1. Whether or not the detail is ironic (that is, whether or not Propertius seeks to incorporate the very genre he denies by providing such extensive description) is debatable. Davis, G., Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse (Berkeley 1991Google Scholar) describes such a strategy in the works of Horace, naming it a ‘mode of assimilation’, ‘a device by which the speaker disingenuously seeks to include material and styles that he ostensibly precludes’ (11).

2. Earlier in the poem, Propertius claims that he composes ‘long Iliads’ based on their activities in bed (13f.). In citing Propertius, I follow E.A. Barber’s 1960 OCT.

3. In Satire 6, Juvenal also represents a female reader passing judgment on an epic heroine, although there the reader is notably aligned with the literary woman, pardoning the dying Dido (periturae ignoscit Elissae, 435).

4. For a useful treatment of terminology, see Moi, T., ‘Feminist, Female, Feminine’, in Belsey, C. and Moore, J. (eds.), The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism (Cambridge MA and Oxford, repr. 1991), 117–32Google Scholar.

5. See, for example, the entry ‘sex difference’ in Humm, M., The Dictionary of Feminist Theory² (New York and London 1995Google Scholar), 256f. The complicated connection between subjectivity and sexual difference receives greatest articulation in the work of psychoanalytic critics beginning with Freud and later Lacan. Luce Irigaray’s work provides an important critique of psychoanalysis and, in doing so, brings the question of female subjectivity to the fore. It is not my goal to contribute to their theoretical articulations of sexual difference, nor to reproduce their models in all their complexities; rather, I seek to use the broadest outlines of their work to highlight a mode for analysing literary women that I believe has been lacking in previous scholarly treatment of Cynthia.

6. My seemingly categorical distinction between the two terms should be understood as a strategic gesture for the purposes of this article; their relationship remains a complicated one in the field of feminist philosophy. See, for example, the contrasting viewpoints about women’s difference in Nicholson, L. (ed.), Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (New York and London 1995Google Scholar).

7. This formulation resembles closely the concept of écriture féminine, a field of feminist research headed by writers like Hélène Cixous that explores women’s distinctive forms of expression. See Humm (n.5 above), 75f., and the essays in Abel, E. (ed.), Writing and Sexual Difference (Chicago 1982Google Scholar).

8. Hallett, J., ‘Women in Roman Elegy: A Reply’, Arethusa 7 (1974), 211–17Google Scholar, at 212. See also her original formulation of the argument in ‘The Role of Woman in Roman Elegy: Counter-Cultural Feminism’, Arethusa 6 (1973), 103–24Google Scholar. Gold, B., ‘“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, promises a more textual approach by adopting Alice Jardine’s notion of ‘gynesis’. Her accompanying analysis, however, centres primarily around the socially (rather than textually) situated concepts of femininity and masculinity, that is, those ways in which Cynthia and Propertius’ actions in the poetry are related to socially defined roles. Thus she exposes not the methods by which gender and sexual difference are discursively constructed within the poetry (indeed, there is little attention given to the language and structure of the text, despite her ostensible interest in finding its ‘spaces’), but the relation of its (already) gendered characters to traditional Roman social roles. In this way, her work resonates strongly with Hallett’s earlier treatment. Gold moreover produces a complementary description of the traditional gender roles that she believes are being subverted—where Hallett describes Cynthia as ‘masculine’, achieving ‘braininess, egotism, and libidinousness’ (‘Reply’, 212), Gold outlines Propertius’ assumption of ‘feminine’ qualities like ‘devotion, submissiveness, loyalty, subservience, passivity, and procreativity’ (91).

9. Greene, E., The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry (Baltimore and London 1998Google Scholar), 37f., focusing on ‘the gender specificity of Propertius’ portrayals of Cynthia and…the ways desire is constituted’ in Book 1, similarly argues against romanticised notions of gender equality in the poems; she insists that ‘amatory relations in Propertius’ elegies are closely bound up with the “realities” of male domination and power.’

