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Sulpicia's Syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

N. J. Lowe
N. J. Lowe
Affiliation:
Westfield College, London
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Extract

In the six remarkable elegidia transmitted in the Tibullan corpus as 3.13–18 (4.7–12) we appear to possess the writings of an educated Roman woman of aristocratic family and high literary connections: a woman, moreover, who participates as an equal in one of the most distinguished artistic salons of the age, and composes poetry in an obstinately male genre on the subject of her own erotic experience, displaying a candour and the exercise of a sexual independence startingly at odds with the ideology of her class. Such a figure is either, depending on one's viewpoint, too good to be true or too embarrassing to be tolerated. The case could easily be put that Sulpicia, more perhaps even than Sappho, has found her poems condemned by accident of gender to a century and a half of condescension, disregard, and wilful misconstruction to accommodate the inelastic sexual politics of elderly male philologists. Certainly even the most sympathetic of recent comment is prone to lapse into a form of critical language outlawed in Catullan scholarship thirty years ago. Yet feminist critics have been strangely cautious in their response. A scholar who rose swiftly to the defence of Erinna when that elusive poet's identity was impugned has notoriously written of Sulpicia:

‘She was not a brilliant artist: her poems are of interest only because the author is female.’ Five years late, Sulpicia has found a place in the major sourcebook on ancient women, but with the cycle of poems violently reordered after the judgment of a nineteenth-century (male) critic, anxious to restore his poetess's chastity against the disconcerting frankness of the texts.

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Type
Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 193 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 Harrauer, H., A Bibliography to the Corpus Tibullianum (Hildesheim, 1971), 59fGoogle Scholar. is supplemented by Currie, H. MacL., ‘The Poems of Sulpicia’, in ANRW II 30.3 (1983), 1751–64Google Scholar; H. Dettmer, ‘The ”Corpus Tibullianum”(1974–1980)’, ibid. 1962–75; cf. also J. M. Fisher, ‘The Life and Work of Tibullus’, ibid. 1924–61: 1929. Add now the brief treatments in Quinn, K. F., Texts and Contexts (London, 1979), 189fGoogle Scholar.; Luck, G. in Kenney, E. J. and Clausen, W. V. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1982–1985), ii.412Google Scholar; Lefkowitz, M. and Fant, M. B., Women's Life in Greece and Rome (London, 1982), 131–2Google Scholar; di Monaco, F., ‘Adulescens poetria in litteris Latinis’, Vita Latina 95 (1984), 24–6Google Scholar; A. D. Deyermond, ‘Sexual Initiation in the Woman's-Voice Court Lyric’, in K. Busby (ed.), Selected Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (forthcoming). Cartault's, A. racy, partisan survey of literature to 1906 (A propos du “Corpus Tibullianum”: un siècle de philologie latine classique, Bibliothèque de la Faculté des Lettres 23, Paris, 1906) is still invaluable, especially pp. 563–4Google Scholar. The most important studies remain: Gruppe, O. F., Die römische Elegie (Leipzig, 1838), i.27–64Google Scholar; Belling, H., Albius Tibullus (2 vols., Berlin, 1897), 1–84Google Scholar; Rasi, P., Una poetessa del secolo di Augusto (Padua, 1913)Google Scholar; Smith, K. F., The Elegies of Albius Tibullus (New York, 1913Google Scholar, reprinted Darmstadt, 1971), 77–87, 504–16; Schuster, M., ‘Zu den Gedichten der Sulpicia’, Mitteilung des Vereins der Humanistischen Gymnasiums, Wien 1 (1924), 19–29;Google ScholarProvasi, G., ‘Il ciclo tibulliano Sulpicia-Cerintho e le sue principali interpretazioni’, RFIC 15 (1937), 343–54Google Scholar; Bréguet, E., Le Roman de Sulpicia (Geneva, 1946)Google Scholar; Santirocco, M. S., ‘Sulpicia Reconsidered’, CJ 74 (1979), 229–39Google Scholar; Ellerman, K., ‘Sulpicia og hendes digte’, Museum Tusculanum 48 (1982), 61–91Google Scholar; Currie, art. cit. Note also the translations of Dunlop, P. in Tibullus: The Poems (Harmondsworth, 1972), 148–53Google Scholar; , A. & Barnstone, W. in A Book of Women Poets: From Antiquity to Now (New York, 1980), 57–9Google Scholar; Dillon, J. (3.14, 16, 18 only) in Cosman, C., Keefe, J., & Weaver, K. (edd.), The Penguin Book of Women Poets (Harmondsworth, 1978), 47–8Google Scholar.

