William Turpin
Swarthmore College, Classics, Faculty Member
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Amores 1.1, as usually understood, ends in a way that seems a little flat: after an amusing account of how falling in love made him turn from epic to elegy, the poet concludes by ponderously invoking an elegiac muse. In this note I will... more
Amores 1.1, as usually understood, ends in a way that seems a little flat: after an amusing account of how falling in love made him turn from epic to elegy, the poet concludes by ponderously invoking an elegiac muse. In this note I will argue that the ending is more entertaining, and more significant: the muse invoked in the last couplet, who is to inspire the poems to come, is none other than Corinna herself.
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The first two poems have made it abundantly clear that the poet has fallen head over heels in love, and we also assume that things are not going well: lovers whose affections are reciprocated might speak of their passion (uror, 1.1.26),... more
The first two poems have made it abundantly clear that the poet has fallen head over heels in love, and we also assume that things are not going well: lovers whose affections are reciprocated might speak of their passion (uror, 1.1.26), but they do not exclaim me miserum! and complain about Cupid’s arrows (1.1.25), or talk about being wounded (factum modo vulnus habebo, 1.2.29). Thus as Amores 1.3 opens we are not surprised to find the poet speaking of himself as the stereotypical unrequited ..
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This poem, like Amores 1.7, is hard to like. Here the poet is not violent, but he seems to be conspicuously unsympathetic. There are moments of wit and cleverness, but taken at face value the poem is unpleasant, and it is difficult to see... more
This poem, like Amores 1.7, is hard to like. Here the poet is not violent, but he seems to be conspicuously unsympathetic. There are moments of wit and cleverness, but taken at face value the poem is unpleasant, and it is difficult to see any satisfactory point in the end. I will suggest a reading that makes the poem more appealing (perhaps), and reads the poet as a less (or at least differently) annoying character. If we take the first couplet literally, we have to believe that the poet’s gi..
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This poem, like Amores 1.5, plays with a topic about which it is hard for modern readers to be playful: physical abuse. The poet has used violence on his girlfriend, and now expresses his deep remorse. But scholars are divided on the... more
This poem, like Amores 1.5, plays with a topic about which it is hard for modern readers to be playful: physical abuse. The poet has used violence on his girlfriend, and now expresses his deep remorse. But scholars are divided on the extent to which that remorse is supposed to be sincere. No one doubts that there is some element of playfulness here, and for many readers that playfulness remains problematic. But some scholars have read the poem as expressing an underlying anxiety: the poet has..
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SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D43016/82 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
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Since the Amores may well be among the first Latin poems a student encounters, it may be helpful to provide a brief introduction to the rules of Latin prosody (the quantity of individual syllables) and to the reading aloud of elegiac... more
Since the Amores may well be among the first Latin poems a student encounters, it may be helpful to provide a brief introduction to the rules of Latin prosody (the quantity of individual syllables) and to the reading aloud of elegiac couplets. For fuller discussion see D. S. Raven, Latin Metre: an Introduction (London: Faber and Faber, 1965). Prosody Whereas English meters are based on a word’s accent (“Múch have I trávelled in the reálms of góld”), Latin meters are based on quantity; what ma..
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We have learned a great deal in recent years about reading Horace's satires; there is now widespread agreement that the speaker of the satires is himself a character within them, a persona. Such a persona may be most effective when it... more
We have learned a great deal in recent years about reading Horace's satires; there is now widespread agreement that the speaker of the satires is himself a character within them, a persona. Such a persona may be most effective when it has obvious connections with its creator, but that fact does not preclude the exaggeration of reality, or even its complete inversion. For Horace the implications of this approach are exciting: instead of a poet discoursing with cheerful earnestness on morality, on poetry and on his daily life, we have a fictional character, whom we do not have to take seriously at all.The three diatribe satires present us with a character so absurd that they have been taken, I think rightly, as parodies. Although the poems were once appreciated as effective moralising sermons, even their admirers found it hard to justify the lack of intellectual coherence, to say nothing of the astonishing vulgarity of the second satire. As parodies, however, the poems are wonderf...