10. In insisting that Cynthia remains fundamentally ‘female’, if not always ‘feminine’, I depart from Hallett (n.8 above) and Gold (n.8 above) in not finding Propertius ‘feminist’. Although, as Hallett and Gold have argued, the concepts of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ do not serve to distinguish the two lovers absolutely, making Propertius seem politically radical, the presence of sexual difference does define and differentiate them irrevocably. While an insistence on sexual difference alone does not make Propertius anti-feminist, his use of sexual difference to retain the advantages he seems to be denying on the surface of the poetry (as he ‘slums’ in feminine roles) suggests his text deserves another, more sceptical, reading. Thus, while Propertius may put the privileges of his ‘masculine’ identity in jeopardy, he never relinquishes other essential privileges, privileges bestowed by his ‘male’ identity. Despite the fact that she comes at it from a very different perspective, one consonant with her concern for literary representation, Wyke, M., ‘Mistress and Metaphor in Augustan Elegy’, Helios 16 (1989), 25–47Google Scholar, also finds Propertius’ poetry anti-feminist, pointing out that the only gains to be found in elegy are those received by the male narrator: ‘But it is not the concern of elegiac poetry to upgrade the political position of women, only to portray the male narrator as alienated from positions of power and to differentiate him from other, socially responsible male types’ (42, my emphasis).

11. Kennedy recognises the essentialism assumed by Propertius’ modes of representation, arguing: ‘Cynthia is described in terms of “fickle”, “wanton”, “temperamental”, “grasping” and so on (terms which are prompted by the perspective of the Propertian lover’s discourse), and these “qualities” are assumed to belong essentially to a woman of a particular type and particular social status. An ideological stereotype of female behaviour is being invoked, and the answer is presented as a “fact”: Cynthia is a courtesan or Cynthia is a promiscuous noblewoman.’ Kennedy, D.F., The Arts of Love: Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge 1993), 95Google Scholar.

12. S. Felman, ‘Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy’, in Belsey and Moore (n.4 above), 133–53, at 147.

13. Although I would like to focus here on Propertius’ representation of female subjectivity as fluid, it is critical to note that he also strategically uses the concept of ‘madness’ against Cynthia, calling her demens at a number of key points in the poetry when she is ‘misbehaving’. For example, he begins 1.8 very strongly, calling Cynthia ‘mad’ and unconcerned about his devotion to her as she plans to depart. She is called ‘demens’ in 2.18c for trying to imitate the British by dyeing her hair. Shortly after he responds to another threatened departure by claiming: non urbem, demens, lumina nostra fugis! (‘It is not the city, mad woman, but my eyes from which you are fleeing!’, 2.32.18).

14. Thus, when Georg Luck compares women in Roman comedy to women in elegy, he concludes (Luck, G., The Latin Love Elegy ² [London 1969], 45Google Scholar): ‘None of Terence’s women is nearly as complex and self-contradictory, none has such a compelling presence as Propertius’ Cynthia’ (my emphasis). Sullivan, J.P. similarly refers to Cynthia’s fickleness, then later extends her ‘attractions’ to include unpredictability, lies and infidelities in Propertius: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge 1976), 35Google Scholar and 80. In one notable exception, Richardson, L. jr (Propertius Elegies I-IV [Norman OK 1977], 5Google Scholar) emphasised the narrative choices that determine Cynthia’s vacillating form: ‘But we are not encouraged, or even permitted, to construct a history of P.’s relations with Cynthia, or any other woman or women, any sequence of events, chronology, or development. When P. wishes to write a poem about the avarice of women, he will make his mistress a meretrix and address it to her. If he wants to write about the confused passion of a deserted lover, he will make his mistress desert him without reason or explanation. If he wants to write about a mistress’ anger at her lover’s infidelity, he will construct an elaborate infidelity, as he does in 4.8.’

15. Gold (n.8 above), 89. In addition to highlighting her sexual fickleness towards him, Propertius employs a number of other textual strategies for keeping Cynthia so elusive to her reader. Many critics have noted, for example, the diverse roles she is made to play, roles that cast her in seemingly contradictory positions—the dice-playing Cynthia who drinks Propertius under the table (2.33b) is, after all, a far cry from the Penelope-like Cynthia of 1.3, who scolds the drunken Propertius upon his late arrival. See the discussion in Richardson (n.14 above), 5. To readers who seek from Cynthia a consistent or coherent character, equally confusing is the fact that she often seems to occupy divergent class or status positions. In her overall repudiation of reading elegy as direct evidence of Augustan social life, Wyke notes (n.10 above, 34): ‘…no clear clues have been found in the poems to the social status of a living mistress and conclusions have ranged from Roman wife to foreign prostitute.’ Indeed, Cynthia’s participation in the poetry is so ambiguous that there is often confusion in determining her very presence—a condition highlighted by the fact that she is not always explicitly named. Veyne, P., Roman Erotic Elegy: Love, Poetry, and the West, tr. Pellauer, D. (Chicago and London 1988), 57Google Scholar, in accordance with his apolitical reading of elegy, sees this situation as a game. He recognises that ‘the heroines of the Roman elegists are only recognisable by their name, and, at least in Propertius, the name Cynthia functions almost like a running head on each page,’ yet the name ‘Cynthia’ creates an expectation of consistent identity that is not maintained by the poet (59f). It is significant that Lyne, R.O.A.M., The Latin Love Poets (Oxford 1980Google Scholar), one of the few critics to insist on Cynthia’s overall ‘coherence’, thus intentionally reads Cynthia in poems in which the woman is not named unless ‘there is good reason to believe otherwise’ (62). Wyke (n.10 above, 33f.) writes succinctly of the differing positions with regard to power each name holds, arguing ‘…Propertius and Cynthia do not perform the same semantic operations.’

