Landscapes of War in Greek and Roman Literature by Bettina Reitz-Joosse;Marian W. Makins;C. J. Mackie;

Author:Bettina Reitz-Joosse;Marian W. Makins;C. J. Mackie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350157927
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2020-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Qualis et unde genus, qui sint mihi, Tulle, Penates,

quaeris pro nostra semper amicitia.

What sort of man I am and from what family, Tullus – what household gods are mine – you are always asking for the sake of our friendship.

The addressee, Tullus, should be familiar to readers of the Monobiblos, having been named already as the addressee of poem 1.1 and in several other places besides.27 If Tullus is being addressed again here, then we can deduce that the speaker is Propertius (or at least his authorial persona). The set-up also marks poem 1.22 as a sphragis, or ‘seal-poem’, with which a poet ‘signs’ and authenticates their work. Such a poem typically appears at the end of a book and supplies such details as the author chooses to include about their life.

Whatever comfort the audience might derive from recognizing the addressee – and thus the speaker – of 1.22 and from classifying it as a sphragis, however, the poem itself soon takes away again. It turns out this is not a typical sphragis at all. Most surprisingly, the author never names himself. In fact, the first word of the poem forecasts this omission: in place of the more usual interrogative quis (‘who?’), here we have qualis (‘what sort of man?’), suggesting that Propertius considers his actual name to be of secondary importance.28

So, it seems, we are to hear Propertius’s answers to a friend’s incessant questions about his family background. But the poem never really answers the questions it poses; at least not directly, and not in the way we might expect. Propertius waits until the final couplet to answer the question of his origins. In the intervening lines he simply hands Tullus – and the reader – pieces of the puzzle (1.22.3–5)

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