Domina Or Serva Amoris

Domina or Serva Amoris?

Sulpicia as Mistress and Cerinthus as Poet in Corpus Tibullianum 3.9

The so-called ‘Garland of Sulpicia’ is a group of 5 elegies which appear as part of book III of the Corpus Tibullianum (3.8-12). These poems appear just before a group of 6 poems (3.13-18) generally accepted as being by a female poet, Sulpicia. She is the only female Roman poet of the classical era whose work has survived. Two of the ‘garland’ poems present a female voice and appear following a third person elegy about a woman named Sulpicia. Although these poems present a female first person voice and appear in close proximity to other poems by, and about, Sulpicia, they have not been considered to be ‘genuine’ works of Sulpicia’s (an exception is Parker 1994) and, with the other 3 garland poems, have therefore been neglected. Much of the work surrounding Sulpicia has focused on recreating her historical figure, a highly problematic and not necessarily revealing enterprise. Because of this interest in the “real” Sulpicia, the literary interest of the ‘garland’ poems has been missed. Judith Hallett has recognized the appeal of the ‘garland’ but has addressed mainly their question of authorship, attributing all 11 poems to Sulpicia herself (Hallett 2002). Beyond this, very little work has been done on the poetic characteristics of the elegies contained in the ‘garland’, and the unique literary opportunities allowed by their female perspective. In this paper I hope to remedy this with a close look at one of these poems and its interaction with, and innovative appropriation of, elegiac traditions.

In this paper I offer a close reading of poem 3.9 of the Corpus Tibullianum. In the poem, a female narrator addresses her lover, Cerinthus, who is abroad hunting. She asks a boar to spare his life and Amor to keep him from harm. The female narrator is not named, but Cerinthus is named elsewhere as the lover of Sulpicia. Sulpicia is, therefore, our narrator and, regardless of her historical authenticity, for the purposes of the poem she is our poet. She is concerned with her lover’s safety but also, as I will show, with his fidelity. Throughout the poem Sulpicia evokes elegiac tropes to establish her relationship to her lover. The result is a complex play between the typical role of the poet as servus amoris, the slave of love, and his indifferent, and often unfaithful, mistress or domina. As the female, Sulpicia should be the domina, the elegiac poet’s object of affection who is often presented as exercising control over her lover. Indeed Sulpicia attempts to cast herself in this role. By tracing the references to the goddesses Venus and Diana, both common models for the elegiac mistress, I show how Sulpicia both likens herself to the elegiac mistress and simultaneously undercuts this role. For example, Sulpicia tries to adopt the characteristics of Diana by asking that she be allowed to hunt with her lover, but she offers to carry his nets (ipsa ego per montes retia torta feram, [Tib.] 3.9.11-12). Carrying the hunting nets was a difficult job and usually the role of a slave or, in Tibullus 1.4 of a servus amoris (Tib. 1.4.49-50). In portraying herself as mistress, she attempts to cast Cerinthus in the role of poet (i.e., servus amoris), subject to his domina’s indifference and inconstancy. In reality, however, Sulpicia is the poet and it is she who is abandoned and pining for her love. Her attempts to paint herself as indifferent domina fail miserably and even in her effort to portray herself as the elegiac mistress, Sulpicia undercuts her role with her concern for her lover’s fidelity and her own passionate love. In this way, the poem becomes a play between the elegiac expectations of Sulpicia’s gender and her actual role as narrator and poet.

Bibliography:

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———. “The Eleven Elegies of the Augustan Poet Sulpicia.” In Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, edited by Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey, 1:45-65. New York: Routledge, 2002.

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Maltby, Robert, ed. Tibullus: Elegies, Text, Introduction and Commentary. Cambridge: Francis Cairns, 2002.

Parker, Holt. “Sulpicia, the Auctor de Sulpicia, and the Authorship of 3.9 and 3.11 of the Corpus Tibullianum.” Helios 21 (1994): 39-62.

Roessel, David. “The Significance of the Name Cerinthus in the Poems of Sulpicia.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 120 (1990): 243-250.

Skoie, Mathilde. Reading Sulpicia: Commentaries, 1475-1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.