returns unexpectedly from a fertility rite to surprise Propertius in anact of infidelity (and to surprise the reader who thought, on the basis ofelegy 4.7, that she was dead).

Propertius’s book 4 opens with a programmatic poem projecting anew future direction for his poetry: he promises—or, perhaps, predicts—that he will now write patriotic, etiological poems in the Callimacheantradition.3 He will sing of the roots of rituals and festivals and theancient names of places (4.1.69). He will write in the future of the past.He will turn, like Cassandra and the Sibyl, to prophecy, albeit to prophe-cies about the past which have already been fulfilled. However, not onlyis the announcement of Propertius’s new poetic program effectively post-poned here, but this project is then immediately undermined in the

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poem’s second half by the appearance of a timely recusatio placed in themouth of the astrologer Horos, another prophet, who declares that Pro -pertius lacks both the talent and divine mandate for such an under taking.4

Horos locates authority for this judgment in his prophetic powers as aseer, but in the demonstration of these powers he ‘foretells’ only inci-dents and details with which we are already familiar: the public historyof Rome and the private ‘history’ of Propertius—in particular, his pastrelationship with Cynthia as represented in books 1–3—now re-presentedby Horos as the poet’s future (4.1.137–40):5

militiam Veneris blandis patiere sub armis,et Veneris pueris utilis hostis eris.

nam tibi victrices quascumque labore pararis,eludet palmas una puella tuas:

You will endure military ser vice in Venus’s sex wars,And you will be an enemy fit to meet Venus’s boys.But whatever small victories and girls you get by your own efforts,One girl will mock at all your prizes.

Yet, as an astrologer (despite the temporal authority ostensibly conferredby his name6), Horos reveals himself to be not so much a skilled readerof Propertius’s future as a close reader of Propertius’s past poetry.Horos’s prediction, in particular, recalls the context of militia amoris inwhich Propertius frames the moment at which Cynthia first “captured”his heart (1.1.1). Indeed, Propertius has already advised the readers ofhis monobiblos that the dominant narrative of his poetry and of his poeticlife will be his relationship with Cynthia, encapsulating Horos’sprophecy with his own narrative summary (both proleptic and analep-tic): Cynthia prima fuit; Cynthia finis erit (Cynthia was the first/ beginning,Cynthia will be the last/ end, 1.12.20). What is more, in the Callim -achean context of this new book, Propertius’s explicit declaration inbook 1 and implicit reaffirmation in book 4 that “Cynthia prima fuit”seems open to an etiological reading, which further suggests a direct lineof (narrative) continuity between the poetic program of the monobiblosand that of book 4. The second part of this poem is not the recusatio itfirst seemed and Cynthia, it appears, has a place in Propertius’s newpoetic project just as she had a place in his past. Cynthia will be presentin the end, just as she was in the beginning.7

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Janus-like, the opening poem of book 4 thus looks back to Proper-tius’s first book at the same time as it sets out (to set out) the poet’s the-matic program for the book ahead. Yet, despite Propertius’s pledge towrite in the future of Roma rather than, as in the past, of Amor, the palin-dromic reversibility of these themes appears to indicate that the dom-inant ‘quasi’ narrative of this book will once again be the story ofthe poet-lover’s amores and, in particular, his relationship with Cyn- thia. Indeed, James Butrica (1996, 147) suggests that we may read evenPropertius’s etiological elegies of book 4 as tangentially relating to thepoet-lover’s relationship with his mistress, albeit as “an emphatic demon-stration of . . . his in de pen dence from her.” Even when a poem does notdirectly concern or feature Cynthia or Propertius, it can (be made to)seem to relate to them and to their story.

This aspect of the beginning of book 4, however, also turns out to bea false start: we must wait, expectantly, for another six poems beforeCynthia is mentioned by name in poem 4.7, and at least four before weeven seem in poem 4.5 “to return for the first time to the poet’s ownlove-life” (Butrica 1996, 147), though whether present, past, or future isuncertain. How then can the dominant or ‘quasi’ narrative of book 4 beread as the story of Propertius’s amor and of his relationship with Cyn-thia when that story contains so many gaps and omissions? When, ofthe eleven poems book 4 comprises, Cynthia is named in only two (4.7and 4.8)? When their affair is (probably) discussed in only one other(4.5)?

Significantly, the same questions arise in relation to the alternate nar-rative program proposed for book 4: Propertius’s declared intention totell the history of Rome. As Jeri Debrohun observes (2003, 48),

Absent from Propertius’ description of Rome present and past is anyexplicit indication of the intervening historical episodes and eventsthat were necessary to take Rome from the time of Evander to Aeneas’arrival, then from Aeneas to the kingship of Romulus, and eventuallyfrom Romulean to Augustan Rome.

As in the story of his relationship with Cynthia—from which crucialepisodes, incidents, and events have been and will be omitted, not leastof all, Cynthia’s death which presumably takes place at some un- narrated point between 3.25 and 4.7—Propertius’s story of Rome’s simple past and glorious present is characterized by its narrative and

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temporal aporia, its missing moments. And yet, just as his summary ofthe Roman year and calendar is effected through a selection rather thana complete survey of its festivals, each aporia does not break up the log-ical or chronological coherence of Propertius’s narrative of Rome pastand present.8 Indeed, although critics may argue that there is no over-riding narrative sequence or thread that ties together the individualpoems that make up the Propertian corpus, it is widely acknowledgednevertheless that individual elegies and individual books lose somethingof their “resonance and bite” if read outside of the wider context offeredby their position within the collection as a whole (Johnson 1997,179–80). As W. Ralph Johnson observes of Propertius and his writing,“Separate poems of his may be put on display, under glass, in themuseum, but that presentation somehow doesn’t work.” Butrica goes fur-ther, declaring that certain principles are fundamental to an appreciationof the Propertian corpus:

First, Propertius’ elegies are not discrete entities but are meant to beread together in a linear progression for cumulative meaning; eachelegy, each book in fact, is only one element of the tribiblos andachieves its full significance only when read in sequence together withall the other elements. Of course, such a linear reading is virtuallydemanded by the format of the ancient bookroll, which offered littlescope for browsing back and forth. Moreover, Propertius’ Cynthiaalready reveals a sophisticated appreciation of how juxtaposition andcross-reference can establish connections among poems and therebyenhance meaning in a linear reading. . . . There is no narrative threadas such, and no “message” or “meaning” is spelled out explicitly; ratherthe reader is left to extract the cumulative meaning from the mul -tiple resonances created by sequence, juxtaposition, echoing, or cross- reference within the whole. (1996, 98–9)

But if Propertius’s elegies are indeed meant to be read together in a lin-ear sequence, then how, without a “narrative thread,” do we read thechronologically confused and temporally challenging story of Cynthiaand Propertius as narrated in book 4? Here, the prophet Horos mayprove a reliable guide: in order to trace the narrative thread that connectsthe disordered poems of the book, perhaps we should look back, in bothtime and narrative.

Theories of narrative maintain that narrative is de pen dent on time: in

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order for there to be narrative, there must not only be events, but eventsfollowing one after the other.9 And in particular, according to narratolo-gist Paul Ricoeur, for a narrative to be coherent and readable, it (and itsreaders) must negotiate the aporias, the doubtful or problematic ele-ments of time, the gaps between events, to configure a coherent sense oftime and temporality. Ricoeur would, no doubt, have sympathized withthose editors of Propertius’s text who have felt the need to reconstructand reorder individual lines and lacunae to make better chronologi-cal and narrative sense. Indeed, Housman’s reordering of Propertius2.26.28–32, where a set of particularly diverse and contradictory inci-dents are rearranged so as to effect a coherent series that is not only logically but, crucially, also chronologically plausible, offers an excellentillustration of Ricoeur’s theory that readers strive to negotiate aporias(both temporal and textual) in order to achieve a sense of chronologicalcoherence in their engagement with a text. As D. Thomas Benediktson(1989, 6) observes on the chronological reordering of the poems in thePropertian corpus, “The possibility that Propertius himself might havepreferred the ‘scrambled’ order is not considered”:10 time and narrativemust be synchronized.

Indeed, one of the strengths of Ricoeur’s theory of time and narrativeis its emphasis upon the synchronism between the world of a text andthe world of its readers that comes about in, and through, the negotia-tion of such aporias. In his essay, “The Human Experience of Time andNarrative,” Ricoeur (1991, 99) considers the Aristotelian representationof time as a line “constituted merely by relations of simultaneity and ofsuccession between abstract ‘nows’, and by the distinction betweenextreme end-points and the intervals between them.” These two sets ofrelationships, he argues,

are sufficient for defining the time when something happens, for decid-ing what came earlier or later and how long a certain state of affairs mightlast. But the deficiency of this representation of time is that it takesinto account neither the centrality of the present as an actual now northe primacy of the future as the main orientation of human desire, northe fundamental capacity of recollecting the past in the present. Thedrastic move made by Augustine . . . was to say that there is no past, nopresent, and no future in any substantive sense, but rather a dialecticof intentionalities, which Augustine referred to as memory, attention,and expectation. (1991, 99; emphases in original)

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Corresponding to Augustine’s dialectic of memory, attention, and expec-tation, Ricoeur offers a threefold explanation for the way in which nar-rative both mediates and is mediated by the human experience of time.He argues that an understanding (or configuration) of a text in the pres-ent is initially enabled (or prefigured) by memories and experiences ofthe past, a past that is in turn influenced (or refigured) by an anticipa-tion or imagination of a future ending. Recalling Aristotle’s definition ofnarrative as “imitation,” Ricoeur identifies these interde pen dent stagesof reading and interpretation as three modes of “mimesis.”

