Leeds International Classical Studies 2.

3 (2003)
ISSN 1477-3643 (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/lics/)
© Marco Fantuzzi

Pastoral love and ‘‘elegiac’’ love, from Greece to Rome1

MARCO FANTUZZI (FLORENCE-MACERATA)

ABSTRACT: Latin elegiac poets often set their dreams of peaceful fulfilment of
the passion of love in the countryside. Propertius and Ovid (more than Tibullus)
refer to a countryside that has specifically bucolic features. This paper analyses
some Greek texts, mainly by the ‘‘minor bucolic’’ poet Bion of Smyrna, that may
have given rise to the ideal of bucolic (happy) love.

In poem 2.34 Propertius gives a lesson in poetics to a friend of his, a man of

letters known under the pseudonym Lynceus. The latter had attempted, first of all,
to betray him with Cynthia (the first thirty lines are dedicated to this subject); but
this had happened because he had been under the influence of wine, and therefore
he could perhaps be forgiven. However, if Lynceus has this overriding interest in
amorous adventures, he is ill-advised to dedicate his efforts to philosophy and epic
(or tragedy), and so on: he should, instead, turn his attention to light poetry of a
learned kind, like that of Callimachus and Philetas, as this is more attractive to
girls. This is what Propertius does, and he reigns sovereign among women at
feasts. Proud of this self-appraisal, Propertius compares his own poetic career
with that of Virgil, and dedicates a brief but (at least apparently) highly
appreciative comment to the Aeneid (nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade, 66).
Immediately afterwards, he starts to speak with particular sympathy about the
Eclogues and the Georgics, especially the former (67-74):
tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi
Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus,
utque decem possint corrumpere mala puellas,
missus et impressis haedus ab uberibus.
felix, qui vilis pomis mercaris amores!
huic, licet ingratae, Tityrus ipse canat.
felix intactum Corydon qui temptat Alexin,
agricolae domini carpere delicias!
Propertius’’ reappraisal of the Eclogues is highly personalised, and freely
introduces adaptations. The undoubtedly arbitrary decision to connect Virgil’’s
Eclogues with the banks of the Galaesus, a river near Tarentum, which (though it
was mentioned at Georgics 4.126) never appeared in the Eclogues, is not the only
example. Even more revealing, in my opinion, is the relatively arbitrary
adaptation whereby the gift of ten apples or a baby lamb as sufficient to conquer
the puellae derives from the association of various models, not all of which are
Virgilian. On the one hand, there is the union of Theocritus Idyll 3.10, where the

1
This paper was first presented at the colloquium ‘‘Greek and Latin Pastoral’’, organised by the
School of Classics at the University of Leeds, 25 January 2002. A fuller, annotated version is to be
published in Italian in the proceedings of the conference ‘‘L’’officina ellenistica: poesia dotta e
popolare in Grecia e a Roma’’, held at Trento, 4-6 April 2002. I would to thank the editors of LICS
and an anonymous referee for their valuable suggestions.

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 MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

