Chapter 4 - The Shield of Propertius

Summary

Propertius’ elegies on the rise of Rome (4.1), the treachery of Tarpeia (4.4), the Battle of Actium (4.6) and the spoils thrice dedicated to Jupiter Feretrius (4.10) boast ostensibly triumphant and teleological narratives that have little by way of elegiac sensibility. Yet this chapter argues that Propertius accesses via Virgil’s Aeneid alternative and less self-assured histories based on repetition and defeat. A locus for this tension betweeen linear and circular chronology is the shield of Aeneas, with its presentation of historical scenes up to Actium, an ecphrasis that Propertius recasts (with an eye on its notionally static and spatial properties) in his own description of Actium in elegy 4.6. The shield features also in elegy 4.4 to associate Tarpeia’s treachery with the Gallic sack of Rome, a historical ‘interpenetration’ much in keeping with Virgilian technique. In 4.10 further intertextuality with the Aeneid multiplies the canonical three dedications of spolia opima in a way that destabilizes the institutionalized Augustan history of Jupiter Feretrius. Ultimately, Propertius’ reading of Virgil implies that not even Rome is immune to the vicissitudes of an elegiac history.