SexViolHist Bib: Representations: Literary Texts: Propertius

»Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium (now Assisi) and died shortly after 15 BC.
Propertius's surviving work comprises four books of Elegies (Elegiae). He was a friend of the poets Gallus and Virgil and, with them, had as his patron Maecenas and, through Maecenas, the emperor Augustus. Although Propertius was not as renowned in his own time as other Latin elegists, he is today regarded by scholars as a major poet.« (Extract from: Wikipedia)

Elegiae

I n f o r m a t i o n

»Propertius's fame rests on his four books of elegies, totaling around 92 poems (the exact number cannot be known as over the intervening years, scholars have divided and regrouped the poems, creating doubt as to the precise number). All his poems are written using the elegiac couplet, a form in vogue among the Roman social set during the late 1st century BC.
Like the work of nearly all the elegists, Propertius's work is dominated by a figure of a single female character, one he refers to throughout his poetry by the name Cynthia. She is named in over half the elegies of the first book and appears indirectly in several others, right from the first word of the first poem in the Monobiblos.
Whilst Apuleius identifies her as a woman named Hostia, and Propertius suggests she is a descendant of the Roman poet Hostius, modern scholarship indicates that the creation of 'Cynthia' is part of a literary convention in Roman love elegy; scripta puella, a fictionalised 'written girl'.«. (Extract from: Wikipedia)

K e y w o r d s

I. Chronological Index: Ancient History: Ancient Rome

II. Geographical Index: European History: Italian History

III. Topical Index: Cases: Fictional Victims: Cynthia | Types: General: Rape

B i b l i o g r a p h y

I. Author Index

[Info] Walde, Christine. »Versuch über den Schlaf in der römischen Dichtung.« Schlaf in der Literatur: Zu Narratologie und Ästhetik einer alltäglichen Extremerfahrung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin 2025: 9-33.

II. Speaker Index