16. Most of my analysis references the first two books of the corpus. Book 3 does not emphasise Cynthia’s mutability, although it remains in the background in e.g. 3.21.

17. Myerowitz Levine, M., ‘The Women of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria: Nature or Culture?’ SCI 6 (1981-1982), 30-56Google Scholar, describes the literary tradition of describing women as avaricious (43-46). For the historical and literary tradition linking women and greed, see also Boyd, B.W., ‘Virtus Ef-feminata and Sallust’s Sempronia’, TAPA 117 (1987), 183-201Google Scholar, who traces it back to the Elder Cato (191f.).

18. The irony is, of course, that Aeneas is the one who will suddenly change his position with regard to Dido and, conversely, Dido’s own transfer of desire (from her dead husband to Aeneas) is depicted as torturous and one that she bitterly regrets.

19. Propertius uses leuis causa again at 2.24a, there to justify his interest in prostitutes (9f.).

20. Postgate, J.P., Select Elegies of Propertius (London 1884; repr. 1958Google Scholar), in his discussion of Propertius’ innovative use of language, recognised the importance of this concept to Propertius’ work. Arguing that Propertius ‘frequently uses a word in the fresh sense on the strength of some analogy’, Postgate offers as an example (lxxiv): ‘On the analogy of leuitas “inconstancy” he has grauitas in the sense of constancy III. 13 (11).14, and pondus habere “to be constant”, 111.20 (17).22’—the latter a figure we have just witnessed.

21. Ovid calls elegy a ‘leuis arnica’ in the Remedia Amoris (379f.). He extends the image in Amores 3.1, when the personified Elegy claims boldly that she is leuis (‘sum leuis, el mecum leuis est mea cura Cupido’, ‘“I am light and with me, Cupid, my care, is also light’”, 41) while chastising Tragedy for being grauis (‘quid grauibus uerbis, animosa Tragoedia’,/dixit ‘me premis? an numquam non grauis esse potes?’, ‘“Why do you weigh me down with such heavy words, stormy Tragedy?” she said. “Can you ever not be serious?’”, 35f.). Wyke, M., ‘Reading Female Flesh: Amores 3.1’, in Cameron, A. (ed.), History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History (London 1989), 111-43Google Scholar, writes of the passage: ‘The signification of the grauis/leuis opposition is drawn away from the level of female dispositions and towards the level of writing-styles by frequent references in the course of the passage to poetic production…’ (122). She goes on to note that ‘the reader will recognise the grauis/leuis opposition with which the doorways are described as the terminology of a Callimachean polemic already used in Amores 1.1.’ In her subsequent analysis, however, Wyke applies her findings in Ovid to all of the elegists, overlooking the specific strategies which inform each text. Her blurring of distinctions between the elegists obscures the point that although Propertius repeatedly describes his poetic style, he uses leuis specifically only once to depict his Muse (2.12.22), using mollis instead to describe his poetry at 2.1.2. Nor does Wyke consider the specific ethics of using the binary leuis/grauis dichotomy in each context— female disposition versus poetic production. After all leuis clearly has different connotations when used as a term describing poetry (in Ovid) from those implied when describing women (in Propertius).

