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ELEGIAC WOMEN AND THE EPIPHANIC GAZE:
THE CASE OF PROPERTIUS’ CYNTHIA
LAUREN CURTIS
I watch her step forth gleaming in Coan silks . . .1
—Propertius 2.1.5
A
T THE BEGINNING OF HIS second book, Propertius invites the reader to
view his beloved along with him. While at the opening of Book 1 Cyn-
thia attracted Propertius with the look from her eyes (suis . . . me cepit
ocellis, 1.1.1), at the beginning of this second collection the eyes are all his.
As Kerill O’Neill observes, “looking emerges as the crucial factor in the speak-
er’s account of his poetic inspiration.”2 Indeed, the lover’s gaze in 2.1 has rightly
been interpreted as displaying the spectacle of Cynthia’s body as a way of pro-
grammatically inaugurating the aesthetics and poetic ideology of a second book
of poetry about her.3
But what kind of gaze is it that opens the book so powerfully? The dynamic of
vision is fundamentally erotic, as Propertius sets up Cynthia as an object of de-
sire.4 The visual arts also play an important part in the poem’s representational
discourse, with Cynthia’s “ivory fingers” (digitis . . . eburnis, 9) taking on the di-
mensions of a sculpted work of art.5 In this article, I examine a mode of viewing
that has received sufficient attention neither in relation to this elegy nor to Pro-
pertius’ poetry in general, but which, I propose, offers a powerful lens for under-
standing how Propertius’ elegies imagine and mediate Cynthia’s presence. I
argue that the arrival of Cynthia at the opening of Book 2 is represented as a di-
vine epiphany.6 Cast in these terms, Cynthia is not just a human mistress but is
1. On the line’s textual issues, see below, n. 9. I use Heyworth’s (2007) text of Propertius throughout. All
translations are my own.
2. O’Neill 2005, 250.
3. On the programmatic nature of Cynthia’s viewed body in this poem, see Wiggers 1977; Fredrick 1997,
179–80; Keith 1999, 52–53; Wyke 2002, 147–51; Keith 2008, 91–93.
4. The elegy sets up a traditional male-female power relationship while also deconstructing it. See Greene 2000
on the Propertian narrator’s destabilization of gender categories in 2.1. Miller (2001, 138– 41) finds further instabil-
ities. O’Neill (2005, 250–51) focuses on the tension between Propertius’ creation of a male gaze in the poem, and
Cynthia’s refusal to meet it.
5. Wiggers 1977, 335; Fredrick 1997, 180.
6. While epiphany in Propertius is understudied, Scioli (2015) treats the intersection of dreams and visual descrip-
tion in Latin elegy. She discusses epiphany insofar as it relates to dream visions (see, e.g., pp. 134–72 on Prop. 3.3)
but is more interested in the relationship between vision and the narration of fantasy than in the explicitly or implic-
itly divine appearances I analyze here.
Classical Philology 114 (2019): 406–429

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ELEGIAC WOMEN AND THE EPIPHANIC GAZE 407
also endowed with attributes of the gods. Her divine nature is composite, com-
bining aspects of Venus and, fittingly for her name, Apollo.
In the first part of this article, I argue for such an epiphanic reading of Proper-
tius 2.1 and develop some of its implications. In particular, I propose that Proper-
tius draws on and transforms earlier Graeco-Roman discourses about epiphany,
especially those of Hellenistic elegy, so that the language of divine presence serves
to mark the beginning of a new elegiac book about Cynthia. Drawing attention to
the representational strategies of Propertius’ elegy, the ineffable, intangible expe-
rience of divine presence self-consciously signals the reader’s unrolling of a new
libellus. The material form of the elegiac poetry book thus mediates the poet’s
(and reader’s) desire for Cynthia as a figure who both inhabits and transcends
a mortal female body. This opening poem of Book 2, I argue, shows Propertius
reimagining the language and protocols of ancient epiphany to position his ele-
giac book as a potent object for conjuring Cynthia’s presence.
Although epiphany is traditionally keyed in Graeco-Roman literature with
themes of opening and arrival, it is not confined to the beginning of Propertius’
book. In the second part of the article, I detect what might be called an “epiphanic
narrative” that runs through Book 2, arguing that Cynthia’s epiphanic and espe-
cially Apolline presence finds further refractions in a sequence of poems at the
end of the book. In Prop. 2.31 and 2.34, Cynthia’s opening epiphany is paradox-
ically reworked as an act of closure. In these two poems, the material form of the
book and the intangible presence of the divine are set in a different relationship,
as Cynthia’s immediate presence recedes into the background, and Propertius fo-
cuses more strongly on his poetry’s ability to document, commemorate, and ar-
chive such encounters.
In studies of Propertius, the epiphanic scenes most frequently discussed are
those in the opening sequence of Book 3, where the poet comes face to face
not with Cynthia, but with the ghost of Callimachus (Prop. 3.1) and Apollo him-
self (3.3).7 This article aims to demonstrate that the mode of epiphanic vision is
already deeply implicated in the elegies about Cynthia. Epiphany expresses Pro-
pertius’ central theme of longing for Cynthia’s presence, figuring such desire as
simultaneously erotic and religious. Throughout Propertius 2, and especially at
important programmatic moments at its beginning and end, moments of epiphany
reveal how Propertian elegy can capture these fleeting, longed-for encounters
within the remembering pages of its book.8
CYNTHIA’S EPIPHANY IN PROPERTIUS 2.1
Quaeritis unde mihi totiens scribantur amores,

unde meus veniat mollis in ora liber.
non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo:
7. On religious language and imagery in the opening sequence of Propertius 3, see Boucher 1974 and Harmon
1979.
8. This interplay between present experience and textual memorialization is at the heart of many epiphanic mo-
ments in Latin literature. While epiphany in Greek literature and culture has received much attention in recent years
(see below, n. 10), its place in Latin literature is ripe for further exploration. See Feeney 1998, 104–7; Henrichs 1978
(Horace); Lovatt 2013, 78–85 (Latin epic); Cioffi 2014 (Virgil).

