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Who said . . . You there! Compose elegiacs, and you epic, and you have
been selected by the gods to compose tragedies? No one, in my opinion,
but . . .
In falsifying Callimachus claim that no one ever allotted individual genres
to different poets, Horos might be said merely to have become the narrow-
minded critic lampooned by Callimachus. Yet Horos refusal to sign Prop-
ertius paratextual contract cannot but cast doubt over the extent to which
there can be ensured for the text a destiny consistent with its authors pur-
pose. Incorporating Propertius rst reading of Propertius, elegy 4.1 is thus
itself a paratext which encodes resistance as one possible response to the
paratextual prises de position of Propertius 4.
Elegies 4.1a and 4.1b thus encompass the recalcitrance of reception and
open authoritarian paratexts to challenge. In the same way, the speeches
of Tarpeia (4.4) and Acanthis (4.5) expose the patriarchal misogyny of
the frames that enclose them;
29
Cynthias epitaph (4.7.856) reveals its
26
Hutchinson (2006) 82 and Heyworth (2007b) 430 follow Richmond in recommending the
couplets deletion.
27
Wills (1996) 151.
28
So Kerkhecker (1999) 27195, with bibliography for and against at 272 nn. 34.
29
On 4.4: Stahl (1985) 279304; Janan (2001) 7084; Wyke (2002) 939; DeBrohun (2003)
1469, 1926; Miller (2004) 189203; Welch (2005) 5678; Hutchinson (2006) 11618. On 4.5:
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Paratext and intertext in Propertius 163
allographic independence with a Propertian hapax (aurea, golden) and
her post-mortem testimony retells the story of her life;
30
the reader of
4.11 witnesses the inversion of Cornelias epitaphic imperative not to weep
(4.11.1 Desine, Paulle, meum lacrimis urgere sepulcrum, Stop burdening
my tomb with tears, Paullus) in the peroratio of her depressingly con-
formist speech (99 entes me surgite, testes, Arise, witnesses, weeping for
me).
31
If elegys anti-conformist credo traditionally positions the genre on
the periphery of social and literary respectability, it is appropriate that in
Propertius ostensibly more conformist fourth book the margins of the text
become spaces of contested authority.
Paratext inscribed
The opening of the secondelegy inthe collectionrepeats a trick nowfamiliar
from the opening of the rst, appearing initially to comment on the collec-
tion itself before modulating into another formof paratext as an inscription
for a statue of the god Vertumnus (4.2.12):
Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?
accipe Vertumni signa paterna dei.
Why marvel that I have so many forms in my singular body? Learn about
the ancestral statue of the god Vertumnus.
Comparison with the paratextual incipit of Propertius second book (2.1.1
Quaeritis unde mihi totiens scribantur amores, You enquire whence so often
are penned my love poems) shows how, on a rst reading, 4.2.1 might like-
wise construct a reader who has posed a question (quid mirare?) pertaining
to the plenitude of the poets output (meas tot). The rst-time reader might
thus be more likely to construe tot in uno corpore formas as a reference
not to Vertumnus metamorphic body, but to the multifarious collection
introduced in the bipartite proem-poem. For similar exploitation of the
polysemy of corpus, another famous opening can be compared (Ovid, Met.
1.13):
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora; di, coeptis (nam uos mutastis et illa)
aspirate meis
Gutzwiller (1985); ONeill (1998); Janan (2001) 8599; Wyke (2002) 99103; Hutchinson
(2006) 1369.
30
Flaschenriem (1998) 5363; Janan (2001) 10013; Gold (2007) 6566; Ramsby (2007) 66, 689.
31
Janan (2001) 14663.
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164 donncha orourke
My spirit prompts me to tell of gures transformed into newbodies; gods,
inspire my endeavours (for you have transformed those too)
Here, in the prologue to Ovids Metamorphoses, corpora refers literally to the
bodies whose metamorphosis Ovid will describe, and metaliterarily to the
conversion of the poets elegiac corpus into epic.
32
On further comparison
with Propertius 4.2.1, it might be noted that Ovids formas | corpora inverts
Propertius corpore formas across the hexametric enjambment, the very
point at which (visually, but not yet metrically)
33
elegiacizing epic inverts
epicizing elegy. For the reader who makes this connection, the preface
to the Metamorphoses witnesses (or constructs) Propertius elegy on the
metamorphic Vertumnus as a most apposite paratext.