Mimesis 1 (prefiguration) is our practical pre-understanding of howcharacters are likely to behave in a narrative, our understanding and be-liefs regarding the motivations, values, and behaviors that, for example,elegiac lovers may exhibit in their interactions with each other and theworld. So, even without prior knowledge of the monobiblos and the ac-count of Propertius and Cynthia’s relationship given there, we can stillread a single poem or episode from one of the later books and ‘predict’that one lover’s infidelity will prompt the other’s jealousy. Prefigurationmay also be seen to include the pre-understanding of a narrative that isaffected by its generic designation:11 our understanding of elegy 4.8, forexample, may be very different depending upon whether we approach itas an etiological poem (Rothstein 1966; Dee 1978) or as a love poem(Camps 1965; Richardson 1977).

In addition to this practical pre-understanding, prefiguration incorpo-rates a variety of different modes of comprehension. First, semanticunderstanding—that Propertius curses the lena Acanthis in 4.5.1–4because the advice she has given to his amica runs contrary to his owninterests. Second, symbolic understanding—that Propertius, though amember of the male Roman elite, assumes a narrative position of eroti-cized enslavement to a dura puella according to the elegiac trope of ser -vitium amoris. And third, the comprehension that Ricoeur deemsfundamental to the interpretation of narrative, temporal understanding,that when, in Propertius 2.28, Cynthia is ill but then suddenly recovers,a period of un-narrated and un-represented time must have passed inthis poem. Indeed, it is this temporal understanding that conditions thereader’s surprise when, following Cynthia’s appearance as a ghost in 4.7,she reappears alive and kicking (and biting and scratching) in the verynext poem.

The next mode, Mimesis 2 (configuration), describes the relation ofincidents and events into a coherent series. According to Ricoeur (1990,

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65), within a narrative any “agents, goals, means, interactions, circum-stances, unexpected results,” however diverse and contradictory, must bebrought together by emplotment. Indeed, it is precisely the relation ofdiverse incidents into a coherent series through such narrative emplot-ment that can be seen to drive editorial efforts to reconstruct and reorderthe Propertian corpus. Thus, in Propertius 1.8, Cynthia is planning a tripaway but then suddenly decides not to go, prompting some editors todivide the poem into two separate halves, locating and emplotting Cyn-thia’s sudden change of heart in the space between these two parts.

Ricoeur’s account of the processes of Mimesis 2, however, shows thatnarrative emplotment need not be restricted by a linear chronology (thatis, the linear chronology of ‘before’ and ‘after’). So, the ‘past,’ ‘present,’and ‘future’ of a narrative need not correspond with the ‘before,’ ‘now,’and ‘after’ of its narration. A narrative may begin in medias res (as in clas-sical epic and, indeed, in Propertius 4.6); tenses and temporal markerscan be manipulated to configure a sense of time and temporality thatdoes not seem to correspond with that of the story or the story world (asin the confusing use of the pluperfect in Propertius 4.8.82).12 Theprocess of emplotment, for Ricoeur, simultaneously creates both tempo-ral continuity and conceptual unity for and from the narrative, makingtemporal and causal connections between moments and events so as tomake the narrative and its narration readable.

As with prefiguration, there is a key temporal dimension to the modeof configuration, concerning (to borrow Frank Kermode’s phrase) “thesense of an ending” in which meaning is made by and as a story pro-gresses towards an end point, and is only understood retrospectivelyfrom that end point when the story can be seen as a whole.13 This is thesense of an ending, the sense of expectation and intention that prevails,according to Augustine and Ricoeur (1991, 101) when in reciting, read-ing, or hearing a poem, “we hold together the whole of the poem, in spiteof the fact that a part of it is still ahead of us and another part hasalready sunk into the past and thus only a phase of the work is present.”This is why, whether Propertius’s book 4 is seen as the final book in afour-book series or as the final book of a tribiblos as James Butrica (1996)argues, its position as end point in the Propertian corpus is significant. Itis towards this end point that any narrative is anticipated to progress,and it is only from this end point that the narrative can be seen andunderstood as a whole.