2 On the group of poets associated with Messalla Corvinus see Hanslik, R., ‘Der Dichterkreis des Messalla’, Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien: Philologischhistorische Klasse 89 (1952), 22–38Google Scholar, Davies, C., ‘Poetry in the “Circle” of Messalla’, G&R 20 (1973), 25–35Google Scholar; Valvo, A., ‘M. Valerio Messalla Corvino negli studi piii recenti’, ANRW II 30.3 (1983), 1663–80: 1674ffGoogle Scholar.

3 ‘Eager and vibrant verse…proud and passionate effusions of a Roman lady of flesh and blood… The content, tone and style speak firmly of reality, the reality of a young woman in love’ (Currie, , pp. 1753, 1758)Google Scholar. See also the quotations in Santirocco, p. 230 n. 9, and Deyermond, n. 8.

4 Pomeroy, S. B., ‘Supplementary Notes on Erinna’, ZPE 32 (1978), 17–21Google Scholar, responding to M. L. West, ‘Erinna’, ibid. 25 (1977), 95–119 (who finishes provocatively: ‘What a pity such a gifted author had to conceal his name’).

5 Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves (New York, 1975), 173Google Scholar.

6 Lefkowitz-Fant (above, n. 1); omitted in the earlier edition Women in Greece and Rome (Toronto, 1977)Google Scholar.

7 Voss, J. H., Albius Tibullus und Lygdamus, übersetzt und erklärt (Tubingen, 1810), 317fGoogle Scholar.; still followed by Smith's commentary despite Cartault's spirited polemic (p. 84): ‘La croyance à l'amour chaste provient du parti pris si longtemps prédominant en Allemagne de voir les choses antiques à travers la pudeur germanique et de considérer comme le devoir du philologue de sauver l'honneur des personnages dont il s'occupait’.

8 Scaliger, J. J., Castigationes in Catullum, Tibullum, Propertium (Paris, 1577)Google Scholar, on 3.14.7 and 15.1.

9 Martial 10.35, 38; von Barth, K., Adversariorum Commentariorum libri LX (Frankfurt, 1624), lix.16Google Scholar, coll. 2811–2, followed in the edition of J. van Broekhuisen (Broukhusius) (Amsterdam, 1708). The identification, long out of favour, was revived by Herrmann, L., L'Age d'argent doré (Paris, 1951), 17–26Google Scholar.

10 Heyne, C. G., Albii Tibulli quae extant carmina nouis curis castigata 3 (Leipzig, 1798), 201–3Google Scholar.

11 Gruppe, , Die römische Elegie 49–50Google Scholar.

12 Baehrens, E., Tibullische Blätter (Jena, 1876), 42Google Scholar; Schanz, M., Geschichte der Römischen Literatur (first edition, Munich 1890–1904), ii.116Google Scholar; Marx, F., ‘Albius 12’, RE I.1 (1893), coll. 1319–29: 1326–7Google Scholar.

13 Teuffel, W. S., Studien und Characteristiken zur griechischen und römischen, sowie zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte (Leipzig, 1871), 366Google Scholar.

14 First by Hertzberg, G. F., Hallische Jahrbücher für deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst 2 (1839), 1012Google Scholar; Rigler, F. A., Annotations ad Tibullum (3 volumes, Potsdam, 1839–1844: not listed by Harrauer), iii.35Google Scholar (‘Scribat aliter vir, aliter mulier: latinitas aut eadem est aut nulla: sexus ad earn nihil pertinet’); cf. Belling (above, n. 1), 70–2.

15 Two interesting exceptions are Radford, R. S., ‘Tibullus and Ovid’, AJP 44 (1923), 1–26, 230–59,293–318Google Scholar, bent on proving Ovidian authorship of Sulpicia's poems along with everything else in book 3; Bréguet (above, n. 1), 43–55.