gift of the ten apples was offered to the lady Amaryllis as a prelude to the
herdsman’’s long, fruitless serenade in front of her door, with Virgil’’s Eclogue
3.70f., where Menalcas mentions the gift of ten apples for his extremely obliging
puer (cf. 66 mihi sese offert ultro). On the other, there is Virgil’’s Eclogue 1.30-35,
where Tityrus says that he has found his freedom,
postquam nos Amaryllis habet, Galatea reliquit.
Namque, fatebor enim, dum me Galatea tenebat,
nec spes libertatis erat, nec cura peculi:
quamvis multa meis exiret victima saeptis,
pinguis et ingratae premeretur caseus urbi,
non umquam gravis aere domum mihi dextra redibat.
Thus Propertius’’ puella is happy to accept his gift of apples, unlike Amaryllis in
Theocritus. In Idyll 3 this gift is only one of many clumsy gestures on the part of
the herdsman, who, like the Cyclops in Idyll 11, sees everything from the narrow
point of view of his pastoral world, and is destined to failure in his courting of
Amaryllis. By contrast, the gift of ten apples in Eclogue 3 gratifies a puer who
appears to satisfy the love of Menalcas, and the Amaryllis of Eclogue 1
personifies the refusal of venality and a gratifying acceptance of Tityrus’’ love.
Even if she did not subsequently satisfy him (licet ingratae, Propertius adds
jokingly), at least she would not ruin him economically, as Galatea had risked
ruining Tityrus in Eclogue 1. Both because she is ready to surrender, and because
she is, at any rate, not ruinously expensive for her lovers, the puella ‘‘constructed’’
by Propertius’’ revisitation of the Eclogues possesses the characteristics of the
ideal lover of an elegiac poet. Unlike the inflexible Amaryllis of Theocritus’’
primordial creation, she is more than willing to open her door to her lover in
exchange for ten apples ... If it is true, as commentators unanimously suggest, and
as I too believe, that the idea of the ‘‘ten-apple woman’’ was bound to evoke the
Amaryllis of Theocritus’’ Idyll 3, then it is very likely that Propertius would have
wished to underline this difference deliberately, so as to emphasise the progress
made by Virgil (or at least by his Virgil) in constructing the ideal of a pacific
pastoral love, compared with the grotesque parody of situations typical of a
paraklausithyron found in Idyll 3.
But Propertius’’ idealising reinterpretation of Virgil’’s Eclogues can be seen
even more clearly in his presentation of the characters of Eclogue 2. Corydon is
said to be felix, because temptat carpere, ‘‘he tries to pick’’ the intactus Alexis, ‘‘the
delight of his rural master’’ (73f.). Thus Corydon’’s felicitas does not consist in the
reciprocation of his love (although Propertius’’ temptat involves some ambiguity
about Corydon’’s success, by contrast with the acknowledged failure of Virgil’’s
Corydon), but in the fact that he has as the object of his desire a youth who is
intactus. In erotic contexts intactus is practically a terminus technicus meaning
‘‘virgin’’, but Alexis, who had been presented more directly by Virgil as formosus,
is most certainly not ‘‘virgin’’, seeing that Virgil said (2.2), and Propertius repeated,
that he was the ‘‘delight’’ of his master. Deliciae is another technical term of erotic
language, quite often used to indicate an eromenos, and for this reason it tends to
belie the technical-erotic value of intactus. Thus the reader is invited to pay
particular attention to this adjective, and is led to interpret it in the

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MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

metaphorical/cultural sense of ‘‘uncontaminated’’, and to find a justification for this

in the specification agricola, which Propertius uses to describe the dominus whose
status Virgil had left indeterminate. In conclusion, Corydon is happy, not because
his love is (or is certainly going to be) requited, as might be expected in erotic
poetry, but simply because he is courting an Alexis who is uncontaminated, seeing
that, as the boy-friend of an agricola, he lives his life out in the fields.
It is common opinion that Propertius is carrying out a sort of eroticisation of
the Eclogues, aiming to reduce to the minimum the distance between his own
poetry and that of Virgil. I am inclined to think that this is not an isolated and
factious interpretation of bucolic poetry (Virgil and Theocritus) on the part of
Propertius, designed to eliminate the clear difference between erotic poetry and
bucolic poetry, or to criticise bucolic poetry in the name of an elegiac ideology. In
this passage of Propertius and in other ones which we will consider later, but also
in Tibullus, in the Gallus of Virgil’’s Eclogue 10, and in at least the fifth of Ovid’’s
Epistulae heroidum, there is a sort of intergeneric synthesis which indicates the
pastoral setting of love as an ideally positive, even if consciously utopian, setting
of eros. In this way a kind of erotic-pastoral poetry is created which provides an
alternative to the erotic-elegiac poetry of the urban setting. I would like to show
that behind the erotic-pastoral poetry of these Latin authors of the first century BC
there was a precise trend of Greek bucolic poetry, which has largely been lost for
us, but which may still be traced, at least partially——a trend of erotic poetry with a
strong bucolic colouring, which departed from the presentation of love as a
disease traditional in tragedy and epigram, and anticipated aspects of a vision of
eros which were, to some extent, elegiac ante litteram.
The bucolic poetry of Theocritus had presented the bucolic environment and
eros as terms of a regularly contrastive and exclusive opposition. Even if love is
one of the themes that Theocritus’’ herdsmen speak about most frequently, the
opposition between unhappy, suffering love (and love poetry) on the one hand,
and bucolic life (and poetry) on the other could already be seen in various poems
by Theocritus. The ekphrasis of the cup in Idyll 1 (32-8, 45-54) had created a
contrast between the woman’’s agitated relationships with her two lovers and the
peacefulness of the picture of country life. In Idyll 7.122-7 the invitation
expressed by Simichidas to Aratus to abandon his desperate passion is
immediately followed by Simichidas’’ long, sweet description of the locus
amoenus, with the implicit effect of contrasting the song of unhappy love and
bucolic serenity and connecting the latter with the renunciation of love. Lastly, the
love-song of Bucaeus in Idyll 10 (24-37), which is presented with characteristics
that are no less clumsy than (if not actually a parody of) that of Idyll 3, is
contrasted with Milon’’s song at work (42-58); then at the end of the latter song,
the meaning of the opposition eros/country life is made explicit in a final
statement which opposes the latter to the former and possesses all the emphasis of
a programmatic sentence of Theocritus, even if it is expressed through the opinion
of a character——whether this is Milon, in a warning to Bucaeus, or Bucaeus
himself, who performs a sort of self-criticism (56-8):

