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I Am Dressed, Therefore I Am?: Vertumnus in Propertius 4.2 and in Metamorphoses 14.622-7711

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Sara H. Lindheim
Sara H. Lindheim*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Extract

Recent interpretations of Propertius 4.2 see in Vertumnus' shifting costumes a programmatic statement about the new poetics of Propertius' fourth book of elegy. The statue's ability to assume and shed identities with a simple wardrobe change mirrors the poet's desire to challenge the traditional generic boundaries of love elegy, dressing it up now in Roman themes, now in amatory ones. No doubt this is so. And yet, more generally, recent criticism finds elegy as a genre hospitable to interpretations that focus on issues of gender and identity. Indeed, as Marilyn Skinner has succinctly summarised, ‘texts of the late first century BCE are notorious for the phenomenon of “gender dissonance”…boundaries between ‘male’ and ‘female’ as essential categories of psychosexual identity fluctuate wildly and eventually break down.’ Propertius' fourth and final poetic collection provides fertile territory for an interrogation of gender, since it both highlights female voices—for example Arethusa, Cynthia or Cornelia—and explores moments of transvestism—for example Vertumnus and Hercules. I argue that when Propertius cloaks the speaking statue, Vertumnus, alternately in ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ attributes, he lays bare not simply poetics, but, further, he questions the very constitution of gender. In other words, Propertius probes the relationship between self-representation and identity and reveals that both are fluid and, more surprisingly perhaps, that the former gives rise to the latter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , 1998 , pp. 27 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1998

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Footnotes

1.

The original version of this paper was delivered in New York City, at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in December 1996. I would like to thank A.J. Boyle, M. Buchan, F. Dunn, D. Kennedy, R. Morstein-Marx, and the anonymous reader for Ramus. Their thoughtful questions, in New York and/or afterwards, have greatly improved my work.

References

2. Dee, J., ‘“Callimachus Romanus“ At Work’, AJP 95 (1974), 43–55Google Scholar; Marquis, E.C., ‘Vertumnus in Propertius 4.2’, Hermes 102 (1974), 491–500Google Scholar; Pinotti, P., ‘Properzio e Vertumno: anticonformismo e restaurazione augustea’, in Colloquium Propertianum III (Assisi 1983), 75–96Google Scholar; Deremetz, A., ‘L’Élégie de Vertumne: l’oeuvre trompeuse’, REL 64 (1986), 116–49Google Scholar; Wyke, M., ‘The Elegiac Woman at Rome’, PCPS 33 (1987), 153’78Google Scholar, and ‘Taking the Woman’s Part: Engendering Roman Love Elegy’, Ramus 23 (1994), 110–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shea, C., ‘The Vertumnus Elegy and Propertius Book IV, ICS 13 (1988), 63–71Google Scholar; DeBrohun, J.B., ‘Redressing Elegy’s Puella: Propertius IV and the Rhetoric of Fashion’, JRS 84 (1994), 41–63Google Scholar.

3. Whether Propertius seeks to highlight what Dee (n.2 above) calls ‘the unity of essence within the multiplicity of appearances’ (52), or conversely, according to Shea’s reformulation (n.2 above), the ‘multiplicity of appearances within unity of essence’ (63).

4. I cite here a sampling of the recent work: Gamel, M.–K., ‘Non sine caede: Abortion Politics and Poetics in Ovid’s Amores’, Helios 16 (1989), 183–206Google Scholar; Sharrock, A., ‘Womanufacture’, JRS 81 (1991), 36–49Google Scholar; Gold, B.K., ‘“But Ariadne was never there in the first place”: Finding the Female in Roman Poetry’, in Rabinowitz, N.S. and Richlin, A. (eds.), Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York 1993), 75–101Google Scholar; Kennedy, D.F., The Arts Of Love. Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge 1993)Google Scholar; Wyke (n.2 above, 1994); Greene, E., ‘Elegiac Woman: Fantasy, Materia and Male Desire in Propertius 1.3 and 1.11’, AJP 116(1995), 303–18Google Scholar.

5. Skinner, M.B., ‘Ego Mulier: The Construction of Male Sexuality in Catullus’, in Hallett, J.P. and Skinner, M.B. (eds.), Roman Sexualities (Princeton 1997), 129–50, at 129Google Scholar.