The reader’s expectation and anticipation of coherence and logicalclosure to a story like that of Propertius and his puella is, however,

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according to Ricoeur only resolved (in the sense that it is made produc-tive) in the third and final mode of narrative time: Mimesis 3 (refigura-tion). Following on from the configuration of a narrative, refiguration isseen to involve “the intersection of the world of the text and the worldof the hearer or reader” (Ricoeur 1990, 71)—that is, the impact of thetext upon its audience to bring about new or increased understanding.This involves more than the recognition, on the basis of 4.5 for example,that in the world of Propertius’s narrative (as in the world of the reader)youth, beauty, and love do not last forever. Refiguration in Ricoeur’sterms would also involve the retrospective, retroactive rereading, orrevised interpretation of a narrative following its conclusion—a rereadingin which our prefiguration is now informed by our remembered under-standing of how characters have behaved in a narrative, and how diverse,contradictory, and incongruous “agents, goals, means, interactions, cir-cumstances, unexpected results” seem to have been related. It is, indeed,in something like this mode of refiguration that Johnson (1997, 180)makes sense of the ending of Propertius’s book 4, and of the corpus as awhole:

When the per for mance ends and the silence begins, we may beshocked to hear Cynthia laughing loudly . . . and then [we] turn back,almost inevitably, to her poems in Book 4, then to its first poem, to thewicked mendacity of its palinode in-and-of a palinode, then go (back)to trace the splendid zigzag of this poet’s adventures in daredevil rhet-oric back through Book 3 and through Book 2 to the first book where(before the recusatio begins) the figure of Cynthia, for which the recusa-tio exists, takes on her glittering polyvocities, her abundant life-as-text.Then back again, through all the poems, to Cornelia—then turn, andback again.

Refiguration directs us to make retrospective sense and order out of allthose diverse, contradictory, and incongruous elements that puzzled usat the point of configuration and so allows us to establish (retrospective)narrative coherence. Through refiguration, then, we can view the story ofPropertius’s affair with Cynthia as a coherent whole, and the confusingtemporal contradictions and puzzling narrative incongruities that struckus at the point of configuration can be re-emplotted as logically andchronologically ordered elements of that story.

If, in this mode of refiguration, we are directed by the appearance ofAcanthis towards a (literal or imaginative) re-evaluation of the earlier

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books in the light of elegy 4.5, to re-view Cynthia’s appearance andbehavior as the effects of a lena’s teachings, then it becomes ‘logical’ toexpect that Propertius should include an account of the lena and herteachings at some point in his narrative. We may assume that Propertiusis here ‘remembering’ an incident and a character from his past—eventhough the amica to whom Acanthis’s advice is directed is not explicitlyidentified here as Cynthia.14 In the mode of refiguration, at the point ofintersection between the world of the text and the world of the hearer orreader of this poem, we relate the lena’s teachings to the narrative ofCynthia’s behavior in earlier elegies—such as Cynthia using the rites ofIsis as an excuse for sexual abstinence, her tantrums, her tears, herexcuses, her jealous rages—just as we seem directed to do by Acanthis’squotation (4.5.55–6) from the opening lines of elegy 1.2, the con-tentious first words that Propertius as poet-lover speaks to Cynthia inthe narrative of their affair.15 We may even try to relate the Acanthispoem back to 3.25 in which Propertius bids Cynthia a (provisionally)final farewell, and see in Propertius’s prediction of an ugly old age forCynthia a foreshadowing of 4.5 in which the lena is a stand-in for Cyn-thia herself, giving advice based on her own erotic experiences (a favoriteerotodidactic trope) to a new Propertian amica.

However puzzling or incongruous the tardy appearance of the lena in4.5 may be, the reader is driven to relate these incidents and agents toothers in the wider narrative of Propertius’s poetry. Motivated by thedrive for coherence—which is, according to theories of narrative, a fun-damental force in the act of reading—we make sense of the appearanceof Acanthis in 4.5 in the world of the text and the world of the readerthrough re-emplotment, by relating the incident and character repre-sented here to an earlier phase of Propertius’s narrative. The appearanceof a lena in book 4 also makes sense when we relate it to the avowed eti-ological programme of this book—retroactively ‘explaining’ as she doesthe true ‘cause’ behind Cynthia’s behavior in books 1–3 and the con-comitant breakdown of her relationship with Propertius.16

In this mode of refiguration, the cyclical rather than linear nature ofRicoeur’s Mimesis is revealed. The passing of time introduces new eventsand renewed opportunities to describe, narrate, and emplot them. Andas we recall and re-present the past, we revise former connectionsbetween “agents, goals, means, interactions, circumstances, unexpectedresults” in the light of more recent experiences. As Propertius’s play withtime in book 4 shows, any memories and experiences of the past thatenable us to interpret his narrative here are always open to (future) revi-

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sion; our anticipation or imagination of the future of that narrative—andparticularly of a future ending—is always open to denial and frustrationby (future) revelations (especially those about the past).