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MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

taàta cr¾ mocqeàntaj ™n ¡l…J ¥ndraj ¢e…dein,

tÕn d" teÒn, Bouka‹e, pršpei limhrÕn œrwta
muq…sden t´ matrˆ kat' eÙn¦n Ñrqreuo…sv.
Later, this same contrast is presented even more explicitly in various epigrams
based on the opposition between ‘‘pastoral’’ and ‘‘erotic’’, which consider the feeling
of love to be in contrast with the rough, elementary world of the shepherds and
their animals (as Theocritus often does, too), or proclaim (as Theocritus had never
done) the separation between pastoral life and love. I am thinking in particular of
the epigrams of Meleager, which apparently develop the old topos of poetry as a
medicine for love (most recently developed by Theocritus, Idyll 11, and by
Callimachus, AP 12.150.1-4 = HE 1047ff.), but which introduce an innovation by
specifically presenting bucolic poetry in the role of a temporary respite or escape
from the vicissitudes of love. See, above all, AP 7.196 (= HE 4066ff.):
'Ac»eij tšttix, drosera‹j stagÒnessi mequsqeˆj
¢gronÒman mšlpeij moàsan ™rhmol£lon:
¥kra d' ™fezÒmenoj pet£loij prionèdesi kèloij
a„q…opi kl£zeij crwtˆ mšlisma lÚraj.
¢ll£, f…loj, fqšggou ti nšon dendrèdesi NÚmfaij
pa…gnion, ¢ntJdÕn Panˆ krškwn kšladon,
Ôfra fugën tÕn ”Erwta meshmbrinÕn Ûpnon ¢greÚsw
™nq£d' ØpÕ skierÍ keklimšnoj plat£nJ.
This may be linked to its twin epigram, AP 7.195 (= HE 4058ff.)
'Akr…j, ™mîn ¢p£thma pÒqwn, paramÚqion Ûpnou,
¢kr…j, ¢roura…h Moàsa liguptšruge,
aÙtofu"j m…mhma lÚraj, krške mo… ti poqeinÕn
™gkroÚousa f…loij possˆ l£louj ptšrugaj,
éj me pÒnwn ·Úsaio panagrÚpnoio mer…mnhj,
¢kr…, mitwsamšnh fqÒggon ™rwtopl£non.
We are left in little doubt of the fact that bucolic life is presented here as a specific
antidote to the negativity of the experience of love. This is shown by the
opposition between the music of the ‘‘song’’ of the cicada or the cricket
(¢gronÒman ... moàsan ™rhmol£lon, a clear metaphor for pastoral poetry) on the
one hand, and, on the other, the love that is enabled by that music to ‘‘flee’’ (fugën
tÕn ”Erwta) or to ‘‘be led astray’’ (™rwtopl£non). It is shown, too, by the
opposition between the rest that this same music offers to the ‘‘fugitive’’ from
Love——a rest to be ‘‘captured’’ even at midday——and the sorrowing vigils
(panagrÚpnoio mer…mnhj) which another inveterate topos, particularly dear to
Meleager, attributes to those who are in the grip of love.
The same contrastive distinction between the bucolic setting and erotic poetry
can be found in Bion (fr. 10 Reed = Gow), but with an almost opposite option in
favour of the latter:
`A meg£la moi KÚprij œq' Øpnèonti paršsta
nhp…acon tÕn ”Erwta kal©j ™k ceirÕj ¥goisa
™j cqÒna neust£zonta, tÒson dš moi œfrase màqon:
`mšlpein moi, f…le boàta, labën tÕn ”Erwta d…daske'.
ìj lšge: c¨ m"n ¢pÁlqen, ™gë d' Ósa boukol…asdon,
n»pioj æj ™qšlonta maqe‹n, tÕn ”Erwta d…daskon,