6. Hallett, J.P., ‘The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter–Cultural Feminism’, in Peradotto, J. and Sullivan, J.P. (eds.), Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (Albany 1984), 241–62Google Scholar, and ‘Feminist Theory, Historical Periods, Literary Canons, and the Study of Graeco-Ro-man Antiquity’, in Rabinowitz and Richlin (n.4 above), esp. 62–66; Wyke (n.2 above, 1987).

7. Lindheim, S.H., ‘Hercules Cross–Dressed, Hercules Undressed: Unmasking the Construction of the Propertian Amator in Elegy 4.9’, AJP 119 (1998), 43–66Google Scholar.

8. Indeed, the Propertian echoes in Ovid’s text have been noted. See, for example, Butler, H.E. and Barber, E.A. (eds.), The Elegies Of Propertius (Oxford 1933)Google Scholar, ad loc, as well as Myers, K.S., ‘Ultimus Ardor: Pomona and Vertumnus in Ovid’s Met.14.623–771’, CJ 89 (1994), 225–50Google Scholar, and Gentilcore, R., ‘The Landscape of Desire: The Tale of Pomona and Vertumnus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Phoenix 49 (1995), 110–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. See Corbeill, A., ‘Dining Deviants in Roman Political Invective’, in Hallett, and Skinner, (n.5 above), 99–128, and also Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic (Princeton 1996), esp. ch. 4, ‘Moral Appearance In Action: Effeminacy’, 128–73Google Scholar.

10. See, for example, Gold (n.4 above), Skinner (n.5 above), Wyke (n.2 above, 1994).

11. See, for example, Richlin, A., ‘Reading Ovid’s Rapes’, in Richlin, A. (ed.). Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford 1992), 158–79Google Scholar.

12. Garber, M., Vested Interests: Cross–Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York 1993), 11Google Scholar.

13. Butler, J., Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York 1990), 112Google Scholar.

14. Butler (n.13 above), 33.

15. Butler (n.13 above), viii.

16. Garber (n.12 above), 389, emphasis hers.

17. Pillinger, H.E., ‘some Callimachean Influences on Propertius, Book Four’, HSCP 73 (1969), 178–81Google Scholar; Miller, J.F., ‘Callimachus and the Augustan Aetiological Elegy’, ANRW 2.30.1 (1982), 378–80Google Scholar.

18. I am not arguing here that Propertius is a naive gender constructivist. In fact, Elegy 4.2 is not the poet’s final word on cross–dressing and gender. He revisits 4.2 later in his fourth book of Elegies at 4.9 when he writes about Hercules and the Bona Dea. See Lindheim (n.7 above).

19. Myers (n.8 above, 235) notes the divergent number of identity changes in the two texts, but does not offer an explanation for the disparity.

20. See Kennedy (n.4 above, 64f.) on ‘love’: ‘…we may have been acting out a script that has been played out, with much the same plot and much the same words, by many before us…what we say and feel in love may not be unique to each of us, but moulded and refined by many before us….Or to put this in the terms suggested by Roland Barthes, there is a lover’s discourse and we construct ourselves as amorous subjects within it….In treating love as a system which can be taught and learned, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria similarly views it as a discursive artefact.’

21. And indeed, the extremity of the view of gender as performative that her own work suggested has been repudiated by Judith Butler herself: ‘For if I were to argue that genders are performative, that could mean that I thought that one woke in the morning, perused the closet or some more open space for the gender of choice, donned that gender for the day, and then restored the garment to its place at night. Such a willful and instrumental subject, one who decides on its gender, is clearly not its gender from the start and fails to realise that its existence is already decided by gender.’ Butler, J., Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘sex’ (New York 1993)Google Scholar, x (original emphasis).

22. Nugent, S.G., ‘Distressing Cross–Dressing: Pomona and Vertumnus’, APA Abstracts (1991), 54Google Scholar.

23. See Garber (n.12 above), 70. Transvestism in such instances is driven by necessity and becomes a complicated pose that, must be abandoned. Often ‘heterosexual desire is for a time apparently thwarted by the cross-dresser’s assumed identity, so that it becomes necessary for him or her to unmask. The ideological implications of this pattern are clear: cross-dressing can be “fun” or “functional” so long as it occupies a liminal space and a temporary time period.’