Reading on, however, Propertius 4.2 turns out to be not or not only
a paratextual reection on the nature of the collection spoken by the poet
in propria persona. The revelation in the pentameter that the speaker is a
statue recongures the incipit as an inscription of the kind that anticipates
the viewers astonishment.
34
This encounter with Vertumnus statue thus
transports the reader from the literary edges of the text to the Vicus Tuscus,
literally on the edge of Romes city centre.
35
The concentration of Romes
book trade in this area,
36
coupled with the poetological subtext of statue
poems,
37
encourages the impression that the metamorphic statue of this
minor Etruscan god still has something to say about Propertius 4 as the
multifaceted collection of an elegiac poet who, as the previous poem has
informed us, is also an immigrant.
38
In this way, the poem itself morphs
into a metapoetic statuary epigram, an effect intensied by its enclosure, at
the opposite end of the elegy, of a six-line legend (4.2.5564):
sed facias, diuum Sator, ut Romana per aeuum 55
transeat ante meos turba togata pedes.
(sex superant uersus. te, qui ad uadimonia curris,
32
See Knox (1986) 9; Wheeler (1999) 1620; Keith (2002) 2378. Ovidian corpora are discussed
in Farrell (1999).
33
See Heyworth (1994) 75; Wheeler (1999) 1617; Morgan (2010) 350. Pentametric indentation
seems to have been a Roman but not a Greek practice: see Anderson, Parsons and Nisbet
(1979) 130 with nn. 358.
34
IG II
2
8388.3 (3rd c. BC), cited by Hutchinson (2006) 89 and discussed by Stager (2005),
begins (Let no man wonder at this image) and
explains why a lion and a prow are depicted on either side of the deceased.
35
See Welch (2005) 3840; LTUR 4.31011.
36
See White (2009); Winsbury (2009) 5766. Signicantly for elegy, it was also a red light
district: ONeill (2000).
37
See Sens (2005); Hutchinson (2008) 93. Cf. Newlands (2002) 4687 on Statius Siluae.
38
For metapoetic and autobiographical readings of Prop. 4.2, see Dee (1974); Pinotti (1983);
Deremetz (1986); Shea (1988); DeBrohun (2003) 16975; Welch (2005) 4255; Cairns (2006)
2812.
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Paratext and intertext in Propertius 165
non moror: haec spatiis ultima creta meis.)
stipes acernus eram, properanti falce dolatus,
ante Numam grata pauper in urbe deus. 60
at tibi, Mamuri, formae caelator aenae,
tellus artices ne terat Osca manus,
qui me tot docilem potuisti fundere in usus.
unum opus est, operi non datur unus honos.
But see to it, Father of the gods, that through the ages Romes togate
throng passes before my feet. (Six lines remain. You, who run to your
vadimony, Ill not delay: this is the chalk nishing-line of my racetrack.) I
was a maple bole, hewn by a hurrying sickle, before Numas time a poor
god in a grateful city. But may the Oscan soil not chafe your artisan hands,
Mamurius, engraver of my bronze gure, you who were able to cast me,
adaptable as I am, into so many uses. The work is singular, but to the work
is accorded no singular honour.
This epigram-in-an-epigram conforms to the norms of its genre, describ-
ing the object on which it purports to be inscribed (cf. e.g. Mart. 6.73),
recording its material upgrade (cf. Call. fr. 100.12 Pf.; Hor. Sat. 1.8.1),
and incorporating its artists autograph (cf. Call. fr. 196.5961: Phidias; fr.
197.13: Epeius). The compliant reader, cognizant of Vertumnus metapo-
etic prole, might thus be tempted to promote to the status of legendary
artifex the poet whose signature can be descried in the fast work of the
sickle (properanti falce).