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 MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

æj eáren plag…aulon Ð P£n, æj aÙlÕn 'Aq£na,

æj cšlun `Erm£wn, k…qarin æj ¡dÝj 'ApÒllwn.
taàt£ nin ™xed…daskon: Ö d' oÙk ™mp£zeto mÚqwn,
¢ll£ moi aÙtÕj ¥eiden ™rwtÚla, ka… me d…daske
qnatîn ¢qan£twn te pÒqwj kaˆ matšroj œrga.
kºgën ™klaqÒman m"n Óswn tÕn ”Erwta d…daskon,
Óssa d' ”Erwj me d…daxen ™rwtÚla p£nta did£cqhn.
The protagonist forgets what he had tried to teach Eros, that is to say, the subjects
that he had sung previously as a bucolic poet, and allows Eros to instruct him in
™rwtÚla, ‘‘short love poems’’.
It is not possible to establish with certainty what love poetry Bion is speaking
about: the bucolic-erotic kind with pastoral protagonists, as in his fragments 9 and
11 or the pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 20 or 27, or erotic-mythological poems with a
very limited pastoral frame of the same kind as the Epithalamium of Achilles and
Deidamia (= [Bion] 2). It is beyond doubt, however, that his protagonist focuses
here on the opposition between the ‘‘bucolic’’-heurematistic poetry presented in 7f.
(the kind adopted by Bion himself, e.g. in fragment 5, or in PVind.Rainer 29801)
and poetry with an erotic-bucolic subject (the lover in the erotic fragment 9, at any
rate, has a pastoral name). Furthermore, he adopts a specific term, ™rwtÚlon, for
the ‘‘short poem with erotic subject-matter’’, for which no specific definition is
attested in previous poetry or literary reflections. And, finally, he sustains the
overriding irresistibility of the latter with a firmness that finds few parallels in the
Greek literary tradition——apart from Anacreontics 1, which analogously opens
with the visit of Anacreon and Eros to the poet in a dream, and closes analogously
with the declaration of faithfulness to love and to love poetry: kaˆ dÁqen ¥cri
kaˆ nàn œrwtoj oÙ pšpaumai.
Indeed there must have been at least two traditions of love poetry with which
Bion came into direct contact: epigrammatic poetry on the one hand, and on the
other the poetry of the Anacreontics. These two traditions had given widely
differing interpretations of the possibility of a peaceful relationship between the
Muses and Eros. Bion appears to detach himself sharply from the first of these
positions, and to be in fairly close agreement with the second. The tradition of the
Anacreontics had perpetuated the figure of the poet-symposiast, who was
constantly tipsy and constantly in love, in a perfect correspondence between
poetry on the one hand and love and symposia on the other. By contrast, the erotic
epigram of the third century had shared with many philosophers of the period an
intellectualistic attitude of condemning the passion of love; and its authors, even
while writing love poetry, considered and often declared love to be a sort of
illness, an irrational fall. They paradoxically experience as a contradiction the fact
that they are poet-intellectuals but at the same time in love, and love poets.2
There is no doubt that the bucolic Virgil attributed considerable importance as
a model to the precedent of Meleager AP 7.196, in view of his two
‘‘programmatic’’ imitations in the first and the second lines of Eclogue 1: patulae
recubans sub tegmine fagi > ØpÕ skierÍ keklimšnoj plat£nJ and silvestrem
2
I have dealt at length with this topic in Fantuzzi and Hunter 2002, 448-62; on the most telling fr.
9 of Bion, see ibid. 235f.