22. It is significant to note that although Propertius uses leuis/grauis to distinguish himself and Cynthia along fairly conventional lines (i.e., grauitas is the conventionally positive term so he uses it of his masculine persona), he in fact inverts another dichotomy often linked to Callimachean poetics: durus/mollis, consistently describing Cynthia as ‘harsh’, the side more traditionally aligned to the masculine, while referring to himself as ‘soft’. In 1.17, Propertius wonders if it would have been easier (leuius) to stay and overcome Cynthia’s manners, conceding that although she is tough (dura), she is singular (15f.). The meaning of Propertius’ assumption of ‘mollis’ in this dichotomy, however, is powerfully clarified by 2.22a, in which, like Catullus previously (poem 16), Propertius asserts an exaggeratedly sexually dominant role in rejecting any mistaken reading that connects softness (mollis) to a lack of masculinity. For a discussion of these terms, see Kennedy (n.11 above), 31-33; Edwards, C., The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge 1993), 63-97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wyke, M., ‘Engendering Roman Love Elegy’, Ramus 23 (1994Google Scholar), 119f. Notably Wyke’s formulation of the impotent male lover of elegy does not take these poems into account, nor does Edwards’ statement that ‘no Roman author ever calls himself effeminate in surviving Latin literature’ (67) capture the complexity of the trope in Propertius.

23. For discussion of these lines, see also Yardley, J.C., ‘The Poetic Attack on Cynthia: Propertius 2.5.27-28’, RhM 126 (1983Google Scholar), 364f.

24. Reading the meaning of Cynthia’s mutability against Propertius’ self-proclaimed stability allows us to open his participation in the text to equal interrogation. As Flax, J., ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, in Nicholson, L. (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (New York and London 1990), 39-62Google Scholar, at 45, asserts: ‘To the extent that feminist discourse defines its problematic as “woman”, it, too, ironically privileges the man as unproblematic or exempted from determination by gender relations.’ Postgate (n.20 above), who takes a fundamentally historic approach, provides one of the few, albeit problematic, acknowledgements that both characters hold responsibility for the ‘production’ of Cynthia’s fickleness, writing: ‘We should rather wonder that, with so much in himself to beget fickleness and so much in Cynthia to justify it, the passion lasted so long, than that his professions offides were not always exactly interpreted…’ (xxxvi, my emphasis). In effect, Postgate claims, Cynthia may be fickle, but who can blame her in the face of her snivelling, narcissistic lover?

25. See Postgate (n.20 above). Two lines later, he extends his use of grauis, swearing on his parents’ bones that he will be true and asking that if he swears falsely, may they each be heavy, grauis, on him (15-18).

26. Propertius laments the costs of love in poem 2.4, concluding that a man (nominative) can ‘change his heart’ (praecordia mutaf) through a single word, while a woman ‘will not be soft’ (uix…mollis erit) even at the cost of blood (21f.). Although here Propertius seems to insist on women’s incapacity for change, it is notably cast in terms of dura, a quality we have seen previously attributed to Cynthia—not as a negation of leuis or by use of mutare.

27. Propertius repeats this construction in 1.10, with Cynthia acting as the subject of the teaching (1.10.19f.).

28. Janan, , ‘Refashioning Hercules: Propertius 4.9’, Helios 25 (1998), 65-77Google Scholar, at 76, concludes that, in 4.9, Propertius ‘reveals elegy to have known something all along that epic hopelessly pretends not to know, that gender conditions the human aspiration to “know thyself” as a persistent but instructive impasse’; see also ibid., 69.

29. By arguing for ‘serious’ consequences of elegy I am in disagreement with Veyne (n.15 above), who insists on the apolitical position of elegy, its status as a ‘pleasing falsehood, where everything is a humorous simulacrum with no trace of irony or harshness, including the vexations of love and evil company’ (86). This does not mean that I do not acknowledge humour and irony in Propertius, only that I believe certain formulations that elegy assumes, including the conceptual position of woman, must be taken seriously.

30. Despite my exposition of the ways in which Propertius’ text marks Cynthia’s fluidity as ‘negative’, I do not mean to suggest the natural status of such a judgment. In other contexts, feminist critics have notably argued for a ‘reclaiming’ of the fluidity they see as an essential part of female subjectivity. See, for example, Irigaray, L., This Sex Which Is Not One, tr. Porter, C. with Burke, Carolyn (Ithaca NY 1985Google ScholarPubMed); and for a helpful evaluation of Irigaray’s formulation, Schor, N., ‘This Essentialism Which Is Not One: Coming to Grips with Irigaray’, differences 1.2 (1989), 48-55Google Scholar.