408 LAUREN CURTIS
ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit.

sive illam Cois fulgentem incedere cerno,9 5
totum de Coa veste volumen erit;
seu vidi ad frontem sparsos errare capillos,
gaudet laudatis ire superba comis;
sive lyrae carmen digitis percussit eburnis,
miramur faciles ut premat arte manus; 10
seu cum poscentes somnum declinat ocellos,
invenio causas mille poeta novas;
seu nuda erepto mecum luctatur amictu,
tum vero longas condimus Iliadas;
seu quicquid fecit, sive est quodcumque locuta, 15
maxima de nihilo nascitur historia.
You ask from where so many loves are written by me, and from where my tender book comes
to my lips. Not Calliope, not Apollo sings these things to me: the girl herself creates my in-
spiration. If I see her step forth, gleaming in Coan silks, a whole book will be made out of her
Coan garment; if I have seen her scattered hair stray on her forehead, she rejoices to proceed
proudly with her hair praised; if she struck the song of the lyre with her ivory fingers, I am
amazed at how she applies her hands to the art with ease; if, when she closes her eyes desiring
sleep, I find a thousand new causes as a poet; if she struggles with me naked, her clothing
ripped off—then indeed I compose long Iliads. Whatever she has done, whatever she is,
and whatever she has said, the greatest history is born out of nothing.
Cynthia appears in a range of attitudes, beginning with her initial approach

and then building, with increasing intimacy, toward the naked bedroom strug-
gles of line 13. While the attitudes that Cynthia strikes and the poet’s focus
on the physical contours of her body suggest an ekphrastic description of a paint-
ing or statue, the lines gain additional resonance if we think of them as drawing
on another highly coded experience of viewing in the Graeco-Roman world, that
of epiphany.
Epiphany is the phenomenon whereby mortals experience firsthand the pres-
ence of a god.10 It is an experience of both the senses and the intellect. While it can
be perceived by all the senses, including hearing, touch, and even smell, it is asso-
ciated especially strongly with vision.11 This sensory experience of the god’s pres-
ence tends to open up an interpretive response in the viewers, expressed as fear,
awe, or wonder as they encounter the divine.12 Epiphany permeated the literature,
9. The text here is difficult. Heyworth prints Leo’s conjecture cerno. The majority of the manuscripts have
cogis, presumably dittography of Cois in the same line (Leo 1880, 435–36; Fedeli 1984). The codices deteriores
have vidi, which would introduce an anaphora continued by vidi in line 7 (vidi is accepted by Enk [1962], Camps
[1967], and Goold [1999]; Barber [1960] prints †cogis† but suggests iuvit). While a definitive reading is impos-
sible, it seems highly likely, at least, that the line contains a verb of sight.
10. Interest in Greek epiphany has greatly increased in recent years: see esp. Platt 2011 and Petridou 2016.
Henrichs (2012) and Platt (2015) offer concise overviews, the latter with further reading and a summary of the
state of the field. See also Pfister 1924 and Pax 1970. As Henrichs puts it, “the concept is much older than the
term.” The Greek word ἐπιφάνεια first appears in a religious context in an inscription from Cos for the Delphic
Soteria thanking Apollo for his epiphany (278 BCE; Syll.3 398.17; SEG 45: 468; Nachtergael 1977, 401–2, with
160 n. 157 on the epiphany; see also Platt 2011, 154–57), but scenes of epiphany in Greek literature are as old as
the Homeric epics.
11. Platt 2011 (passim, most explicitly 10–13) treats the complex interrelation of epiphany, vision, and rep-
resentation. See also Platt 2016 on the fundamental relationship in the Graeco-Roman world between human
vision and the desire for divine presence.
12. On fear and amazement as typical reactions to epiphany, see Richardson 1974, 208–9; 2010, 102.

art, and myth of the Greek world, forming a discourse through whose repeated for-
mulas and modes of expression ancient artists and writers imagined the relationship
between humans and gods.13 In the Roman world, too, “private individuals saw
gods on a regular basis,” as demonstrated by the large number of ex visu inscrip-
tions that have been found from across the Empire.14 Latin poets, working in di-
alogue with these Greek and Roman religious and mythological traditions,
incorporated the language and protocols of epiphanic experience into their work
as a central means by which to explore the relationship between human and di-
vine, and the role of the poet in negotiating this encounter.15
Horace’s ode to Bacchus (Carm. 2.19), a closely contemporary Latin poem
that treats epiphany in explicit terms, can shed light on the epiphanic tone of Pro-
pertius 2.1.16 Recounting his own past encounter with Bacchus, Horace first fore-
grounds the sensory experience of epiphany. He uses the verb video to express
its primarily visual dimension that, in Greek, was usually expressed by a form
of the verb ὁράω: Bacchum in remotis carmina rupibus / vidi docentem (“Bacchus
I have seen teaching his poems in remote crags,” 1–2). He goes on to describe his
reaction: a mixture of fear (metu, 5) and joy (laetatur, 7). Horace, who has wit-
nessed the god up close, is able to cross the threshold back to the mortal realm
and retell the experience: credite, posteri (“believe me, future generations!”).
Propertius, I propose, draws on a similar combination of ancient religious,
mythological, and literary discourse at the opening of 2.1 to represent Cynthia as
an approaching goddess. First, the narrator represents the experience of seeing her
in epiphanic language. Propertius’ repeated emphasis on sight (cerno, 5;17 vidi, 7) is
identical to the language of Horace’s first-person epiphany (Bacchum . . . / vidi).18
Like Horace, Propertius then turns to his reaction to the vision; in Propertius’
case, this involves feelings of awe (miramur, 10). Miror is the Latin equivalent
of the “wonder” (thauma) often expressed in accounts of Greek epiphanies.19
Meeting Propertius’ awestruck gaze is Cynthia herself, and his description of
her appearance suggests a superhuman, even divine, presence. He first describes
her physical approach, which is another means by which poets such as Virgil
signal an epiphany in Latin.20 The verb Propertius uses, incedere, is grand and
dignified, more appropriate for a god striding through the landscape than a puella
13. See Petridou 2016, 2 and passim on the importance of understanding epiphany as a “culturally structured
and culturally meaningful phenomenon.”
14. Ando 2010, 45. Ando 2010 and 2011 explore the difference between Greek and Roman ideas about
making the gods present. See also Platt 2011, 147–69 on how epigraphic sources commemorate epiphany. For
a detailed examination of one important context for experiencing the divine across the Graeco-Roman world, in-
cubatory dream visions, see Renberg 2016.
15. See above, n. 8.
16. For this poem’s treatment of epiphany, see Henrichs 1978.
17. On the textual issues surrounding the first verb of sight (cerno, 5), see above, n. 9.
18. Cf. the participle visus signaling divine epiphany in the Aeneid (on which see Cioffi 2014) and in the
epigraphic record (above, n. 14). In her discussion of Prop. 4.7 as a dream epiphany of Cynthia’s ghost, Scioli
(2015, 7–8) likewise notes how close its language of vision (visa est, 3) is to ex visu inscriptions.
19. Miror is also used by Virgil in describing epiphanic encounters (e.g., Verg. Aen. 8.619, when Venus appears
to Aeneas: miraturque). Elsewhere in the Aeneid, human reaction to epiphany is expressed by surprise (attonitus,
4.282), terror (exterritus, 4.571), speechlessness (obmutuit, 4.279), and stupefaction (obstipuere, 9.123; stupet,
10.249).
20. E.g., Verg. Aen.1.314: sese tulit (Venus); 1.405: incessu (Venus); 2.589–90: se . . . / obtulit (Venus); 4.556–
57: se . . . / obtulit (Mercury); 5.622: se . . . infert (Iris); 8.32–33: se atollere . . . / visus (Tiber); 8.611: seque obtulit
(Venus); 9.649: ibat (Apollo); 10.220: occurit (Nymphs).