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MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

Musam meditaris > ¢gronÒman mšlpeij moàsan. More generally, in the light of
the tradition of contrastive comparison between bucolic poetry and love poetry
represented by Bion (in favour of the latter) and Meleager (with his temporary
preference for the former), I believe we can better understand why the Virgil of
Eclogue 10 imagines that his friend, the elegiac poet Gallus, conceives of the
possibility of pastoral life (and poetry) as the alternative (not an alternative, but
the alternative) to the love he feels for Lycoris, and also to his previous
mythological-erudite poetry and to elegiac poetry. Or rather, the poem creates an
ideal, impossible synthesis between eros and pastoral setting: Gallus, the hero of
the passion adopted as a choice of elegiac life, agrees, at least in Virgil’’s vision, to
become a sort of Daphnis, the pastoral victim of love.
The contemplation of the ruins of his love, proclaimed by Apollo (22f.), leads
Gallus to regret that he had not joined the shepherds in their world in the past, and
had not found solace with the love of some Phyllis or Amyntas, who ‘‘among the
willows or under the vine’’ would undoubtedly have yielded themselves to him
willingly (that is to say, without the dramas of refusals and the unfaithfulness of
elegiac loves), or that he had not enjoyed the love of Lycoris amid those loca
amoena (37-43):
certe sive mihi Phyllis sive esset Amyntas
seu quicumque furor (quid tum, si fuscus Amyntas?
et nigrae violae sunt et vaccinia nigra),
mecum inter salices lenta sub vite iaceret;
serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas.
hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori,
hic nemus; hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.
Then Gallus seems to understand that to find a remedy for the agitation of his
passion it is not sufficient simply to change environment, and to leave the city of
the elegy for the pastoral countryside. Thus he proposes to take the concrete
decision to change his life and his poetry in future, or rather to re-elaborate, in
symbiosis with the Muse of Theocritus, his previous poetry, which had been
written under the guidance of the ‘‘Chalcidian’’ Muse (51f.), and the very idea of
love and love poetry, so that they may become a function of the bucolic
environment (tenerisque meos incidere amores arboribus——crescent illae,
crescetis, amores, ll. 53f.). But then the dream collapses: in the end Gallus is
forced to recognise this, with an unconditional surrender (‘‘Love triumphs over
everything: we, too, must give way to Love’’) which has many analogies with the
Propertian ideology of servitium amoris. This surrender is probably not to be
interpreted as an admission of the inferiority of the idea of bucolic love proposed
by Virgil to Gallus, but of the incapacity of the elegiac poet Gallus (who has his
own different, pre-existing, prepotent ideology of love) to understand the rhetoric
of erotic discourse pastorally re-interpreted and controlled. Virgil says something
quite analogous also in Eclogue 2, where the rhetoric of Corydon’’s erotic
discourse tries to transform the loved one into a function of the bucolic world,
until he realises the impossibility of the task: that is to say, he realises the radical
separation that exists between love and pastoral life, and the overriding superiority
of the former.

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 MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

There is a clear connection between Eclogue 10 and the fifth of Ovid’’s

Epistulae heroidum. The intention of the Nymph Oenone is to contrast Paris’’ new
love for the adulterous Helen, which is fraught with danger for the future (156),
with the opposing possibility of a ‘‘love without any risks’’ (tutus amor, 89) with
her, a nymph who had only belonged to Paris, and would have liked to continue to
belong to him——elegiacally——for ever (133 and 157f.). But unfortunately for her,
Paris, a bit like Virgil’’s Gallus, remains insensitive to Oenone’’s appeal when she
invites him to return to the erotic-pastoral synthesis of life, as if he, too, were an
irreversible creation of elegiac poetry, who had passed through the pastoral
experience without being significantly affected by it.
The possibility that erotic pathos may become controllable, without the
sorrows caused by elegiac (or urban) love, when it is set within the coordinates of
the pastoral world, is clearly formulated again several times, at least in
Propertius.3 A rapid hint, based more on literary allusiveness than on autonomous
images, can be found in Propertius 1.18. As he is afraid that his face is not sad
enough or emaciated enough to show fully how much he suffers for love of
Cynthia and his faithfulness to her, the poet does not limit himself to donning the
clothes of a passionate lover of the tradition. Instead he practically invents, in the
name of his love for Cynthia, a sort of pastoral prehistory, based first of all on the
story of Gallus in the Eclogue 10 and ultimately on the Acontius of Callimachus
(19-22):
vos eritis testes, si quos habet arbor amores
fagus et Arcadio pinus amica deo.
a quotiens teneras resonant mea verba sub umbras,
scribitur et vestris Cynthia corticibus!
In Propertius 2.30, the imitation of Eclogue 2, another of Virgil’’s most erotic
bucolic poems, is the starting point for a true intersection between bucolic ideal
and elegiac ideal. Propertius has just declared, in a highly Catullan manner, that he
is not bothered in the slightest if his life-style is criticised by excessively austere
elderly people, and that no-one can blame him if he ‘‘is happy living with one
woman’’ (23). His only desire is that Cynthia is ready to follow him away from the
city, to live with him amid the wild nature of the mountains, because there it will
be possible for them to hear the Muses sing love stories: with these Muses (who
are not unacquainted with the sufferings of love: 34-6) Cynthia will be able to
take part in the dance, together with the Muses and Bacchus, and Propertius
himself will place the Bacchic crown of ivy on her brow. Let us consider in
particular 25-9:
libeat tibi, Cynthia, mecum
rorida muscosis antra tenere iugis:
illic aspicies scopulis haerere Sorores