39
The statues transformation conforms to Proper-
tius newfound interest in the metamorphic development of Rome (cf. ante
Numam and ante Phrygem Aenean in the second lines of the epigram and
book) and relates implicitly to Propertius renovation of the elegiac genre. It
signals Propertius generic enrichment
40
of elegy that the upgraded statue
prays to Jupiter to guarantee an eternal procession of Romans before its feet
(andsobefore the metrical pedes of Propertianelegy) inthe exaltedlanguage
with which Virgils Jupiter (Aen. 1.254 hominum sator atque deorum, sire
of men and gods) unrolls the book of fate to guarantee eternal sovereignty
for the togate people of Rome (282 Romanos rerum dominos gentemque
togatam, the Romans, masters of the world and race of the toga). The
statues position at the edge of Romes economic, political and religious hub
(6 Romanum satis est posse uidere Forum, it is enough to be able to see the
Roman Forum) complements the liminal status of the paratext: as
39
For the pun on Propertius name, see Marquis (1974) 500. For the twinning of Propertius and
Mamurius, see Hutchinson (2006) 99; Ramsby (2007) 634. On the tendency of elegiac poets
to embed their own names in inscriptions, see Ramsby (2007) 4, 89112.
40
For this view of intertextual interaction, see Harrison (2007).
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166 donncha orourke
Vertumnus promises not to detain the passer-by who hurries to court (57
8), so 4.2 is a threshold through which the reader passes en route into
the book and onwards, ad uadimonia as it were, to Cornelias courtroom
appearance in 4.11.
41
As an inscription that announces an epigram, Propertius 4.2 is paratex-
tually demanding. The apostrophe to the hurrying passer-by in lines 578,
in the enclosing inscription, is an epigrammatic formula itself as conven-
tional as those which follow in the enclosed legend, such that Vertumnus
simultaneously draws and effaces the ultima creta (chalk nishing line) in
line 58. The editorial impulse to capitalize the sex uersus is symptomatic of
this provocation. However, as G. Hutchinson points out, editions which do
so risk to overlook the inscribed quality of the elegy as a whole.
42
Further,
the uniformly majuscule script of the Roman papyrus roll could conceiv-
ably have been exploited by a poet with a penchant for paratextual play:
43
here, as Propertius challenges the reader to differentiate between text and
paratext, the elegy oscillates between long inscription and short epigram in
a way that is itself expressive of the books ambition to expand beyond the
epigrammatic origins of the elegiac genre.
44
The conspicuous innumeracy of Vertumnus sex superant uersus (57)
accentuates the challenge: as editors remark, there remain at this point in
the elegy not six lines, but eight. The hypothesis that took this anomaly as
evidence of stanzaic composition,
45
though refuted on the basis of com-
parable expressions in other Latin poets which assuredly signify nothing
of the sort,
46
is nonetheless a response to what is, in effect, a verbalized
stichometric paratext. A simpler and more attractive solution emends the
verbal prex to sub, as if inreference to the lines inscriptionbeneath onthe
statues plinth,
47
but this specicity, like capitalization, disambiguates what
may be a meaningful paratextual ambiguity. Something may yet be learned
from other cases where stichometric paratext is absorbed into the poetic
41
Cf. Welch (2005) 55: It is ironic that this poem about marginality is central to reading both
Propertius fourth book and Augustan Rome.
42
See Hutchinson (2006) 98 and 115.
43
Ramsby (2007) 2 considers it unlikely that ancient texts distinguished between
quasi-inscribed and non-inscribed verse (though her own text does so). On Roman square
and rustic capitals, see Ullman (1963) 5962; Bischoff (1990) 559. See Kleve (1994) on the
development of Roman script from early Roman to pre-classical/classical capital (Tj aders
renement of capitalis rustica).
44
On elegy and epigram, see Schulz-Vanheyden (1970); Hubbard (1974) 940; Ramsby (2007);
Hutchinson (2008) 1028; Keith (2011).
45
See Richmond (1918) 73 and (1928) 67, after Ellis (1878) 2501.
46
Shackleton Bailey (1956) 229.
47
Richardson Jr (1977) 428; Heyworth (2007b) 444.
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Paratext and intertext in Propertius 167
text. In Tristia 1.7, Ovid introduces a supplementary preface to be prexed
to the Metamorphoses to excuse any stylistic imperfections left uncorrected
before his exile (Tr. 1.7.2940):
ablatum mediis opus est incudibus illud,
defuit et coeptis ultima lima meis. 30
en ueniam pro laude peto, laudatus abunde,
non fastiditus si tibi, lector, ero.
hos quoque sex uersus in primi fronte libelli,
si praeponendos esse putabis, habe:
orba parente suo quicumque uolumina tangis, 35
his saltem uestra detur in urbe locus.
quoque magis faueas, non sunt haec edita ab ipso,
sed quasi de domini funere rapta sui.
quidquid in his igitur uitii rude carmen habebit,
emendaturus, si licuisset, erat. 40
That work was snatched right from the anvil, and what I started never got
the nishing touch. Lo! I seek pardon rather than praise, praised more
than enough, if I am not the object of your disdain, reader. Take these six
lines too, if you think them t to be prexed to the head of the rst book:
Whoever touches these volumes orphaned of their father, at least to them
let there be granted a place in your city. And that you be more favourably
disposed, they were not published by him, but were rescued, as it were,
from their masters funeral. So whatever imperfection this rough poem
has, he was going to correct, had it been permitted.