In this respect, Propertius’s appropriation of a Callimachean etio-logical programme for book 4 is illustrative. His use of etiology as apoetic vehicle for half of the elegies in this book is significant, high-lighting a focus upon past beginnings and upon the potential withinbeginnings and names (in etiology and etymology) to promise a “truehistory.” Yet in his declaration in 4.1.37 that nil patrium nisi nomen habetRomanus alumnus (The Roman nurseling has nothing from his forefa-thers but his name), and in Vertumnus’s competing versions of how hehimself got his name (4.2.10–20), we see the instability and volatilityof etiological and etymological discourse—indeed, we see the instabilityof all such discursive attempts to bridge the gap between past and pres-ent. For, at once seeming both to anticipate Ricoeur’s views upon thissubject and to inherit this view from Callimachus, Propertius can beseen to treat etiology “as a peculiarly double-edged tracing of the linkbetween past and present—a tracing that simultaneously draws atten-tion to the abyss between past and present and attempts to bridge it”(Janan 2001, 16).17

Perhaps nowhere in book 4 is this abyss between past and presentmore vividly encountered than in 4.7.18 Here Cynthia returns: a surprisein itself since, as Johnson (1997, 177) reminds us, Cynthia “is not evensupposed to be in this volume, which is supposed to be about Rome, notabout depraved, psychotic harlots.” That she returns from the grave, herbody scarred and charred by the funeral pyre, to charge Propertius withmisrepresentation and infidelity is yet more startling: the last time wesaw or heard of her, she was very much alive (3.25). However, as thispoem starkly reveals, death is not the end (4.7.1–10):

sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit,luridaque exstinctos effugit umbra rogos.

Cynthia namque meo visa est incumbere fulcro,murmur ad extremae nuper humata tubae,

cum mihi somnus ab exsequiis penderet amoris,et quererer lecti frigida regna mei.

eosdem habuit secum quibus est elata capillos,eosdem oculos; lateri vestis adusta fuit,

et solitum digito beryllon adederat ignis,summaque Lethaeus triverat ora liquor.

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There are ghosts: death does not end every thing.The pale shade does escape the burnt-out pyre.For Cynthia seemed to lean over my bed,She who had only recently been buried to the horn’s lament,One night when sleep was hovering after the funeral of love,And I lamented the cold kingdom of my bed.She had just the same hair as on her bier, and just the same eyes;But her shroud was burnt to her side,And the fire had destroyed her favorite jewelled ring,And the waters of Lethe had eaten away at her lips.

Cynthia’s return is logically and chronologically awkward here, not leastof all because we, with Propertius, had seemed to bid her a final farewellin the closing poem of book 3 (3.25). Yet Horos’s prophecy in the open-ing poem of book 4 also forewarned us, with Propertius, to expect some-thing like this: or so, at the point of reconfiguration, we can interpret/reinterpret his prophecy as meaning/ having meant.19 What is more, Cyn-thia has startled us like this before: in each of the previous books (1.3,2.29, 3.6) she has complained to Propertius about his treatment of herin this same mode of direct address—a narratological rarity not only inPropertius but in Roman love elegy as a whole.20

Through refiguration we also notice that in her claims to have beenever faithful to Propertius, even in the face of his own infidelities, Cyn-thia does not, as some critics assume, straightforwardly contradict thestory of their affair as narrated by the poet-lover in books 1–3.21 At thepoint of refiguration, we can see that Cynthia’s complaint in 4.7 ratherrepresents a version of her relationship with Propertius that is (already)narrated in the monobiblos. In 4.7, Cynthia’s ghost swears by the irre-versible poems or songs of the Fates that she has always been faithfulto Propertius: iuro ego Fatorum nulli revolubile carmen, . . . me servasse fidem(4.7.51–3). Given Propertius’s representation of their relationship inbooks 1–3, this seems a bold reversal of positions and of the ‘true story.’But if we reread or reflect upon the earlier poems in a mode of refigura-tion we notice that, according to Cynthia and her narrative of theiraffair, Propertius was always unfaithful to her and she was ever faithful tohim (1.3.35–46). Similarly, if we revisit 1.4 we may notice a tacitacknowledgement of this fact by Propertius himself, as he offers adviceto Bassus on the best way to deal with difficult girlfriends as if from first-hand personal experience (1.4.20–1). Claiming authority on the basis ofpersonal experience is, of course, a commonplace of erotodidactic poetry,

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but re-reading the poet-lover’s claim in the light of Cynthia’s revelationsin 4.7, we might ‘refigure’ this aspect of poem 1.4 as something morethan an elegiac trope.22 Indeed, by directing Propertius to ‘undo’ boththe poetry and the story that he has written about her, and by directingthe reader to establish connections and cross-references with previouspoems in the corpus, Cynthia effectively ‘authorizes’ her own mode ofrefiguration in 4.7. In urging Propertius to destroy the poetic record oftheir past together, and in presenting her own revision of that narrativerecord, Cynthia effectively draws to a close the story-so-far of Propertiusand his elegiac mistress.

