Who is this lecher boasting that he can go all night and one woman is not enough? What happened to the Propertius who is always pledging exclusive and eternal loyalty to Cynthia, even when she is treating him like a doormat? It’s a reminder that poets are not necessarily autobiographers or diarists: if they are any good, they are artists, using their creative imagination. If you were a Roman who wanted to write love elegy and didn’t have a lover, you would invent one. If you did have one, you – and she or he – might have views on how literally the relationship should be turned into verse. Conversely, when they seem at their most imaginative and spontaneous, Roman poets may be following a convention or a model from centuries of Greek precedents that we may or may not know about.
Thamyras was a mythical singer who challenged the nine muses to a music contest in which their stake was sex with all nine of them. He lost and was deprived of the gift of song and of his sight (could have been even worse).
Alcmena was one of Jupiter’s mythical conquests: he took her husband’s form to seduce her, and stopped the motion of the stars to make the night longer.
See the illustrated blog post here.
To hear the Latin, press play:
