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Alternae Voces—Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Alison Sharrock
Alison Sharrock
Affiliation:
University of Keele
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Extract

There is a persistent tradition of reading Propertius 1.10, according to which the Gallus addressed by the poem is the elegiac poet, and the poem itself is a description, not, or not only, of Gallus and his girl in bed but of Propertius reading Gallus’ love elegy.1 In CQ 39 (1989), 561–2, James O'Hara suggests that the phrase ‘in alternis vocibus’ in Prop. 1.10.10 is a hint at amoebean verse, and as such may refer to the amoebean elegiac experiments by Gallus which Fairweather argues are represented by the Qasr Ibrim papyrus. This may well be right. I suggest, however, that the primary metaphorical meaning of ‘in alternis vocibus’ is ‘in your elegiac verse’. Oblique hints at such a reading can be found in Ross (above n. 1), who describes 9f as ‘an extremely suggestive couplet’, and Hinds, in his discussion of alternus as a programmatic term in Ovid, Fasti 4.484.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 1990 , pp. 570 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

1 Skutsch, F., Gallus und Vergil (Leipzig and Berlin, 1906), pp. 144–6Google Scholar, Benjamin, A. S., ‘A Note on Propertius 1.10: O iucunda quies', CP 60 (1965), 178Google Scholar, Ross, D. O., Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry. Gallus, Elegy, and Rome (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 83—4Google Scholar, Cairns, F., ‘Propertius 1.4 and 1.5 and the “Gallus” of the Monobiblos’, Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, Fourth Volume (Liverpool, 1984), p. 101 n. 73Google Scholar.

2 Fairweather, J., ‘The “Gallus Papyrus”: a New Interpretation’, CQ 34 (1984), 167–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Hinds, S., The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 119–20, p. 162 n. 9Google Scholar.

4 Propertius 1.13 is quite similar to the poem under consideration: again addressed to Gallus, again describing the poet's pleasure at ‘watching Gallus in his mistress’ arms'. In 1.3 Propertius says ‘at non ipse tuas imitabor, perfide, voces’. If the identification of Gallus with the elegist is correct, voces here must refer to, or at least hint at, Gallus' own poetry.

5 See Hinds (above n. 3), pp. 119–20.

6 Knox, P. E., Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry, Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary Volume no. 11 (1986), pp. 19–23Google Scholar. I am indebted here to personal communication with Stephen Hinds.