410 LAUREN CURTIS
approaching her lover.21 Cynthia is also described as “gleaming” ( fulgentem, 5),

a word often used in Latin for the radiance that emanates from an approaching
god.22 She is happy and proud (superba, gaudet, 8), language that suggests di-
vine magnanimity rather than merely human delight.23 Her clothing and hair, as-
pects of a beautiful young girl’s adornment, are also often emphasized in a divine
epiphany.24 In contrast to Horace, whose narrative recounts a past event, Proper-
tius’ verbs are mostly present, inviting the reader to witness the epiphany in real
time as it takes place before his eyes.
Over and above this general impression of divinity, there are two gods with
whom Cynthia shares particular features, Venus and Apollo. Calliope and Apollo
are explicitly rejected as sources of Propertius’ inspiration at the beginning of
the poem (non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo, 3), yet Cynthia’s ar-
rival recalls Apollo as he is represented throughout the Graeco-Roman tradition.
Above all, the scene echoes Callimachus’ description of the god in the Hymn to
Apollo (32–46), with its emphasis on Apollo’s beautiful and youthful appearance
(“he is always beautiful and always young,” καὶ μὲν ἀεὶ καλὸς καὶ ἀεὶ νέος, 36),
including his fragrant hair (κόμαι, 38, cf. Cynthia’s capillos, Prop. 2.1.7; and
comis, 8). Propertius’ focus on Cynthia’s ars (10) also calls to mind the “skills”
of Callimachus’ divine aretalogy (τέχνῃ, 42), including Apollo’s singing and
playing the lyre (λύρη, 33; ἀοιδόν, 43; ἀοιδή, 44, cf. the lyra that Cynthia plays,
Prop. 2.1.9–10). Propertius probably also has in mind the passage that inspired
Callimachus, Homeric Hymn to Apollo 182–85:
εἶσι δὲ φορμίζων Λητου̃ς ἐρικυδέος υἱ ός
φόρμιγγι γλαφυρῇ πρὸς Πυθὼ πετρήεσσαν,
ἄμβροτα εἵματ’ ἔχων τεθυωμένα τοιο̃ δὲ φόρμιγξ
χρυσέου ὑπὸ πλήκτρου καναχὴν ἔχει ἱ μερόεσσαν.
The glorious son of Leto approaches, playing his hollow phorminx, toward rocky Pytho, wear-
ing divine, scented clothes. And his phorminx makes a lovely echo under the golden plectrum.
Apollo’s approach (εἶσι) is echoed in Propertius’ incedere (5), and as in both

Propertius and Callimachus, the focus is on beautiful clothing (εἵματα) and skill
at the strings (here the thrice-repeated phorminx). In Latin poetry, the combina-
tion of Apollo’s gorgeous appearance (especially hair and clothing) and his skill
at lyre-playing are also strongly marked features: the epiphanies of Apollo at
Tibullus 2.5 and Aeneid 4 are prime examples, and the author of the first of
the Elegies to Maecenas reapplies Propertius’ own phrase about Cynthia’s lyre-
21. Camps (1967, ad loc.) describes it as a “stately walk” and compares it to Prop. 2.2.6, where incedo is
used again in an explicitly divine comparison of Cynthia to Juno. Enk (1962, ad loc.), commenting on the use of
incedo at Prop. 2.2.6, says that the verb is usually used de iis qui gravitatem et dignitatem affectant (“of those
who assume stateliness and dignity”). Wiggers (1977, 335) picks up on the elevated register of incedo in 2.1 and
connects it to Propertius’ “idealization” of Cynthia.
22. Verg. Aen. 1.402: refulsit (Venus); 1.588: refulsit (Aeneas, compared explicitly to a god); 2.590: refulsit
(Venus). As Petridou (2016, 21) points out, “the most common hallmarks of divine presence, which are common
to almost all the forms of epiphany, are: beauty, fragrance, stature, and light or radiance.”
23. Delight: laeta, Verg. Aen. 1.503 (of Dido, compared to Diana); laetos . . . honores, 1.591 (of Aeneas,
made appear like a god). Pride: superbus, [Tib.] 3.8.22; 3.10.2 (of Apollo).
24. There are many examples in Greek; see esp. the detailed description of Aphrodite’s “shining clothes”
(εἵματα σιγαλόεντα) at Hymn. Hom. Ven. 84–90.