Given the possibility, discussed above, that the original preface to the Meta-
morphoses reads the opening of Propertius 4.2 as a paratextual discussion
about generic metamorphosis, it is tantalizing to think that the sex uer-
sus of Ovids exilic preface return to the end of the same intertext. Ovids
revised preface now personies the book and apostrophizes its reader, as
Propertius 4.2 initially seemed to do, and the image of Ovids literary smithy
brings to mind Mamurius metapoetic metalwork inthe concluding Proper-
tian epigram. However, whereas the Metamorphoses was interrupted (abla-
tum. . . opus est) before receiving Ovids ultima lima, Vertumnus celebrates
the perfection of his statue (unum opus est) after reaching his ultima creta;
and whereas Vertumnus is grata pauper in urbe deus, content with his post
at the edge of the forum, Ovid prays uestra detur in urbe locus, lamenting
his relegation to the edge of the world.
48
Ovids hos quoque sex uersus might
48
On the metamorphosis of Ovid in Tr. 1.7, see Hinds (1985).
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168 donncha orourke
therefore be taken to footnote his composition too of a six-line paratext.
49
Emendedas Ovidinstructs, the double preface of the Metamorphoses alludes
rst to the end and then (as suggested above) to the beginning of Proper-
tius 4.2. The audiovisual transition from elegiac to epic verse expresses a
metamorphosis of genre (nam uos mutastis et illas) that inverts Propertius
incorporation of epic forms into elegy.
50
Ironically, the reader who agrees
that Ovids paratextual apologia is necessary (si praeponendos esse putabis)
unwittingly heightens the intertextual perfection of the Metamorphoses.
Despite its paratextual pretensions as epigram and critical note, Prop-
ertius 4.2 is strikingly non-directive in comparison with the preface(s) of
Ovids Metamorphoses. In contrast to the provocatory poet of 4.1a, too,
the conciliatory Vertumnus entertains three etymologies of his name and
settles for the one that relates to his protean versatility (4.2.47). Vertum-
nus shifting identities reconcile the polarized reading practices enacted
in 4.1 through Horos rejection of Propertius epicizing programme. Read
as a paratext, elegy 4.2 seeks paradoxically to deregulate interpretation by
welcoming reader reception (22 in quamcumque uoles, uerte, decorus ero,
turn me into whatever you wish, Ill be tasteful). Moreover, since uertere
encompasses linguistic metamorphoses such as translation and paraphrase
(OLD s.v. 24), Vertumnus metapoetic statue might be said to symbolize
intertextual plurality itself. In this sense, it is apt that the etymology Ver-
tumnus endorses at 4.2.47 (quod formas unus uertebar in omnes, because
I could turn my singular self into all shapes) is itself a version of Virgils
description of Proteus (Geo. 4.411 formas se uertet in omnis). Intertextual
reception is such that a text, although a single entity like Vertumnus statue,
invites multiple reactions (64 unum opus est, operi non datur unus honos).
Papyrotechnics: Towards a fussier model?
Unlike most modern paratexts, the prefaces considered above mediate from
within the text. According to Genette, the incorporated preface belongs
to an age when the poverty of presentation concealed its use by depriv-
ing it of the means of drawing attention to itself with an appearance en
exergue.
51
While this may be true in part, the visual and graphic modes of
49
On self-reexive annotation (aka the Alexandrian footnote), see Conte (1986) 5769; Wills
(1996) 30 with n. 47; Hinds (1998) 116, Miller (1993). On the paratextuality of quoque in the
Ovidian corpus, see Jansen in ch. 13, XXX.
50
See n. 33 above. The readable text, emphasised by Parker (2009), is not incompatible with
effects dependent on aural reception, emphasized by Morgan (2010).
51
Genette (1997b) 163.