24. See Senelick, L., ‘Boys and Girls Together: Subcultural Origins of Glamour Drag and Male Impersonation on the Nineteenth–Century Stage’, in Ferris, L. (ed.), Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross-Dressing (London 1993), 80–95Google Scholar, where, in discussing cross–dressing conventions in nineteenth century theatre, he writes (81): ’Such transpositions were acceptable only when the age represented was transitional and, according to social conventions, the least sexually active: young women might play prepubescent lads…and men might play post–menopausal matrons…for those conditions offered minimal threat to standard gender identities.’ In addition, as the reader for Ramus points out, within the elegiac genre the old woman in and of herself would be a ’safe’ character, one who promotes only the (heterosexual) erotic activity of someone else.

25. Garber (n.12 above), 9, original emphasis. In looking ‘through the cross-dresser’ one chooses ‘to turn away from a close encounter with the transvestite and to want instead to subsume that figure within one of the two traditional genders.’

26. Parry, H., ‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Violence in a Pastoral Landscape’, TAPA 95 (1964), 268–82Google Scholar, argues that Ovid often presents the sun in the Metamorphoses as ‘a masculine symbol of unbridled, primitive energy’ (277).

27. For violence (uis) against the body as a stand–in for rape, see Richlin (n.11 above). Indeed, earlier in the narrative, Pomona builds a wall, ‘fearing force/rape’ (uim…metuens, 635).

28. While the Pomona and Vertumnus story has been considered one of the few stories with a happy ending in the Metamorphoses (e.g. Littlefield, D., ‘Pomona and Vertumnus: A Fruition of History in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Arion 4 [1965], 465–73Google Scholar, and Fantazzi, C., ‘The Revindication of Roman Myth in the Pomona-Vertumnus Tale’, in Barbu, N. et al. [eds.], Ovidianum [Bucharest 1976], 283–93)Google Scholar, recent criticism has perceived that while rape does not overtly occur in this tale, the reader cannot escape the implications of violence. See for example, Parry (n.26 above); L. Curran, ‘Rape and Rape Victims in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, in Peradotto and Sullivan (n.6 above), 263–86; Nugent (n.22 above); Richlin (n.11 above); Myers (n.8 above); Gentilcore (n.8 above).

29. Gentilcore (n.8 above, 119) reminds us not to overlook the sinister aspect of uulnera. Arguing that ‘in the Pomona and Vertumnus tale symbolism replaces literal description’, she points out that the metaphoric language emphasises seizing and wounding, even while the story is of happy love.

30. Gentilcore (n.8 above, 119) also points out how the use of imago brings the reader back to the earlier uses of the noun. Her argument, however, centres on conscious deception on the part of Vertumnus which, as so often in the Metamorphoses, leads to violence and rape.

31. Cf. Gentilcore (n.8 above), esp. 112f.

32. Indeed, it is no novelty to suggest that an embedded narrative in the Metamorphoses belongs interpretively with its framing narrative and vice versa. For the intertwining of Iphis-Anaxarete with Pomona-Vertumnus, see Fabre, J., ‘L’être et les figures: une réflexion sur le récit dans le récit chez Ovide (Mét., XIV, 622–771)’, Lalies 6 (1987), 167–73Google Scholar; Nugent (n.22 above); Myers (n.8 above); Gentilcore (n.8 above).

33. The name Iphis is not the name used in the model for this story in Liberalis’ rendition of Hermesianax; see Solodow, J.B., The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Chapel Hill 1988), 179fGoogle Scholar. It is, therefore, a conscious choice on the part of Ovid.

34. In a recent article, Myers (n.8 above), also notes the ‘literary amatory clichés’ (238) in the narrative of Iphis and Anaxarete and draws out the conventional elements of love elegy that appear (238f.). Further, she notes (ibid.) that the story which Ovid used as his model—reconstructed from Hermesianax via Antoninus Liberalis—does not parody the paraclausithyron in a similar manner. This raises the question: what is Ovid up to?

35. See Copley, F.O., Exclusus Amator: A Study in Latin Love Poetry (Baltimore 1956)Google Scholar.

36. Gentilcore (n.8 above, 118) offers a different reading of this embedded narrative: ‘The inset tale ridicules obsessive love and the failure of the tactics to which Iphis resorts….His fate (and the consequent fate of Anaxarete) represents the failure of elegiac poetry both as a model for how the lover may succeed in love and as a vehicle of persuasion.’ She further equates the failure of Vertumnus with the failure of Iphis—‘Vertumnus fails by citing and emulating Iphis’ actions’ (ibid.).

37. For a concise overview see Conte, G.B., Latin Literature: A History, tr. Solodow, J.B. (Baltimore 1994), 321–24Google Scholar.

38. Nugent (n.22 above) points this out.