playing in 2.1 to Apollo himself: Actius ipse lyram plectro percussit eburno (51,
cf. Prop. 2.1.9: sive lyrae carmen digitis percussit eburnis).25
Second, and fittingly for the erotic context, is Venus. Particularly close in
terms of language is Venus’ epiphany to Aeneas at Aeneid 1.402–5:
Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,
ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem
spiravere; pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,
et vera incessu patuit dea.
She spoke and, turning away, glowed all over her rosy neck, and her ambrosial hair breathed
out a divine scent on her head; her clothing fell to the tips of her feet, and she showed herself
to be a true goddess by her approach.
The words highlighted in bold show details that Virgil’s epiphany of Venus
shares with Propertius: gleaming (refulsit, cf. Prop. fulgentem); hair (comae,
cf. comis); clothing (vestis, cf. veste); the movement of her approach (incessu,
cf. incedere). In both texts the line between human and divine is unclear: in Pro-
pertius, a mortal woman is described in terms appropriate for a goddess, while
in Virgil, Aeneas mistakes Venus for a human girl. Composed around the same
time as Propertius’ second book, and drawing on the same literary and religious
idioms, the Virgilian passage offers a contemporary parallel for representing Venus’
epiphany.26
While the language of Venus’ appearance is in many ways similar to that used
of Apollo, the goddess’ inherent sexuality adds further complexity to Proper-
tius’ epiphanic encounter with Cynthia. From her earliest mythological traditions,
Aphrodite was a figure who bridged human and divine realms because of the im-
manent possibility of her sexual union with mortals.27 In the Homeric Hymn to
Aphrodite, for example, there is a constant tension between her divine status and
her appearance to Anchises as an “unwed maiden” (παρθένῳ ἀδμήτῃ, 82), and
between the sensuous physicality of their sexual encounter and her transcendence
of the realm of human perception.
This fine metaphysical line is very much at play in Prop. 2.1, and contributes
to the elegy’s striking transition from Cynthia’s majestic approach to the rather
graphically physical bedroom struggles of line 13. As seen in the Homeric Hymn
to Aphrodite, Aphrodite herself could move from ineffable to tangibly sexual
at a moment’s notice. But the tension gains a particular frisson in Propertius be-
cause—at least as she has been presented in the elegies so far—Cynthia is a hu-
man woman. The similarities with Venus heighten her ability both to fully inhabit
and also transcend her mortal, female body.
Elsewhere in Latin poetry, this tendency of especially beautiful and desir-
able women to blur ontological boundaries is also expressed through epiphanic
language: Catullus had already begun to experiment with presenting Lesbia as
25. Miller 2009, 93. Miller sees this as a “correction” of Propertius 2.1, putting Cynthia’s lyre back into
Apollo’s hands. While this is no doubt true, I suspect the anonymous elegist also saw the already Apolline nature
of Propertius’ original Cynthia as a meaningful element of the borrowing.
26. Enk (1962, ad 2.2.6 [incedit]) notes the Virgilian parallel in connection to Cynthia’s stately appearance
in the next poem, and comments on the rough contemporaneity of the two passages’ composition.
27. On erotic epiphanies in the Greek world, see Petridou 2016, 229–50.

412 LAUREN CURTIS
a candida diva stepping over the threshold in an epiphanic arrival at 68.70–72,

and Ovid would later play further with the tension between Corinna’s epiphanic
grace and her sexy all-too-human characteristics.28 In Propertius, the realms of
mortal and immortal are joined also by a third element, cult images.
With all the gods, and with a particularly sexualized twist in the case of Venus/
Aphrodite, the tension in the moment of epiphany between divine transcendence
and the realm of human perception was mediated in the ancient world through
art objects and especially cult statues.29 As far back as the Homeric Hymn to
Aphrodite, Aphrodite goes to her temple at Paphos and decks herself out with
embellishments that are “wonderful to behold” (θαυ̃μα ἰ δέσθαι, 90). In this scene,
Aphrodite’s actions bring to mind the cult image that would embody the goddess
in her temple and make her manifest to her worshippers.30 In the case of Aphro-
dite, her statuary embodied her in a famously sexualized way, as documented
by the many stories about Praxiteles’ nude statue of her at Cnidos and the sexual
desire and excitement that it provoked. In the next section, I will draw out some
of the implications of Propertius’ decision to represent Cynthia in terms that in-
corporate the iconography of cult statues and their ability to contain and transmit
the wonder of divine presence. For now, it is enough to observe that Cynthia’s
“ivory fingers” (digitis . . . eburnis, 9) holding the lyre recall not simply the plastic
arts, as readers have often noticed, but more particularly, in conjunction with the
scene’s epiphanic discourse, the cult statues that bring humans into contact with
divine presence.31
EPIPHANY, ELEGY, AND THE POETICS OF THE BOOK