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Paratext and intertext in Propertius 169
communication to which Propertius and Ovid draw attention suggest oth-
erwise, especially when considered alongside the hard evidence of literary
papyrology: the spectacular testimony of the Milan papyrus of Posidippus
(PMil. Vogl. VIII 309) with its section titles, paragraphoi and stichometry
(unusually in running totals for each section
52
) singlehandedly discredits
the assumption that ancient texts were paratextually inert.
53
W. Johnson has
found that the standards of book roll production, especially in the Roman
period, and even in the provincial towns that supply our data sets, were
remarkably exacting. The question posed by Johnsons study thus pertains
in a particularly acute way to the audiographic paratexts of Propertius and
Ovid: What was the relation, if any, between the format of the bookroll and
its contents?
54
The Roman poetry book par excellence, Virgils Eclogues, has attracted
adventurous speculation in this direction: W. Berg suggested that the
(in)famous numerical symmetries of the Eclogues derive from the physi-
cal arrangement of the text on the uolumen,
55
and J. Van Sickle went on to
hypothesize a layout for the entire book.
56
Voluminological experimenta-
tion of this order presupposes a degree of authorial control over form and
content that negotiates with what is now understood about the transforma-
tive effects of literary consumption and circulation in antiquity. A. Barchiesi
has proposed that the fetish of the perfect book be replaced with a fuzzier
model which recognizes editorial activity of a structural kind, but which
shifts editorial control fromthe author-designer to reader-(re)assemblers.
57
On this view, it might be said that there are moments at which the poetry
book toys with the idea of its own mise en page. For example, G. Hutchinson
has suggested that Ecl. 6.1112 (nec Phoebo gratior ulla est | quam sibi quae
Vari praescripsit pagina nomen, to Phoebus no column is more pleasing
than that which has Varus name inscribed at the top) may imply a new
column for a new poem.
58
When the rst Eclogue inaugurates a Virgilian
propagandistic device by placing the Octavianic iuuenis in the centre of its
central line (42 hic illum uidi iuuenem, here I saw that young man),
59
the
verb uidi annotates quasi-paratextually the convergence of formand theme.
Similarly, D. Wray has observed that the rst elegy of Tibullus 1 can be dis-
posedinthree columns eachof twenty-six lines, withthe metapoetic couplet
3940 conspicuous at their centre.
60
In this way and in others, the Eclogue
book can be considered as the maquette for its Augustan successors,
61
52
See Johnson (2005) 76.
53
See Krevans (2005).
54
Johnson (2004) 3.
55
Berg (1974) 11012.
56
van Sickle (1980) 401.
57
Barchiesi (2005).
58
Hutchinson (2008) 22.
59
See Fredricksmeyer (1966) 214.
60
Wray (2003) 239.
61
See Leach (1978).
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170 donncha orourke
possibly including Propertius 4, where the central elegy on Actium has pro-
vided the centrepiece for the various architectural designs proposed for the
book.
62
Beginnings, middles and endings, then, are loci of programmatic and
paratextual activity that will necessarily have transposed to identical loci
on the ancient book roll. An inuential precursor in this respect was the
Garland of Meleager, in the opening and closing epigrams of which the poet
expands the margins of his own text by converting front and back matter
into poetry.
63
Thus, in the nal epigram, the coronis bilocates between the
margins and the text proper, both as symbol of closure and as poem (AP
12.257 =129 GP):
64
, 1
,
. . .
, 7
.
The coronis, announcing the nal bend, trustiest guardian of the written
columns . . . and turned in coils like a snakes back, I sit enthroned at the
turning-post of this learning.
Like the incorporated paratexts in Propertius and Ovid, Meleagers text
here gestures to visual phenomena as its ventriloquist coronis equates the
terminationof the columns of text withthe endof a race. Since hippodromic
metaphors occur elsewhere inLatinpoetry tosignal the endof the text (Verg.
G. 2.5412; Il. Lat. 1066) or in reference thereto (Lucr. 6.925), Meleager
points up how Propertius at 4.1.70 (has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus,
cf. , ) and Vertumnus at 4.2.58 (haec spatiis ultima creta
meis, cf. ) set up false closures. If Meleagers coronis epigram is
(or represents a type that is) the inspiration behind these Propertian lines,
then it perhaps also offers a parallel for the more denitive closure imposed
on elegy 4.1 by Horos: octipedis Cancri terga sinistra time (4.1.150 beware
the back of the eight-footed Crab on the left, cf. ). A book roll
with an octopede coronis or asteriscus to the left of this line would add to
the playfulness of Horos warning and consolidate intertextuality with the
62
See Dieterich (1900); Grimal (1952); Nethercut (1968). Hutchinson (1984) and (2008) 1621,
5961 favours a less rigidly architectural model.
