Roman Morals Reconsidered:
Power and Idealization in Propertius 3.13 and 14

Barbara P. Weinlich (The University of Montana, Missoula)

In Elegies 3.13 and 14, the Propertian speaker re-frames Roman cultural phenomena in order to re-integrate himself into contemporary society.

Contrary to existing scholarship that discusses each poem separately (e.g., LaPenna 1950, Alfonsi 1949, Lana 1948, and Nethercut 1970) this paper suggests a reading of Propertius 3.13 and 14 as a diptych. In each elegy, the speaker compares Rome’s values or “bona” to those of another, highly idealized culture. Elegy 3.13 praises a lost Golden Age of humankind; Elegy 3.14 lauds Sparta’s “iura palaestrae” and the “lex Spartana.”  Both suggest a revision of Rome’s “bona.” Curiously, however, the urge for a change in Elegy 3.13 yields to a utopian wish in Elegy 3.14.

In adopting a dynamic, discursive view of language this paper argues that the device of idealization serves to highlight the speaker’s change of attitude toward Rome’s values and society and consequently toward elegiac love. By contrasting the ethos of contemporary Rome with that of a mythic past, a description that bears both verbal and thematic references to Vergil’s portrayal of the “Golden Age” in Georgics 2.458-540, the speaker of Elegy 3.13 casts himself in the outsider-position of a “patriae haruspex” (3.13.59) who, like an elegiac poet-lover, rejects the “bona” or values of Roman society and calls for a change. Elegy 3.13 thus re-emphasizes the speaker’s concerns about Roman morals previously voiced in Elegies 3.5, 3.7, and 3.12. In Elegy 3.14, in turn, his idealization of the rules of interaction between Spartan men and women provides the speaker with a means to express a wish phrased in the so-called “contrary-to-fact present.” Given that it cannot be granted, this wish in fact indicates that the speaker now considers himself a member of Roman society: He accepts the same “bona” that he has criticized in the previous elegy.

This reading is supported by the absence of any further complaint about Roman morals and by the speaker’s new mode of behavior toward his “puella” in the remaining elegies of Book 3. In Elegies 3.15 and 19, he silences her; in Elegy 3.16, he carefully weighs the risks of satisfying her wish to have him come to Tibur in the middle of the night. Obviously, the power is no longer with the mistress.

Yet these observations should not obscure the significance of Elegies 3.13 and 14 in the context of Augustan literature. The speaker’s use of idealization in support of both rejection and acceptance of Rome’s status quo may also be read as a response to the limited feasibility of Augustus’ politics of moral restoration: Despite a sincere longing for the pristine ethos of a Golden Age as portrayed by Vergil in Georgics 2.458-540, hardly any Roman wanted to give up the standard of living granted by contemporary Rome’s “bona.”