Propertius’ Cynthia, then, draws on a long and varied discourse in Graeco-
Roman literature and religious thought concerning how gods are made manifest
to mortals, and how humans of a special status—in particular, a beautiful, beloved
woman—might appear as if a god. It is now time to consider how Propertius trans-
forms and reinvents this discourse for his own poetic purposes—that is, to inves-
tigate the close relationship that Propertius posits between Cynthia’s epiphanic
appearance and the genre and form of elegy itself.
28. See Feeney 1992, 33–34, where he calls Lesbia’s arrival in Catullus 68 an “epiphany.” Edwards (1991, 68)
calls it a “theophany.” Lieberg (1962) offers a full-length treatment of Catullus’ presentation of Lesbia as an immor-
talized figure, although his attempt to distinguish what is “natural” from what is “literary” fails to understand Lesbia
as the product of Catullus’ poetic imagination. The candida diva of Catullus 68 would later inspire Ovid in present-
ing Corinna’s arrival as epiphanic at Amores 1.5.9 (ecce, Corinna venit! “behold, Corinna arrives!”) where, like Pro-
pertius, he merges the divine with the very human as Corinna offers him her body. On Corinna in this elegy, see
Kennedy 2008 and Salzman-Mitchell 2008; on Ovid’s reading of Catullus, see Hinds 1987, 7–11. As my reading
of Prop. 2.1 shows, Propertius’ epiphanic treatment of Cynthia may also provide a model for Ovid’s Corinna.
Heyworth (1994, 51–54) traces the influence of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo in another set of Latin love poems,
Catullus 61 and Propertius 3.10, where the allusion “[raises] the woman addressed to divine status” (p. 51). The ten-
dency to represent beautiful heroines as epiphanic goddesses is prevalent in Greek literature as well; see in particular
Cioffi 2013 on the Greek novel.
29. On the origins of Greek cult images and their role in epiphany, see Burkert 1997.
30. Thauma is a typical reaction both to viewing art and seeing the gods, a conceptual link that underscores
how beholding amazingly lifelike statues can be akin to witnessing an epiphany (see Neer 2010, 57–69; Tanner
2006, 52 and more broadly 40–55 on the ritual and performative experience of viewing cult statues).
31. Again, the Greek novels offer a parallel for the permeable boundary between mortal woman, goddess,
and cult statue. In Chariton, the heroine Callirhoe is mistaken for a statue of Aphrodite (see Zeitlin 2003; Cioffi
2013, 8–13).

In Propertius, the representation of Cynthia in divine terms is part of a wider

trend running through his corpus of mythologizing Cynthia. Earlier scholars
have explained this tendency as a hyperbolic way for Propertius to express his
admiration for Cynthia by elevating her ontological status.32 However, since the
work of Maria Wyke and others on Cynthia’s embodiment of Propertian poetics,
her divine status takes on a deeper meaning, especially at the opening of Book 2.
Wyke has argued that in this book Cynthia undergoes a transformation: in the
Monobiblos, the tendency was toward greater realism; in the second book, how-
ever, there is a complex interplay between such realism and a Cynthia unmoored
from biographical details. She begins to be located in a less well-defined land-
scape, where she embodies poetics as a scripta puella.33
A comparison between the opening scenes of Propertius 1.1 and 2.1 shows this
transformation in terms of Cynthia’s divine associations. In 1.1, Cynthia’s name
began the collection (Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis). The line con-
tains a programmatic statement about the beginning not just of an affair but of
a poetry book, but it is grounded in specific “biographical” language and details
about their relationship: for instance, Propertius has been governed by furor for a
whole year (7).34 Comparable in its programmatic nature is the opening of 2.1,
where Cynthia is explicitly introduced as a poetic cypher and the source of his
poetry (quaeritis unde mihi totiens scribantur amores, 1). As we have seen, her
appearance draws on a manifold tradition of divine epiphanies, especially those
of Venus and Apollo. Here, biographical realism is less prominent than a meta-
poetic association of Cynthia and her namesake god. Her name, as the reader
has known from the opening of Book 1, is the feminine form of Apollo’s epithet
Cynthius. Cynthia’s instantiation of this divine name, which was introduced into
Greek by Hellenistic poets including Callimachus and into Latin by Virgil, allows
her to join the ranks of the several mistresses in Roman poetry to be given names
that emphasize their Apolline identity.35 In the second poem of Book 1, Cynthia’s
Apolline name is developed into a richer description of Apollo’s gift of his songs
to her (Phoebus sua carmina donet, 1.2.27). At the beginning of the next book,
Cynthia becomes an instantiation of Apollo and, as it were, fully activates the di-
vine potential of her name. At the same time, as we have seen, she also embodies
traits of Venus. Thus, the opening of Book 2 suggests a more richly mythologized
way of marking a new poetic beginning through the awe-inspired vision of Cyn-
thia’s physical form.
32. So Boyancé 1956, 172–93 on Cynthia’s “idealisation mythique” and Lilja 1978, 186–92 on the “deifi-
cation” of women, including Cynthia, in love elegy. Hubbard (1974, 33–35) is more fine-grained, drawing at-
tention to elegies such as 1.17, in which the mistress’ angry actions and control of the natural world show her
“startling power” and not just her idealization.
33. Wyke 2002, 46–77, a revised version of Wyke 1987. As McNamee (1993) has shown, Book 2 makes
explicit a discourse of Callimachean poetics surrounding Cynthia that was already present in the Monobiblos.
34. The realistic details are of course manufactured and stylized, since the poem’s opening is a rewriting of
an epigram of Meleager (Anth. Pal. 12.101).
35. Callimachus: Aet. frag. 67.6 and frag. 114.8 Pfeiffer; Hymn 4.9–10. Posidippus: Suppl. Hell. 705.9. On
Cynthius as a Hellenistic epithet, see Clausen 1976 and 1977; Harder 2012, 2: 553–54. On the literary valences
of Cynthia’s name, brought into Latin poetry by Virgil and probably also Gallus, see Randall 1979, 31–33; Wyke
2002, 27–28; Miller 2004, 64–66; Keith 2008, 92–93. As Boyancé (1956, 172–75) and Miller (2009, 78) ob-
serve, Varro’s Leucadia, Gallus’ Lycoris, Tibullus’ Delia, and Propertius’ Cynthia all have Apolline names.