63
Gutzwiller (1998) 279 on AP 4.1 and 12.257 =1 and 129 GP.
64
See Bing (1988) 335.
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Paratext and intertext in Propertius 171
Meleagrian (para)text.
65
Be that as it may, Horos appears here to continue
his practice of redeploying Propertius intertexts for his own ends.
Prompted by these parallels with Meleagers coronis epigram and in the
spirit of autonomous reader-editing in a book which draws attention to
aspects of its physical appearance, the possibility of coincidence between
the metaphorical nishing lines of Propertius 4 and the ends of its columns
of text might also be explored. Greek literary papyri normally have columns
of between twenty-ve and fty lines, with verse texts at the lower end of
that range;
66
as far as can be told, Roman book rolls were taller, but with
wider margins and larger letters
67
(features common also to Greek editions
de luxe
68
). In viewof these gures, and taking into consideration Propertius
possible engagement witha traditionof textualizing the anatomy of the book
roll, it is tempting to imagine Propertius 4.1.29 and 32, which begin with
the words prima and quattuor respectively, as the rst and fourth lines of a
second column. If this is signicant, then Propertius 4 uses the rst available
juncture to encode within itself instructions for its own mise en page.
The preceding sentence hangs on a considerable protasis. Columns are
subject to numerous variables, among them the question of whether titles
and interstices should be included. More problematically still, few would
agree that an authorially designed layout, if there ever was one, could be
recoveredfromthe textus receptus:
69
as the lacunae, interpolations andtrans-
positions accumulate, the columns will become ever more displaced from
their pristine organization.
70
Accepting these caveats, the following may be
taken as defensible hypotheses: that a title should head the rst column;
71
that an interstice should follow the title;
72
that interstices do not sepa-
rate elegies (thus sustaining the ambiguity at 4.1.701),
73
although division
might be signalled in the margin without consequence to stichometry;
74
65
The asteriscus typically has eight outer points: see Turner (1987) plate 22 (POxy. 26.2441
[Pindar]), where asteriscus, coronis and paragraphos coincide at the end of a poem.
66
See Johnson (2004) 11925.
67
See Hutchinson (2008) 223.
68
See Johnson (2004) 1556.
69
See Heyworth (1995b) and (2007a) lvilxiv.
70
According to the edition of Propertius 4 used: Fedeli (1984): 1 interpolation, 2 transpositions,
0 lacunae; Hutchinson (2006): 25 interpolations, 5 lacunae, 0 transpositions; Heyworth
(2007a): 10 interpolations, 5 lacunae, 15 transpositions.
71
Seven extant Propertian codices (P, T, S, K, M, U, R) transmit a title for Propertius 4, and a
further four (N, J, W, C) leave room for one.
72
As in e.g. PMil. Vogl. VIII 309.
73
When N marks division (see n. 13 above), it does so with an enlarged decorated initial: see
Butrica (1984) 323; Heyworth (1995a) 1368 concludes that the archetype did not divide with
interstices.
74
e.g. PHerc. 21 (Ennius Annales) pezzo VII fr. 3 has forked paragraphoi between verses in the
left margin: see Kleve (1990) 6, 15. On ways of marking division in antiquity, see Turner (1987)
8, 1213; Heyworth (1995a) 1212.
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172 donncha orourke
that the same number of lines (i.e. thirty) could be maintained in successive
columns;
75
that an archetypal layout is more likely to be recovered for the
rst columns of a text where the risk of accumulated columnar displacement
is proportionally lower.