But what comes next? We might, at this stage in book 4, reasonablyanticipate another patriotic or etiological elegy, but as Johnson ingen-iously puts it (1997, 177–8):

It is, in fact, feigning from the start to be about Roman antiquities,another Cynthia poem. But this one is worse than the one where shewas dead and shrieking. Here she is alive again, still shrieking, becauseshe has discovered Propertius involved in a ludicrous and disgustingthree-way. One is tempted to just roll the volume up and cast it aside.

The chronologically and logically awkward reappearance of Cynthia in4.8 is ostensibly less easily resolved than that of 4.7. As J. P. Postgate(1881, lv) observed, “If viii had preceded vii, the contrast would havebeen startling enough. . . . But to reverse the order and to bid naturerevolve upon her track is a ghastly imagination.” Yet here, too, refigura-tion can help to make sense of the place of this elegy within both theworld of the text and the world of the reader, in both time and narrative.This is the final poem of Propertius in which Cynthia appears, but it isnot the final poem of book 4 or of the Propertian corpus, and as an endpoint to the story of Propertius’s elegiac love affair it appears unsatisfac-tory, ostensibly offering little ‘sense of an ending.’23 Refiguration, how-ever, allows us to view this final episode in the story of Propertius andCynthia as a logically (and chronologically) effective conclusion—albeitone that sends the reader back to review the other Cynthia poems inbook 4, back to Horos’s ‘prophecy’ that the poet would continue to suf-fer and serve in Venus’s militia amoris and be mocked by one girl (unapuella) (4.1.137–40), and so on back through to the beginning of themonobiblos, and to “Cynthia” (1.1.1). Read in this way, we notice that 4.8concludes with a trope that has prepared us to anticipate just such anending to this narrative. Propertius and Cynthia fight and then finally

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come together; orgasm (a little death?) and a permanent ‘peace’ (or per-haps only a temporary ‘truce’?) signal the end of the affair—at leastaccording to the terms of elegy’s militia amoris—as the pair “take off theirarmor” (solvimus arma, 4.8.88) in the final line.

Our surprise at finding Cynthia alive and kicking in 4.8 has clearlybeen (pre)determined by our prior reading of poem 4.7. If prefigurationrepresents our practical pre-understanding of how characters are sup-posed to behave in a narrative, then we are bound to be surprised whena dead character returns, not from the grave as a ghostly apparition—forthis our semantic and symbolic pre-understanding may prepare us—butas a living character. In 4.8, Cynthia is not simply one of the undead; sheis one of the living, one who has never died. But the feedback loop ofrefiguration also directs us to make connections between the events nar-rated in poems 4.7 and 4.8, and in this mode we may notice that poem4.7 prepares us both to be surprised by and to expect Cynthia’s return in4.8. On the one hand, as we have seen, 4.7 urges the undoing of therecord of Propertius and Cynthia’s past, and seeks to impose closureupon their elegiac story-so-far. At one level, then, the poem that followsis written upon a narrative tabula rasa, a new book roll. And if the pasthas been erased, if the record of the story of Propertius and Cynthia aswe knew it has been unwritten, then we might begin to read this newepisode as part of a new narrative. Indeed, the sense that 4.8 stages anew beginning for the lovers is enhanced by the poem’s own narrative of“purification” (4.8.83–6), as part of which Propertius even provides hisbeloved (and his reader) with a “clean sheet” (4.8.87).

Alternatively, rather than seeing the juxtaposition of 4.7 and 4.8 as anawkward anomaly, through and at the point of refiguration we can seeCynthia’s prediction for her ultimate and eternal (if uneasy) reconcilia-tion with Propertius at the close of 4.7 as a temporal and narrativebridge between the two poems, directing the reader’s expectation towardjust such an outcome. As Cynthia prophetically declares: nunc te pos-sideant aliae: mox sola tenebo: / mecum eris (Others may possess you for now:but soon I alone will hold you, you will be with me, 4.7.93–4). And inthe very next poem (“soon” indeed) her words come into effect, as we“now” see Cynthia, not simply undead as in 4.7 but very much alive,and reconciled “at last” with Propertius—thereby confirming the reader’sexpectation and anticipation of such an (ostensibly unexpected and dis-connected) event.