31. My attempt to trace the effects of Propertius’ treatment of Cynthia’s sexual difference on subsequent literary criticism owes a great deal to the work of Felman (n.12 above). For Felman’s analysis not only reveals the complex ways in which Stéphanie and her madness function in Balzac’s text, but also what she calls the ‘critical phallacy’; that is, the tendency of many literary critics to mirror Philippe’s treatment of Stéphanie and her ‘madness’, in particular Philippe’s attempts to ‘cure’ Stéphanie and bring her in line with masculine reason. According to Felman, Balzac’s critics thus adopt a therapeutic imperative in their interpretations, an impulse to make the story ‘explicable’, by obliterating any disruption of the text—a process that serves to obliterate the ‘disturbing’ traces of sexual difference and of Stéphanie herself (152). In short, since Stéphanie seems incomprehensible to the critic (that is, ‘unreadable’ according to traditional critical methods), her role and its relation to difference are effectively eradicated from the final interpretation in order to insure a cohesive, authoritatively uniform reading.

32. Papanghelis, T., Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death (Cambridge 1987), 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Enk, P.J., Sex Propertii Elegiarum, Liber Secundus, vol. 2 (Leiden 1962), 9Google Scholar, himself writes: ‘Si quis autem miratur poetam Cynthiam, quae sibi tot tantasque voluptates et suavitates adferat (5-16), ultimo versu duram puellam vocare, is meminerit Cynthiae amorem erga poetam instabilem mobilemque esse, id quod totus liber secundus doceat’ (‘If anyone is amazed that the poet calls Cynthia, who brings so much pleasure and delight to him [5-16], a harsh girl in the last verse, they should remember that Cynthia’s love for the poet is unstable and shifting, which is what the second book demonstrates’).

33. She is presumably the addressee (uita, ‘[my] life’) of 1.2.1, but is only named again at 1.3.8.

34. Connor, P.J., ‘Saeuitia Amoris: Propertius 1.1’, CP 67 (1972), 51-54Google Scholar.

35. Flaschenriem, B., ‘Speaking of Women: “Female Voice” in Propertius’, Helios 25 (1998), 49-64Google Scholar, at 61. 4.7 has attracted a great deal of critical attention: Warden, J., Fallax Opus: Poet and Reader in the Elegies of Propertius (Toronto 1980Google Scholar) in its entirety provides a reading of the poem. Similarly (and not surprisingly) it features prominently in Papanghelis’ treatment of love and death (n.32 above). See also Helmbold, W.C., ‘Propertius IV.7: Prolegomena to an Interpretation’, University of California Publications in Classical Philology 13.9 (1949), 333-43Google Scholar. Poem 4.7 has been crucial to work on structure and poetic programs in Propertius. Since such analyses often insist that Propertius seeks to get rid of Cynthia by the end of Book 3, her appearance in 4.7 is often interpreted as a re-statement of poetic aims, reading in Cynthia’s body the representation of elegiac discourse: cf. Wyke, M., ‘The Elegiac Woman at Rome’, PCPS n.s. 33 (1987), 153-78Google Scholar, at 168-70. Lange, D.K., ‘Cynthia and Cornelia: Two Voices from the Grave’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature, vol. 1 (Brussels 1979), 335-42Google Scholar, at 338, writes directly: ‘It is my contention that Elegy 7 contains a definite poetic statement and may be, in fact, the formal notice of Propertius’ farewell to erotic poetry.’

36. Flaschenriem (n.35 above), 55. See also Baker, R.J., ‘A Literary Burnt Offering (Propertius 4.7.77-78)’, CP 68 (1973), 286-89Google Scholar.

37. Hallett, ‘Role’ (n.8 above).

38. Wyke (n.22 above), 121. Janan (n.28 above, 65) argues that ‘Propertius’ fourth book expands the scope of elegy by exploiting potential fluidities in the genre’s representation of gender.’ Flaschenriem (n.35 above, 63) argues that 4.7 in particular ‘experiments with a new way of constructing the female as a speaker and lover, and it hints at the subversive potential of elegiac discourse—its ability to accommodate a range of perspectives—and to sustain a dialogue, so to speak, of contesting voices.’