414 LAUREN CURTIS
In elegy 2.1, Cynthia’s appearance soon blends into a recusatio addressed to

Maecenas, which further shows the programmatic stakes of epiphany in this
opening poem. The recusatio is framed in terms of genre preference, rejecting
the mythological and historical battles of epic for “Callimachus with his narrow
breast” (angusto pectore Callimachus, 40). The poem therefore associates itself
with Callimachean elegy, and moreover claims to be developing Callimachus’
aesthetic into the realm of love poetry and its “slender bed” (angusto . . . lecto,
45). In the rest of this section, I consider the relationship between Propertius’ ele-
giac form and genre and his representation of epiphany. By reimagining how
Greek elegiac poetry incorporates visions of the divine, the programmatic stakes
of this opening poem are heightened and centered around Cynthia’s physical form.
My argument further develops the duality of Cynthia’s divinity that I detected ear-
lier. I look first at Greek epigram, in which Cynthia’s eroticized Venus-like side is
in play; I then turn to Callimachus’ narrative elegy, where Apollo is central.
Greek epigram, with its own earlier blending of erotic subject matter and ele-
giac poetics, is a pervasive influence in Propertius’ elegies.36 Here, I am particu-
larly interested in a group of ekphrastic Hellenistic epigrams that apply the erotic
gaze to cult statues of Aphrodite and thereby create an epiphanic encounter be-
tween human and divine. As we have seen, ancient literature since the Homeric
Hymn to Aphrodite explored the nature and bounds of erotic epiphany. But Hel-
lenistic epigram takes the trope to another level, where it becomes intertwined
with the genre’s interest in the possibilities and limits of representation, and the
role of the artistic medium—whether the plastic arts or the text of the poem it-
self—in making the divine present. It is this self-reflective aspect of the elegiac
text that Propertius develops further at the beginning of Book 2.
In the Palatine Anthology, thirteen epigrams about the Cnidian statue of Aph-
rodite express, in variations on a theme, the amazing lifelikeness of Praxiteles’
statue as viewed by mortals, by other gods, and even by Aphrodite herself.37 Rep-
resentative of the group is Anth. Pal. 16.159:
Τίς λίθον ἐψύχωσε; τίς ἐν χθονὶ Κύπριν ἐσειδ̃ εν;
ἵμερον ἐν πέτρῃ τίς τόσον εἰ ργάσατο;
Πραξιτέλους χειρω̃ν ὅδε που πόνος, ἢ τάχ᾿ Ὄλυμπος
χηρεύει, Παφίης ἐς Κνίδον ἐρχομένης.
Who gave life to stone? Who saw the Cyprian on earth? Who wrought such desire in stone?
This is surely the work of Praxiteles’ hands, or else perhaps Olympus is bereft, since the
Paphian goddess has gone to Cnidus.
In her book on epiphany and representation in Greek literature and art, Ver-
ity Platt discusses these epigrams’ strategies for representing the divine.38 She
argues that as Hellenistic literature takes up as a central theme the relationship
between the technology of writing and the ephemeral and immediate nature of
36. On Propertius and Greek epigram, see Giangrande 1974; Fedeli 1980; Keith 2008, 45–51.
37. Anth. Pal. 16.159–70. On the Cnidian Aphrodite, the role of the hetaera Phryne as its model, and their
representation in this set of epigrams, see Morales 2011. On viewing the Cnidia in these epigrams and partic-
ularly in the Lucianic Erotes, see Haynes 2013.
38. Platt 2011, 180–211.

the processes of ritual and performance, these epigrams weigh into the debate
by presenting epiphanic experience as both conjured and necessarily mediated by
the text itself. As Platt argues, the epigrams play on the tension between the gen-
re’s original function as inscriptions on statue bases, and their decontextualized
status as literary texts collected in a poetry book. The epigram represents through
poetic language an artistic object to which it is not attached. As Platt puts it:
While the image must make present a divinity that defies representation, the epigram must con-
jure up in verbal form an image that cannot be seen. The constraints of materiality, in this sense,
are parallel to the constraints of language. Most importantly, the particularly self-reflexive na-
ture of the Hellenistic epigram, as a literary device that presents the poet “seeing himself see-
ing,” meant that ekphrastic epigrams about sacred images did not just negotiate the relationship
between epiphany and representation, but also drew attention to the poet’s reflection upon this
very process.39
Platt’s reading helps shed light on Anth. Pal. 16.159. On the one hand, these
lines express the extreme lifelikeness of Praxiteles’ statue by blurring the distinction
between the statue and Aphrodite herself. Seeing the statue, the epigram implies,
is akin to having a direct epiphanic encounter with the goddess.40 At the same time,
the epigram brings to the fore the multiple ways in which Aphrodite’s presence
is mediated: by the divine vision of the sculptor (note the epiphanic language of
τίς . . . ἐσειδ̃ εν, “who saw?”); by the medium in which he interprets his vision as
a work of art (λίθον, ἐν πέτρῃ); and by the artistic language of the poem which
conjures both the work of art and, by extension, the divine presence of the goddess
before the reader’s eyes (the words εἰ ργάσατο and πόνος, which refer to Praxit-
eles, remind the reader of the equally elaborate τέχνη of the epigram itself ). The
poem itself claims to create the experience of epiphany, while simultaneously re-
vealing the complexities of mediating such an encounter in art.41
Propertius’ debt to these Hellenistic epigrams is subtle. He does not allude to
them on a verbal level. Rather, the way in which the epigrams draw attention to
their own representational strategies as literary texts—by putting them in dialogue
with the τέχνη of the plastic arts—is highly suggestive of Propertius’ own mode of
thought at the opening of 2.1. As we have seen, Propertius presents Cynthia’s
arrival as a spontaneous moment of divine appearance. The effect is much more
immediate than in the Hellenistic epigram, as the present tenses and first-person
voice model for the reader the experience of witnessing the epiphany. And yet
when the reader is asked to gaze upon her desirable body, its similarity to a statue
is apparent (digitis . . . eburnis, 9). As in Hellenistic epigram, epiphany takes the
39. Platt 2011, 183. Platt’s quotation is from Goldhill 1994, 205.
40. Other epigrams in the series employ a similar idea, such as Anth. Pal. 16.161: οὔτε σε Πραξιτέλης
τεχνάσατο, οὔθ᾿ ὁ σίδαρος· / ἀλλ᾿ οὕτως ἔστης, ὥς ποτε κρινομένη (“Neither Praxiteles wrought you, nor did the
iron. But you stand just as you did once, when you were judged”). The reader is invited to take on the persona of
Paris and see the goddess for himself. This kind of self-conscious discourse is not confined to texts. See Marconi
2011 on how classical Greek vase painting visually represents the likeness between gods and cult statues by showing
gods watching their statues being finished by human craftsmen.
41. Some of the other epigrams go further and imagine the reader’s epiphanic experience of the statue, e.g., Anth.
Pal. 16.167: φάσεις, τὰν μὲν Κύπριν ἀνὰ κραναὰν Κνίδον ἀθρω̃ν, / ἅδε που ὡς φλέξει καὶ λίθος εὖσα λίθον (“You
will say, when you gaze upon the Cyprian in rocky Cnidus, that, although stone, she will set fire even to stone”);
16.169: Ἀφρογενου̃ς Παφίης ζάθεον περιδέρκεο κάλλος, / καὶ λέξεις· αἰ νω̃ τὸν Φρύγα τη̃ς κρίσεως (“Gaze all over
the beauty of the foam-born Paphian, and you will say, ‘I praise the Phrygian for his judgment’ ”).