3
In the poetry of Tibullus, too, there are frequent dreams of golden ages or prospective utopias in a
rural setting, which exalt the purity of life in the countryside. But in these primitivistic outbursts
the sweetening of eros is only a relatively marginal component of the ideal of life of aÙt£rkeia,
and the tradition of cynical primitivism and diatribe, or Virgil’’s Georgics, prove to have far more
influence than the poetic models of Greek or Latin poetry with a bucolic setting.

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 MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

et canere antiqui dulcia furta Iovis,

ut Semela est combustus, ut est deperditus Io ...
Lines 25f. are a clear allusion to Eclogue 2.28f.:
O tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura
atque humilis habitare casas ...
Similarly, the involvement of Cynthia and Propertius in the Bacchic dances of the
Muses enacts the same atmosphere of rural/poetic enthousiasmos as can also be
found in Virgil’’s Eclogue 2.31:
mecum una in silvis imitabere Pana canendo.
Basically, Propertius does not limit himself to situating amid the wild woods the
mystical communion between himself, Cynthia, the Muses and Bacchus, which
would best correspond, at the same time, to his desires of love for Cynthia and his
ideals as an elegiac poet. That would be a banal setting, in line with the highly
traditional setting of scenes of poetic initiation in wild, uninhabited places. He
goes further than this and, through his allusion to Virgil, Propertius marks out his
position within literary history, representing it as intimately linked to the bucolic
environment. This ideal evasion into a fantastic world where eros is everything is
thus achieved specifically in the countryside, and consciously assumes the modes
and the forms of bucolic poetry.
Propertius 3.13 once again speaks about a utopia, but this time retrospectively,
and therefore with the force of a fictitious, consolatory historicity. Propertius
begins by deprecating the extravagance of matrons and the unfaithfulness of
wives, and then he breaks off with a makarismos which introduces the golden age
(25f.):
felix agrestum quondam pacata iuventus,
divitiae quorum messis et arbor erant!
There follows a long description (27-46) of this ancient period of spontaneity and
simplicity, when the gifts that were exchanged consisted simply of fruit and
flowers (which, as we have seen, Virgil had already presented as the typical gifts
exchanged among shepherds), and women sold their kisses at the price of these
simple gifts; no need was felt for luxuries, but lovers slept under a blanket made
from the skin of an animal. At the end of this long description, to exemplify the
simplicity of the religious feeling of these long-lost times, are the following lines
(43-6):
et leporem, quicumque venis, venaberis, hospes,
et, si forte meo tramite quaeris, avem:
et me Pana tibi comitem de rupe vocato,
sive petes calamo praemia, sive cane.
These lines translate almost to the letter a famous epigram by Leonidas (AP 9.337
= HE 2143ff.)——the only such case in Propertius’’ poetry.4 With the appropriation

4
The well-known case of Propertius 1.1.1-4 ~ Meleager AP 12.101 = HE 4540ff. is much more an
adaptation than a translation.