39. Nor do I agree with a basic premise of much of this scholarship—that Cynthia is most autonomous in Book 4 (especially 4.7). Such an assumption obviously privileges the voice in asserting subjectivity. I am, however, suspicious of the voice Propertius gives Cynthia and argue elsewhere that some of Cynthia’s most radical gestures are depicted indirectly in Books 1-3, including her attempts to dye her hair in 2.18c, an act which disclaims her national identity as ‘Roman’ and sends Propertius into paroxysms. In n.13 above, I identify other incidents in which Cynthia is similarly labelled ‘mad’, a term that suggests her potential to situate herself outside Propertius’ discourse of rationality.

40. Critical approaches to Roman elegy have changed radically over the past decades, as has been well documented. Where scholars traditionally had treated elegy as a type of autobiographical confession signalled by the first person perspective of the narrator, they began increasingly to resist its stylistic claims of emotional immediacy and sincerity and to unmask its elaborate literary constructedness, a critical trend that reached full force in the 1980’s. Far from any direct or transparent reflection of Roman social reality, elegy was henceforth exposed as a form of textual discourse that incorporated a variety of modes of representation. See Allen, A.W., ‘“Sincerity” and the Roman Elegists’, CP 45 (1950), 145-60Google Scholar, and Allen, A.W., ‘Sunt Qui Propertium Malint’, in Sullivan, J.P. (ed.), Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric (Cambridge MA 1962), 107-48Google Scholar, for some of the earliest attacks on the biographical tradition of reading elegy. Wyke, M., ‘In Pursuit of Love, The Poetic Self and a Process of Reading: Augustan Elegy in the 1980s’, JRS 79 (1989), 165-73Google Scholar, provides an assessment of the continuing evolution of elegiac studies, asserting in particular the domination of the ‘poetic’ line of Propertian criticism by the late 1980’s. See also Nisbet, R.G.M., ‘Pyrrha Among Roses: Real Life and Poetic Imagination in Augustan Rome’, JRS 77 (1987), 184-90Google Scholar, and Kennedy (n.ll above). Recent studies of Propertius have devoted heightened attention to Propertius’ evocation of literary ancestors and models and his use of elaborate rhetorical structures and figures, not to mention his appropriation of a variety of generic forms (most notably in Book 4). See, for example, the following explorations of Propertius’ literary qualities: Warden (n.35 above), Papanghelis (n.32 above), Veyne (n.15 above), and Bene-diktson, D.T., Propertius: Modernist Poet of Antiquity (Carbondale and Edwardsville 1989Google Scholar).

41. Treatments of Cynthia’s role in individual poems include: Lyne, R.O.A.M., ‘Propertius and Cynthia: Elegy 1.3’, PCPS n.s. 16 (1970), 60-78Google Scholar; Allen, A., ‘Cynthia’s Bedside Manner’, Phoenix 27 (1973), 381-85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dee, J.H., ‘Elegy 4.8: A Propertian Comedy’, TAPA 108 (1978), 41-53Google Scholar; Gariépy, R.J., ‘Beauty Unadorned: A Reading of Propertius 1.2’, CB 57 (1980), 12-14Google Scholar; and Allison, J.W., ‘The Cast of Characters in Propertius 4.7’, CW 77 (1984), 355-58Google Scholar. My insistence on treating Cynthia qua Cynthia as a subject of Propertius’ poetry echoes in part the sentiments of Jasper Griffin, who cautioned against allowing the literary approach to become too dominant, claiming that one is not ‘…necessarily anxious to accept the implication that all poetry is really about poetry, rather than being about the many and various things which it professes to be about, such as life and love,’ in Latin Poets and Roman Life (Chapel Hill 1986), 49Google Scholar. That is, I would like to explore ways in which the poems that feature Cynthia can be thought to be ‘about’ Cynthia—and not always or solely indirect expressions of something else.

42. Wyke, M., ‘Written Women: Propertius’ Scripta Puella’, JRS 77 (1987), 47-61Google Scholar.

43. Wyke (n.10 above, 35) argues that Cynthia functions as ‘a woman in a text, whose physique, temperament, name, and status are all subject to the idiom of that text’.

44. Wyke (n.10 above), 43. My use of ‘exclusively’ to characterise Wyke’s conclusions alludes to the restrictive ways in which she articulates her thesis. She claims, for example, that in Book 2 Cynthia comes to embody Propertius’ allegiance to Callimachean poetics so stringently that her identity apart from that role holds little significance. She writes (n.42 above, 60): ‘(p)oems 2.10-13…form a group which re-establishes an allegiance to a politically unorthodox Callimachean poetic practice. Each of the poems then associates the Propertian puella so intimately with that practice as to undermine her identity apart from it.’ In insisting solely on Cynthia’s ‘writtenness’ at this stage in the poetry, however, Wyke’s treatment notably (and summarily) marginalises numerous ‘non-poetic’ treatments of Cynthia, e.g., Poem 3.8, the description of a brawl between the lovers, one which begins with Cynthia dramatically hurling a table at the poet.