Finally, in the context of Ricoeur’s phenomenology of reading, at thepoint of intersection between the world of the text and that of the reader,

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Mimesis 3 involves the assimilation of the hypothetical narrative experi-ence encountered in the phase of Mimesis 2 into a ‘real’ experience forthe reader. In this case, the reader ‘really’ learns ‘here and now,’ in thispresent moment and at this end point in the narrative, that Cynthia andPropertius are ‘here and now’ reunited. It is narratologically significant,then, that elegy 4.8 opens with an etiologically coded invitation to thereader to “learn what happened last night along the watery Esquiline”(disce quid Esquilias hac nocte fugarit aquosas). In the story of this poem andin the story world of this text and its readers, last night Cynthia returnedunexpectedly from Lanuvium; last night she caught out Propertius in anattempted act of infidelity; last night Propertius and Cynthia were recon-ciled, their relationship begun again. And, in a continuous three-foldpresent, in the world of the text and the world of the reader, that uneasy,ultimate, and eternal reconciliation continues. In the memory, attention,and expectation of the reader, Propertius and Cynthia really arereunited—just as Propertius, Horos, and Cynthia herself declared theywould be—now, in the end, and in the beginning.24

Works Cited

Bal, M. 1997. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Second edition. En glishtranslation by C. van Boheemen. Toronto. (Originally published as De theorie vanvertellen en verhalen: inleiding in de narratologie [Muiderberg 1978])

Barchiesi, A. 1997. The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustan Discourse. Berkeley.Benediktson, T. 1989. Propertius: Modernist Poet of Antiquity. Carbondale, IL.Bing, P. 1988. The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic

Poets. Göttingen.Boucher, J.-P. 1965. Études sur Properce: Problèmes d’inspiration et d’art. Paris.Brooks, P. 1984. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA.Burck, E. 1966. “Zur Komposition des vierten Buches des Properz.” WS 79: 405–27.Butrica, J. 1996. “The Amores of Propertius: Unity and Structure in Books II–IV.” ICS

21: 87–158.Camps, W. A. 1965. Propertius, Elegies: Book IV. Cambridge.Damsté, P. H. 1928. “De Propertii Elegiarum libro quarto.” Mnemosyne 56: 214–9.Debrohun, J. B. 2003. Roman Propertius and the Reinvention of Elegy. Ann Arbor.Dee, J. 1978. “Elegy 4.8: A Propertian Comedy.” TAPA 108: 41–53. Fränkel, H. 1945. Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds. Berkeley.Gutzwiller, K. 1985. “The Lover and the Lena: Propertius 4.5.” Ramus 14.2: 105–15.Hardie, P. 1997. “Closure in Latin Epic.” In Roberts et al. 1997, 139–62.Herman, D., M. Jahn, and M.-L. Ryan, eds. 2005. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narra-

tive Theory. London.Herman, D., and B. Vervaeck. 2005. Handbook of Narrative Analysis. Lincoln, NE.Herrmann, L. 1951. L’âge d’argent doré. Paris.

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Heyworth, S. 2007a. Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius. Oxford.———. 2007b. Sexti Properti Elegi. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford.Housman, A. E. 1888. “Emendationes Propertianae.” AJP 16: 1–35.James, S. L. 2003. Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender and Reading in Roman Love

Elegy. Berkeley.Janan, M. 2001. The Politics of Desire: Propertius 4. Berkeley.Johnson, W. R. 1997. “Final Exit: Propertius 4.11.” In Roberts et al. 1997, 163–80.Kermode, F. 1967. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. London.Liveley, G., and P. Salzman-Mitchell, eds. 2008. Latin Elegy and Narratology: Fragments

of Story. Columbus, OH.Onega, S., and J. A. G. Landa, eds. 1996. Narratology: An Introduction. London and

New York.O’Neill, K. 1995. “Propertius 4.4 and the Burden of Aetiology.” Hermathena 158:

53–60.Postgate, J. P. 1881. Propertius: Select Elegies. London.Richardson, L. 1977. Propertius, Elegies I–IV. Norman, OK.Ricoeur, P. 1990. Time and Narrative. 3 volumes. En glish translation by Kathleen

Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago and London. (Originally published as Tempset récit [Paris 1983, 1984, 1985])

———. 1991. “The Human Experience of Time and Narrative.” In Mario J. Valdés,ed., A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination. En glish translation by David Pel-lauer. London and Toronto. 99–116.

Roberts, D. H., F. M. Dunn, and D. Fowler, eds. 1997. Classical Closures: Reading theEnd in Greek and Latin Literature. Princeton.