416 LAUREN CURTIS
poet up to the limits of representation. Suddenly, we are invited to gaze not just
upon the image of Cynthia, but also upon the levels of representation that call her
into being. Are we looking at a goddess? A representation of a goddess in stat-
uary? A girl who looks like a statue of a goddess? How many degrees of repre-
sentation are involved here? In other words, what is the relationship between
Cynthia, the text, and the reader?
The Propertian poem’s self-consciousness about its strategies for representing
Cynthia is tied to a constant and pressing insistence on its status as written poetry
(scribantur, 1; liber, 2; volumen, 6) even as it purports to present Cynthia in an
unmediated way. The Hellenistic epigrams already drew attention to their act of
representing divine presence through the space of the page and the written word;
now, Propertius applies this tradition to his lover and poetic subject Cynthia,
drawing attention at the start of the collection to the ways in which her body will
mediate questions of literary representation.42 Indeed, when the book arrives
upon the poet’s lips (unde meus veniat mollis in ora liber, 2) its appearance
merges with the epiphany of Cynthia herself (sive illam . . . incedere cerno, 5).
Like these earlier Hellenistic epigrams, Propertius puts the religious experience
of epiphany at the center of its self-definitional discourse.
A second important elegiac background to Prop. 2.1 is Callimachus’ Aetia
prologue, which Propertius explicitly signaled when referring to Callimachus’
“slender Muse” (angusto pectore Callimachus, 40). As the Augustan poets were
well aware, in the Aetia prologue Apollo appeared to the poet in an epiphany
while he was setting his writing tablet on his knee, and gave him the metaphor-
ical poetic advice to keep the Muse slender and to drive his cart over roads nar-
row and untrodden (frag. 1. 22–28 Pfeiffer). The moment was cast and recast in
Latin poetry, perhaps most importantly by Virgil at the beginning of Eclogue 6,
where Apollo—transformed from Callimachus’ Lycian to the Cynthian god (Cyn-
thius, 3)—tweaked his ear and told him to “sing a slender song” (deductum dicere
carmen, 5).
The Aetia prologue has a clear presence in Propertius’ epiphany of Cynthia,
yet the relationship is complicated, as Propertius both alludes to and apparently
rejects the prologue as a model. An expectation of divine inspiration is set up in
the opening couplet (quaeritis, unde mihi totiens scribantur amores, / unde meus
veniat mollis in ora liber, 1–2) but it is immediately undercut in the next lines:
non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo (3). The pairing of Calliope and
Apollo recalls the Aetia prologue’s association of the god of poetry and his Muse
(Apollo tells Callimachus to keep his Muse slender) and also Callimachus’ jux-
taposition of the prologue with the “Dream,” where the Muses appear to him as
they did to Hesiod (frag. 2 Pfeiffer). Neither of Callimachus’ divine epiphanic
experiences, it seems, does Propertius claim for himself. Instead, in language
highly redolent of Apollo’s traditional guise (and, although Cynthia is not
named, surely playing on Virgil’s Callimachean encounter with Cynthian Apollo
in Eclogue 6), Cynthia takes on the epiphanic role. It is the girl, not the god, who
42. Cf. Feeney 1998, 107 on Catullus’ Lesbia: “The beloved, then, is on the margin between all kinds of expe-
rience—actual and fantastic, mundane and romantic, human and divine. Above all, she is on the edge of represent-
ability. That is the way in which she is most like a god.”

inspires Propertius’ poetry (ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit, 4). Epiphany is in-
volved in Propertius’ rearticulation of his poetic inspiration, transferring it from
Apollo to his Apolline woman.
There is a further sense in which Propertius reacts against and transforms Cal-
limachus’ epiphany of Apollo, which brings us back to questions of elegiac
form, genre, and the materiality of the text. The Aetia prologue, which opened
Callimachus’ four books of narrative elegy, was especially concerned with po-
etic beginnings. Callimachus’ concern is not just with mapping out the textual
space of the page as a place for divine epiphany, as did the Hellenistic epigrams,
but also the narrative space of the poetry book. Since the opening of Hesiod’s
Theogony, epiphany acted in Greek literature as a means of understanding divine
inspiration at the key moment of beginning a new work.43 But Callimachus, al-
ways concerned with his book as a material object, draws attention to the moment
of composition in a particularly text-centered way. His Apollo appears while he is
in the process of writing for the first time on his tablets (ὅτ⌋ε πρ⌊ώ⌋τιστον ἐμοις̃
ἐπὶ δέλτον ἔθηκα / γούνασι⌋ν, frag. 1.21–22). The moment refers self-reflexively
to the Aetia prologue’s status as the opening of a new work, and the divine au-
thority with which the epiphanic moment imbues the poem as, unrolling in the
reader’s own hands, it begins.
Propertius’ epiphany of Cynthia in 2.1 recalls and takes further this idea of
epiphany inaugurating a new elegiac book.44 As we have already seen, the writ-
ten form and textual space of the book-roll are emphasized from the beginning
(scribantur, 1; liber, 2; volumen, 6), and are said to literally result from Cynthia’s
physical presence. When the epiphany is transferred from Apollo to Cynthia her-
self, her epiphanic form mirrors and indeed enacts the physical moment of the
new book’s opening. Her “approach” as a divine figure (incedere) is what meta-
phorically marks the book’s beginning, as her moving body begins to represent
the ingressive poetics of the unrolling book in the reader’s hand.45
Such ingressive language is echoed in the next poem of the book, 2.2.6 (in-
cedit). Together, these moments position Cynthia’s ongoing arrival as a metapo-
etic act of beginning the book afresh. Indeed, the metaphor was already established
at the opening of the Monobiblos, when Cynthia was said to “proceed” ( proce-
dere) at 1.2.1. Given the frequent symbolic association between the anatomical
foot and the metrical foot of ancient verse, Cynthia’s approaching movement
43. On epiphany and poetic inspiration, see Petridou 2016, 195–228.