45. McNamee, K., ‘Propertius, Poetry, and Love’, in De Forest, M. (ed.). Woman’s Power, Man’s Game: Essays in Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy K. King (Wauconda 1993), 215-48Google Scholar, at 215. Greene also attempts to add Book 1 to Wyke’s thesis, arguing explicitly against Wyke’s claims that Book 1 portrays ‘Cynthia as a flesh and blood woman who does not become intimately associated with the practice of writing until Book 2’: Greene (n.9 above), 37.

46. McNamee (n.45 above), 215.

47. See n.7 above.

48. A process of reading designed to bring visibility to such questions was first established in the groundbreaking work of Fetterley, Judith, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington 1978Google Scholar). Claiming in her introduction (xi), ‘Literature is political. It is painful to have to insist on this fact, but the necessity of such insistence indicates the dimension of the problem,’ Fetterley’s solution was to make the critic explicitly political. She called for a type of feminist reading that would work against the text to reveal its too-often concealed strategies, a point of view which ‘…has its investment in making available to consciousness precisely that which the literature wishes to keep hidden’ (xix-xx). See also Munich, A., ‘Notorious Signs, Feminist Criticism and Literary Tradition’, in Greene, G. and Kahn, C. (eds.), Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism (London and New York 1985), 238-59Google Scholar; Flynn, E.A. and Schweickart, P.P. (eds.), Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts (Baltimore and London 1986Google Scholar); Fuss, D., ‘Reading Like a Feminist’, differences 1.2 (1989), 77-92Google Scholar; Kirby, V., ‘“Feminisms, Reading, Postmodernisms”: Rethinking Complicity’, in Gunew, S. and Yeatman, A. (eds.), Feminism and the Politics of Difference (Boulder and San Francisco 1993), 20-34Google Scholar; and J. Butler, ‘For a Careful Reading’, in Nicholson (n.6 above), 127-43. The process of ‘reading like a feminist’ in classics has an important history, one that has been addressed in numerous contexts. Papers from a Women’s Classical Caucus panel on Ovid, , ‘Reappropriating the Text: the Case of Ovid’, were published in Helios 17 (1990Google Scholar). Gutzwiller, K. and Michelini, A.N. applied a discussion of such methodologies specifically to the act of reading Roman elegy. In ‘Women and Other Strangers: Feminist Perspectives in Classical Literature’, in Hartman, J.E. and Messer-Davidow, E. (eds.), (En)Gendering Knowledge: Feminists In Academe (Knoxville TN 1991), 66-84Google Scholar, they propose a reading stance for the feminist reader much like Fetterley’s earlier one, a position predetermined to combat the specific rhetorical persuasiveness of elegy’s style.

49. An anonymous reader of the paper suggested that the goal of this project therefore approximates earlier positive attempts to reconstruct Cynthia. While this statement was very helpful in forcing me to think about the potential consequences of this argument, I believe that my work, which finds changeability Cynthia’s sole form of identification, does not support the same assumptions about the subject as earlier positivist scholarship that sought to identify Cynthia conclusively, i.e., that subjects are inherently coherent and consistent.

50. Wyke (n.21 above).

51. I would like to thank one of the article’s anonymous reviewers for making suggestions that helped me clarify and sharpen the argument and Professor Anthony Boyle for encouraging me to continue pursuing this reading. I am very grateful to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, for their offer of a Visiting Fellowship, during which time I was able to rethink my approach to gender in Propertius. I am also grateful to the following, with whom I engaged in invaluable discussions at various points in the process: Ann-Marie Knoblauch, Mary McDonald, Helen Wood, Roger Martinez Sanmarti and John Henderson. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my sincere gratitude to two people whose influence on this project is notable: Emily Zakin, whose work in feminist philosophy has been a source of constant inspiration to me, and Lawrence Richardson, jr. It is Professor Richardson who always guides me back to the pleasures (often guilty) and challenges of reading Propertius, and while I owe Professor Richardson innumerable debts, this is the one I hold most dear.