16 Gilleland, M. E., Linguistic Differentiation of Character Type and Sex in the Comedies of Plautus and Terence (Diss. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1979)Google Scholar; summary in DA 40 (1979), 3279AGoogle Scholar. Cicero testifies (De Or. 3.45) to a tendency to archaism in the spoken Latin of aristocratic women, at least in the previous generation; the distinction between archaism and colloquialism in first-century Latin is not always easy to draw, since Republican comedy constitutes our main body of test material for both.

17 So for instance Kirby Flower Smith's introduction, op. cit. (above, n. 1), 81: ‘Irrespective however of training, of environment, or of any extraneous cause, mere sex in itself is clearly reflected in habits of thought and points of view. A genuine women reacts so to speak to a given emotional stimulus in a way more or less characteristic of every other genuine woman in the same situation. In this respect nothing in all literature could be more characteristically feminine than these elegies. Their charming author is beyond all doubt a very woman. It is really for that reason that her poetry is so difficult. Her way of thinking is distinctively feminine, and though we may be familiar with it in the modern sphere of our own personal experience, it is less easy to follow in Latin, because Latin as we know it in the surviving literature is distinctively and exclusively masculine. She is feminine in what she says and in the way she says it. On the other hand, and this is the real difficulty, she is quite as feminine in what she does not say.’

18 Rossbach, A., Albii Tibulli libri quattuor (Leipzig, 1855), vi, 55Google Scholar.

19 Haupt, M., ‘Varia’, Hermes 5 (1871), 32–4Google Scholar = Opuscula (Leipzig, 1875–1876), iii.502Google Scholarf.; cf. PWR S739, and for the stemma RE IVA.l, coll. 879–80.

20 Fredericks, S. C., ‘A Poetic Experiment in the Garland of Sulpicia’, Latomus 35 (1976), 761–82Google Scholar usefully surveys the theories in n. 1.

21 The Cornutus addressed by Tibullus in 2.2.9, 2.3.1 remains an attractive identification, i supported by the elegiac conventions of metrical equivalence and far-fetched Greek puns in the coinage of pseudonyms for the beloved. 2.2 celebrates Cornutus' marriage, allowing romantic biographers to identify the wife of line 11 with Sulpicia and this marriage with the happy consummation alluded to in Sulpicia's first elegy. Ancient provenance is unlikely for the variant reading Cerinthe in late manuscripts of 2.2.9, but recent work on the Caecilii Cornuti has added interest to the Cornutus/Cerinthus hypothesis. Cichorius, C., Römische Studien (Leipzig and Berlin, 1922), 264 first identified the friend of Tibullus as the mysterious M. Caecilius Cornutus (PIR 2 C34) who was one of the first Augustan Arvales, alongside Messalla, in 21 B.C. (CIL vi. 32338).CrossRefGoogle ScholarScheid, J., Les Frères arvales (Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes: Section des Sciences Religieuses) 77 (Paris, 1975), 34–40 draws on the Cerinthus hypothesis for a speculative biography and reconstruction of the family stemma, in which Sulpicia acquires an intriguing political and literary marriage and becomes mother of the Arval of A.D. 14 (CIL vi.2023a, and see PIR 2 C35). The critic, however, will want to ask whether a planned marriage of this kind is easily understood from the Sulpicia elegies – the Garland perhaps more problematically than the elegidia. See alsoGoogle ScholarGroag, E., ‘Caecilius 46’, RE III.1 (1897), col. 1200Google Scholar, and cf. nos. 45 and 47; Howe, G., Fasti sacerdotum P.R. publicorum aetatis imperatoriae (Leipzig, 1904), 54 (no. 5)Google Scholar; de Laet, S. J., De Samenstelling van den Romeinischen Senaat (Amsterdam, 1941), 31 (no. 67)Google Scholar; Lewis, M. W. Hoffman, The Official Priests of Rome under the Julio-Claudians (1955), 121 n. 5Google Scholar; Syme, R., The Augustan Aristocracy (Oxford, 1986), 47, 206Google Scholar; cf. id., History in Ovid (Oxford, 1978), 179 and n. 2, and Some Arval Brethren (Oxford, 1981), 2Google Scholar.