Rothstein, M. 1898. Die Elegien des Sextus Propertius. Berlin.Sandbach, F. H. 1962. “Some Problems in Propertius.” JCP 127: 263–76.Toolan, M. J. 1988. Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London.Veyne, P. 1988. Roman Erotic Elegy: Love, Poetry and the West. En glish translation by

David Pellauer. Chicago. (Originally published as L’elegie érotique romaine: l’amour,la poésie et l’Occident [Paris 1983])

Yardley, J. C. 1977. “Cynthia’s Ghost: Propertius 4.7 Again.” BICS 24: 83–7.Zanker, G. 1987. Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and Its Audience. London.

Notes

1. Among others, Postgate 1881; Damsté 1928; Herrmann 1951.2. So Ricoeur (1990, 206–25) suggests that even ostensibly “eventless” stories (such

as annalistic histories) nevertheless include “quasi-plots” involving “quasi-events” and“quasi-characters.” See Liveley and Salzman-Mitchell 2008, 1–13.

3. See O’Neill 1995.4. The shift in tone and narrator has prompted several editors to separate the poem

itself into two discrete parts. See Heyworth 2007a, 424.5. The text used here and throughout is the 2007 Oxford Classical Text edited by

Stephen Heyworth (2007b). Translations are my own.6. Horos’s name is doubly (and etiologically) linked to time and temporality,

through the Latin hora (hour) and the Greek w|ra (year, season).

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7. Sandbach (1962, 264–71) argues convincingly that 4.1.71–150 does not consti-tute a recusatio, as Propertius does not subsequently give up on his avowed intention towrite etiological poetry in the remainder of the book.

8. See Debrohun 2003, 52 and Barchiesi 1997, 188 note 7.9. See, in particular, Bal 1997, 208–14; Herman et al. 2005; Herman and Vervaeck

2005, 60 –7; Onega and Landa 1996; and Toolan 1988, 4–8, 42–53.10. Stephen Heyworth (2007a, 471), following Shackleton Bailey, adduces a

chronological rationale for textual emendation of 4.7.79–80: “Cynthia is nuper humata(4), and there cannot yet be ivy growing over her tomb.”

11. Although Ricoeur does not explicitly address this issue in Time and Narrative.12. See Heyworth 2007a, 483, who emends riserat to risit et.13. This expression is also used by Brooks 1984, 94.14. Camps (1965, 97) resolves this narrative aporia by suggesting (without further

explanation) that “There is no ground for supposing that the lena is a real person; orthat the amica of line 63 is Cynthia.” See also Gutzwiller 1985; Janan 2001, 87; and,for a comprehensive survey of various correspondences between 4.5 and other poemsin the Propertian corpus, James 2003, 71–107.

15. Heyworth (2007b, 167) excises the opening couplet found in 1.2 from 4.5.16. We might further make sense of the sudden shifts in temporal perspective and

tense in this poem, shifting suddenly between past, present, and future, as a sign of thecontinuing influence that the lena and Cynthia assert upon Propertius.

17. See also Bing 1988, 70–1 and Zanker 1987, 121–3.18. See Yardley 1977.19. So the puella of Horos’s prophecy is identified unequivocally as Cynthia.20. Notice in particular the literal reversal of positions in 1.3 and 4.7: it is now

Cynthia who leans over Propertius’s bed as he sleeps.21. See Janan 2001, 100–1: “Her picture of their affair and its aftermath radically

conflicts with the way Propertius has depicted their relations in his previous three-pluspoetry books. . . . His poetic record of the affair, outside this single elegy, consistentlymakes Cynthia the fickle offender, he the long-suffering victim—an account his mis-tress’ post-mortem disclosure flatly contravenes.”

22. The following elegy 4.8, moreover, will further confirm this previously ‘hidden’aspect to the story of Propertius and Cynthia’s affair by revealing that Cynthia’s accu-sations of Propertius’s infidelities are quite justified. Although Propertius will seek tojustify his behavior as retaliation for Cynthia’s own infidelities, his status as a reliablenarrator has been forcefully undermined by Cynthia’s own testimony in the precedingpoem.

23. Of course, unsatisfactory endings are not uncommon in Augustan poetry. SeeHardie 1997 on the problematic ending of the Aeneid and the idea that the death ofTurnus “is not an ending in any important sense; the real ending to the story of Romeis found instead in the survey of Roman history on the Shield of Aeneas at the end ofBook 8” (142). Hardie—and Virgil—remind us that the end, goal, or telos of a narra-tive need not necessarily come at its end.

24. Thanks to Pat Salzman-Mitchell for organizing the Elegy and Narrativity con-ference in 2004, and to audiences at Bristol and Princeton for their help in shaping mythoughts on Propertius’s elegiac narrative. Thanks, too, to Duncan Kennedy for shar-ing his insights into 4.8.

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