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MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

of these words, Propertius acknowledges his debt to the sensibility and the
religious nature of the tradition of Greek bucolic poetry.
An analogous allusion referring to a precise model in Greek bucolic poetry,
which has so far escaped the notice of scholars, should be considered at work in
Propertius 2.19. This time, it specifically involves Bion. It is a daydream about the
future, which might include a possible stay of Cynthia in the countryside, and the
involvement of Propertius. For once the poet states that he is not afraid that
Cynthia will be unfaithful when she is far away from him: the countryside, which
is devoid of temptations, will be a guarantee of her purity, and Cynthia will be
alone among the fields and the flocks (7f.), far away from the temptations of the
city, and from the people she usually met when she went out to go to the temples
(9f.). As for him, he will be ready to devote himself to the worship of Diana,
leaving aside that of Venus (iam me sacra Dianae suscipere et Veneris ponere vota
iuvat, 17f.), and to hunt, giving orders to the dogs himself (audaces ipse monere
canis), but with all due caution (21-4):
non tamen ut vastos ausim temptare leones
aut celer agrestis comminus ire sues.
haec igitur mihi sit lepores audacia mollis
excipere et structo figere avem calamo.
In this passage, in my opinion, we can see a reflection of the tardy rebuke
formulated by Aphrodite over the dead body of Adonis in the Epitaph for Adonis,
a poem which describes the lament of Aphrodite for her beloved Adonis, who has
just been killed by the wild boar: ‘‘but why do you give orders to the dogs, O
reckless one? why did you, who are handsome, desire so ardently to struggle
against a wild beast?’’ (t… g£r, tolmhrš, kun£geij; kalÕj ™ën t… tosoàton
™m»nao qhrˆ pala…ein; 60f.). There is also an anticipation of the more
circumstantially described warning which Ovid, probably also remembering Bion
and undoubtedly adapting Propertius, places in the mouth of the goddess when
(like Propertius) she subjects herself, at the height of her love for Adonis, to a sort
of venatorial servitium amoris (Met. 10.533-52). She adopts Diana’’s costume
(genus veste ritu succincta Dianae, 536) and starts giving orders to the dogs
(hortatur canes, 537). But she only attacks animals that it is not dangerous to hunt
(tutae animalia praedae, 537), such as hares (Propertius, too, speaks of lepores),
and at all costs (539-46) she keeps away from strong wild boars, and from wolves,
and bears (a fortibus abstinet apris raptoresque lupos armatosque unguibus ursos
vitat); and she warns Adonis, too, to fear these beasts, telling him: ‘‘be brave
against fearful animals, but boldness against bold animals is not safe’’ (in audaces
non est audacia tuta. parce meo, iuvenis, temerarius [cf. Bion’’s tolmhrš] esse
periclo, neve feras, quibus arma dedit natura, lacesse ...). As Ovid correctly
‘‘interprets’’ in his imitation, Propertius in this way presented himself as a sort of
prudent Adonis, who does not commit the sin of recklessness of which Bion’’s
Aphrodite had accused her loved one.

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 MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

Last, but not least, Propertius 2.13 provides further strong evidence that
Propertius, at least, considered Bion one of his favourite authors. In this case,
anyway, Bion’’s intertext has already been described in detail.5
It therefore appears to me highly attractive to consider the possibility that
Propertius was induced to evoke Bion because he detected in the Epitaph for
Adonis, as in other poems by Bion considered above, a precedent for some of the
attitudes involved in his ideal as an eternal singer of love. But it is difficult to say
to what extent Bion, and an insufficiently documented re-interpretation of love
outside the epigram (with its consolidated traditions and its high level of topicity),
really represented the archetypes of Latin elegiac poetry. In any event, as well as
proposing genetic hypotheses, my discussion ought at least to have highlighted the
fact that the bucolic environment quite often becomes, for Propertius and Ovid,
the wishful setting of the ‘‘road not taken’’ by elegiac love, namely the idealised
happy prehistory or alternative to the urban environment where the unhappiness
of elegiac poetry was enacted.

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—— ‘‘Eros Pastoral and Profane: on Love in Virgil’’s Eclogues’’, in S. Morton Braund
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5
Papanghelis 1987, 64-70; Fantuzzi, in Fantuzzi and Hunter 2002, 240-2.

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MARCO FANTUZZI, PASTORAL LOVE AND ‘‘ELEGIAC’’ LOVE, FROM GREECE TO ROME

D.O. Ross, Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry (Cambridge 1975)

E.A. Schmidt, Poetische Reflexion: Vergils Bukolik (Munich 1972)
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