22 A sceptic might note that our poet seems suspiciously forthcoming with autobiographical identifiers. In the space of forty lines she thoughtfully informs us she is the young (18.3) daughter Sulpicia of a Servius (16.4) with property in Etruria (14.4), and that a Messalla is her kinsman and, in some manner, guardian (14.5–6). No doubt some of this can be justified as in the way of auctorial sphragis; but it is hard to be entirely confident of an author obliging enough to address her most distinguished relative, if the text is sound, as ‘relative’.

23 ‘A sufficient explanation of these and similar peculiarities is mere inexperience in literary and metrical technique’ (Smith, , p. 81)Google Scholar; ‘It is the style of a writer who is not expert enough in the use of words to say what she wants to say without sacrifice of clarity’ (Quinn, , p. 190)Google Scholar.

24 art. cit. (above, n. 1), 238–9.

25 In addition to the discussions of Radford and Breguet (above, n. 15), see Cartault, A., Le Distique élégiaque chez Tibulle, Sulpicia, Lygdamus, Bibliothèque de la Faculté des Lettres 27 (Paris, 1911), esp. pp. 310–11Google Scholar.

26 Most fully discussed by Smith, p. 81 and commentary; Bréguet, pp. 43–4.

27 This distinctive Tibullan technique is famously analysed in Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), 495–505Google Scholar.

28 It is not always easy to tell whether a main-verb subjunctive in Sulpicia is jussive or potential in force; see further on 3.13 below.

29 Strictly, the mood of prosit is deliberative within an indicative condition: Kühner, R. & Stegmann, C., Ausführliche Grammatik der Lateinischen Sprache 3 (Leipzig, 1955), ii.392Google Scholar, §213(b).

30 The toga is of course the girl's, a badge of her inferior rank; the translations of Dunlop and the Barnstones curiously give it to Cerinthus.

31 Smith, K. F., op. cit. 513Google Scholar.

32 So the translations of Dunlop and Fant, perhaps hedging their bets. The OLD lists this occurrence of cadere, alongside Propertius 2.3.2, under 2f ‘to be brought down (from a position of eminence)’.

33 Virgil (G. 4.63) alludes to the plant cerintha (honeywort) as ignobile gramen, but botanical symbolism in the name (Boucher, J. P., ‘A propos de Cérinthus et de quelques autres pseudonymes dans la poésie augustéenne’, Latomus 35 (1976), 504–19Google Scholar) seems improbable. If Cerinthus is M. Caecilius Cornutus (see above, n. 21), his family background scarcely warrants the slur ignotus, though he is a surprising figure to find rubbing consular shoulders among the Arvales. The epithet in Virgil has not been convincingly explained: see Sargeaunt, J., The Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil (Oxford, 1920), 30–1Google Scholar.

34 Ellerman, art. cit. (above, n. 1), 75–9.

35 The transmitted text dolori est should surely be retained in line 5; the strange predicative dative with causa is closely supported by the construction with fama in 13.1–2.

36 One ‘feminine’ effect in the poems' cumulative texture may be that of the 27 verbs of which Sulpicia herself is the subject only four are indicative, and two of those (18.3, 5) refer to the same act; while no fewer than 24 verbs are used impersonally or with abstract or hypothetical subjects.

37 The paradosis with sinit is only preserved by the ugly reading quam uis, first proposed in the edition of Achilles Statius (Venice, 1567), and surprisingly endorsed in Postgate's text.

38 So Smith on 7–8: ‘Sulpicia is a women, she realizes, as only a woman can, the consequences of exposure, she dreads them, as only a woman can and should; hence, for example, the intrusion of fama in the first distych, which constitutes the real difficulty of the first sentence, and which a man probably would not have used’.

39 Santirocco, p. 235; cf. Ellerman, pp. 69–70.

40 Santirocco 234.

41 Lygdamus: first by Gruppe, , Die römische Elegie i.105–43Google Scholar; later discussions reviewed by Fisher, , art. cit. (above, n. 1), 1927 n. 14. Auctor de Sulpicia: Bréguet, pp. 333–8Google Scholar. The whole of book 3: R. S. Radford, art. cit. (above, n. 15).