A uolumen so arranged, with prima and quattuor beginning the rst and
fourth lines of col. ii, will present several further coincidences of format and
content as it is unrolled. At the top of col. iii sits the quodcumque . . . riui
(4.1.59) of the new Propertian poetic, now visually (as well as thematically)
aligned with the quodcumque which at the top of col. i seemed initially to
refer to the book we (be)hold. At the bottomof col. iii reference to Troys fall
andTrojanRomes rise (4.1.878) anticipates the movement of the eye to the
top of the next column. Horos bleak perspective on Greco-Trojan geopol-
itics in lines 256 of col. iv now directs us to look back (4.1.114 respice)
to the same lines in col. ii for the triumphalist history he revises. As Horos
turns from Greek history to Propertian biography, the abrupt hactenus his-
toriae . . . incipe (4.1.11920) begins col. v and so creates a natural division
within the elegy. His reference to the scandentisque Asisi . . . murus in lines
78 of this column (4.1.1256) now recalls visually as well as verbally the
scandentes . . . arces and muros mentioned by Propertius in lines 78 of col.
iii (4.1.656); still in col. v, Horos recollection of Propertius Apolline ini-
tiation in line 15 (4.1.133 dictat Apollo) elucidates his warning in col. iii
(4.1.73 auersus Apollo), once again in horizontal alignment. The nal cou-
plet of 4.1 spills over untidily into col. vi, but the hexameter seems to warn
the reader tomindthe gap (149 uel tremefacta cauos tellus diducat hiatus, or
should the shaken earth draw apart gaping chasms), while the pentameter
nowsets Horos closural crab at the top of the column, anunexpected place
to nd a coronis if one was here inscribed. As if to conrm this stunt, the
head of the adjacent col. vii reads sobrius ad lites; at cum est imposta corona, |
clamabis capiti uina subisse meo (4.2.2930 Imsober at a dispute, but when
Ive put on my garland, youll cry that the wine has gone to my head): the
metapoetic Vertumnus thus gestures to the coronis at the top of the previous
column and at the head of his elegy. Finally, the end of col. vii coincides
with the false closure of 4.2.578, so that the ultima creta of Vertumnus
race announces the nishing line of the column, and the six-line plinth
epigram is, unexpectedly but as advertised, situated above (sex superant
uersus), en exergue at the top of col. viii. On this arrangement, a network of
paratextual signa preserves, within the body of the text, authorial-editorial
75
Johnson (2004) 567 describes a typical variation of no more than one line from the mean; cf.
e.g. POxy. 223 +PColon. 5.210 (Il. 5) for columns of 24, 25, 24, 25, 25, 26, 25, 25, 25, 25, and
25 lines.
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Paratext and intertext in Propertius 173
instructions for formatting the book roll. The emergent edition graphically
complements the paratextual and intertextual readings offered above, and
thereby satises the criterion that form and content cohere.
An analogy for the horizontal alignment and strategic placement of the
text on the book roll might be drawn with the artistic strategies of alignment
andplacement invisual texts, bothplastic andepigraphic. For instance, it has
been persistently argued that the helical frieze of Trajans Column presents
typologically similar scenes in vertical alignment.
76
Inversely, it has been
suggested that Trajans Column is itself to be compared to a scroll inscribed
with the visual text of Trajans res gestae.
77
This comparison is all the more
suggestive in view of the likelihood that the verbal text of Augustus Res
gestae was organized, as J. Elsner has argued, with the section describing the
emperors buildings in Rome (1921) occupying a privileged position in
the lay-out of the text at the top of the second of the two bronze columns on
which it was inscribed at Rome, just as in the copy preserved in the Temple
of Augustus and Rome at Ankara the same section appears at the top of the
right-handinterior wall of the pronaus.
78
It might not be sucha stretchof the
imagination, therefore, to imagine similar strategies of textual placement
and alignment at play in a contemporary and quasi-inscriptional poetry
book that has as one of its central themes the monumental transformation
of the Roman cityscape.
79
While it might be objected that meaningful correlations in visual and
literary texts lie in the eye of the beholder, a control for the layout of
Propertius 4 postulatedabove is providednot only by the absence of obvious
correlations in alternative mises en page,
80
but also by the fact that the same
intratextual correspondences have been detected by readers independently
76
See Lehmann-Hartleben (1926) 114, 1456; Gauer (1977) 912, 458; Brilliant (1986) 97100,
1038; Settis (1988) 20219.
77
See Huet (1996) 212.
78
See Elsner (1996b) 412 and also 50 on the Greek translation of the RG at Apollonia in Asia
Minor, where the text was inscribed on the plinth of a group of seven statues, with the chapters
on Augustus building programme appearing in the fourth (central) column under the statue
of Augustus himself.
79
For these themes in Propertius 4, see Welch (2005) and Rea (2007) 10323.
