Chapter 3 - Poetic and Imperial Spaces in Propertius, Books 1–3

Summary

This chapter examines Propertius’ poetics of space, particularly as it relates to Roman imperialist rhetoric. Beyond the relatively obvious metapoetic images of height and lowliness, it suggests that Propertius employs a range of other spatial metaphors in his construction of a poetic self-image, drawing notably on the language of boundaries and boundlessness, centre and periphery; here, elegiac poetics capitalises on what the author terms the ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ aspects of imperialist discourse, whereby Rome expands to fill the world, but also subsumes or draws in the products and characteristics of all other nations. In his more confident moments, the elegist represents himself not merely as echoing or collaborating with, but as surpassing the achievements of Augustus himself. A similar symbolic rivalry may be seen in Propertius’ self-representation as triumphator; the author links this in turn to the poet’s references to monumental architecture, particularly the ecphrasis of the Temple of Palatine Apollo in 2.31, which may be understood as a figurative monument to the power of poetry, dependent on but not identical with its counterpart in the physical landscape of Rome.