Berkeley Undergraduate Journal of Classics

Propertius begins his fourth book of poetry by claiming that he is a changed man. No more for him the pining after his domina, but instead he now styles himself as the ‘Roman Callimachus’, who is writing poetry in the service of his country (Roma, fave, tibi surgit opus IV.1.67). The fourth book of Propertius is notable for the cast of characters to whom the poet gives voice, and after a preliminary survey, the reader would be forgiven for thinking that Propertius was overtly obsessed with bringing the dead to life, particularly dead women.

This study explores the way in which these internal female narrators, including Arethusa, Cynthia, Acanthis and Cornelia, should be understood as mounting a narrative challenge to the wider context of Propertian poetics,  using the performative acts of both writing and speech to claim their own authority. This represents a contrast not only with the wider historical and social reality of the poems, but the dead women of Propertius also become provocative through the poet’s intertextual references to his great rival in aetiological poetry, Virgil.