80
For example, a partially attractive mise en page is generated by columns of twenty-eight lines
with no title or interstices (i.e. with primus and quattuor at the top of col. ii): the 952 lines of the
book divide into thirty-four even columns of this length; unus (or una) falls in the rst or last
line of a column at 4.1.140, 4.2.47 and 4.8.32, and the two occurrences of quinque each fall ve
lines from the bottom of a column with inviting metapoetic overtones (4.1.1078 aspicienda
uia est . . . | . . . et ab zonis quinque petenda des; 4.11.14 et sum, quod digitis quinque legatur
onus). However, numerous other cardinals and ordinals offer no such coincidence with this
arrangement, and no obvious correspondence between content and column emerges; for an
alternative metapoetic reading of 4.11.14, see Heyworth (2007b) 5056.
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174 donncha orourke
of paratextual analysis and voluminological experimentation.
81
For this
reason, too, Propertius 4 might be consideredalongside Tibullus 1 andother
collections in the tradition of Virgils Eclogues, with which it already shares
the ambition to rise from quasi-pastoral beginnings (collis et herba) to epic
heights (maxima Roma). Without claiming that there exists a transcendent
format for every Romanpoetry book, therefore, it may nonetheless be worth
considering anewthe potential of the papyrus roll to manage the reception
of its text by paratextual means.
Paratextual special effects on papyrus can be considered alongside
other Hellenistic and Roman pyrotechnics: like acrostics, palindromes,
technopaegnia or carmina gurata (picture poems or calligrams), and the
hexameter grid poems of Optatian,
82
a poetry book formatted along the
lines suggested above reies itself to communicate visually as well as ver-
bally to a reading culture that is increasingly understood as ocularcentric.
83
Text of this kind depends, as T. Habinek has written, on its materiality rather
than on semantics: more often than we are accustomed to acknowledge,
it denies the freedom of the signier and limits production of meaning to
direct encounters with the very system of inscription recognized as such.
84
It would be appropriate, therefore, if Propertius attempt in 4.1a to prescribe
a particular interpretation for his text were accompanied by an endeavour to
restrict the format of that text toa particular scheme. That neither enterprise
is ultimately possible is reected in the perennial disagreement over Prop-
ertius politics and in the successive re-editing of his text. These instabilities
are also recognized in different ways within Propertius 4, be it in Horos
deant response in 4.1b, or, just after Vertumnus paratextually conspicuous
sex uersus, in Arethusas anxieties about the liturae that threaten her letters
legibility (4.3.36).
85
However, where Catullus fretted about the survival of
his libellus and the vagaries of its fortune (Cat. 1),
86
Propertius celebrates
81
See nn. 19, 24, 26 above. Other parallels: Penates appear in line 3 of cols. iv and v (4.1.91; 121,
where notis . . . Penatibus and edit provide paratextual footnotes); simple icons and opulent
temples are contrasted in line 7 of cols. i and vi (4.1.5; 4.2.5); the Tiber once-upon-a-time
features in line 10 of cols. i and vi (4.1.8; 4.2.78, where hac quondam Tiberinus iter faciebat
signposts the repetition); if the name of the Trojan priestess is under erasure in Ilia tellus
(4.1.53), it is brought out by Martisque rapacis (4.1.83) immediately to the right in line 25 of
col. iii.
82
On these and other Formspiele in Greek literature, see Luz (2010). See Polara (1973) for the
text (with commentary) of Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius (b. AD 260/270 ); for further
analysis, see Ernst (1986) 1516 and (1991) 95142; R uhl (2006).
83
For this term, see the discussion in Squire (2009) 1489.
84
Habinek (2009) 136. Cf. Genette (1997b) 3.
85
On the battle for survival, see Winsbury (2009) 12934.
86
See Farrell (2009). For theories on the Catullan collection(s), see Skinner (2007) and Kennedy,
ch. 1 of this volume.
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Paratext and intertext in Propertius 175
his readers freedom to make of his text what they will. Vertumnus statue
symbolises embodied language, but also the diversity of reception, the tot
in uno corpore formae. Situated at the ashpoint where structuralism and
poststructuralism collide, Propertius 4 harnesses paratext and intertext to
celebrate the tension between authorial control (of interpretation, and per-
haps even of mise en page) and the readers liberation of the text and its
meaning.
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