44. My argument here has much in common with recent approaches to Roman poetry that consider the mate-
riality of the book-roll as central to the creation of meaning within the collection. See Butler 2011, and on individual
authors Phillips 2011 (Propertius’ Monobiblos), Farrell 2009, and Feeney 2012 (both on Catullus). The materiality of
the book was, of course, already a central concern of Hellenistic poetics. For an overview, see Gutzwiller 2007, 43–
49. Barchiesi (2005b) discusses the influence of this Hellenistic poetics at Rome.
45. This image of Latin elegy seems to have developed out of a Greek tendency to personify narrative as a run-
ning figure. The metaphor is found at Eur. Ion 529 (a “running story,” τρέχων ὁ μυ̃θος), and then becomes gendered
as female at Callim. Aet. frag. 75.76–77 (the story of Acontius and Cydippe “ran” toward Callimachus’ Muse). It is
also connected to the metaphor, in Hellenistic epigram, of reading as a walk or journey through the imagined land-
scape of the epigram book (on which see Höschele 2007). In Propertius it is Cynthia, not the reader, who strides
through the book. Ovid will take the identification of elegiac verse and moving Muse to its furthest degree when
Am. 3.1 begins with the arrival of Elegia, a female figure whose limping gait points to her poetic identity ( pes illi
longior alter erat, 8). In fact, Am. 3.1 rewrites many of the features I have identified in Prop. 2.1: Ovid’s third elegiac
book opens with a pair of generic personifications whose appearance to Ovid is both erotic and epiphanic, and whose
appearance represents Ovid’s choice to begin a book of elegy yet again.

418 LAUREN CURTIS
demonstrates the beginning not just of a new book, but in particular a new book
of poetry in elegiac meter. Again, Callimachus is a specific site of allusion: his
Hymn to Apollo closes with a famously programmatic scene in which Apollo
kicks Envy with his foot and advocates a set of poetic principles by which Cal-
limachus should write (Hymn 3.107–12).
Thus, in a certain sense, the opening of Propertius’ new book is staged as an
epiphanic encounter between Cynthia and the reader. The act of reading, Proper-
tius suggests as the book unrolls, can be a transcendent experience akin to epiph-
any. The textual form of the book can, somewhat magically, contain and even
perform the evanescent and sensuous experience of divine presence. Moreover,
the reader’s vision is made possible by the experience of Propertius himself,
which allows for the creation of an intimate relationship between author and
reader. It is important to remember that the first word of the elegy is an address
to an anonymous plurality: quaeritis (“you ask”), as the poem sets itself up as a
dialogue with its readers.46 When the epiphany comes, Propertius’ new book
shares his own experience with the reader to make it appear afresh; we might
recall Horace Odes 2.19, in which Horace recounts his own epiphanic experi-
ence of Bacchus to a waiting public. As in Hellenistic elegy, but with a particular
twist that comes from recounting the appearance not of a god but of his own
scripta puella, Propertius collapses the thauma of the epiphanic moment with
the experience of encountering the text itself.
EPIPHANY IN THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO: PROPERTIUS 2.31 AND 2.32

Cynthia’s epiphany in 2.1 articulates the programmatic opening of Propertius’
second book, and its language continues to find echoes as the book’s opening
sequence continues. At the beginning of 2.2, Cynthia’s appearance and walk is
explicitly compared to that of Juno and Athena, and at 2.3.25 she is the beneficiary
of caelestia munera (“heavenly gifts”). Such echoes carry the book’s opening as-
sociation of divine presence and erotic desire further into Book 2. Somewhat
paradoxically, in a series of elegies to which I now turn, epiphany then reappears
as a motif toward the book’s end. Aspects of the epiphanic Cynthia in Prop. 2.1
are echoed in 2.31–32 (Propertius visits the temple of Apollo) and 2.34 (he sit-
uates his work in relation to poetic tradition). In these poems, the epiphanic lan-
guage that was introduced by the book’s opening vision of Cynthia is associated
not with arrival and poetic beginnings, but with the book’s closural strategies.47
In 2.31, these strategies center on the idea of Cynthia’s absence. The scenario
of the elegy is an ekphrasis of Augustus’ temple of Apollo, newly opened on the
46. Wiggers (1977, 334) notes how unusual it is that Propertius does not name his interlocutors here, and
argues that the effect of the ambiguity is to “make the reader question his own role in the poem . . . The all-
inclusive invocation of II.1.1 draws him into the poem as an active participant.”
47. The argument in this section therefore implies a reading of Propertius 2 as a single poetry book. While such a
long book used to be regarded as unlikely, Tarrant’s (2006, 55–57) suggestion that the book’s excessive length could
be a provocative literary gesture has sparked something of a reexamination, especially in light of programmatic ech-
oes between the opening and closing poems. Keith (2008, 181 n. 138) “subscribe[s] to the view that book 2 is a single
collection, with programmatic opening and closing poems (2.1, 34), as well as a sequence of programmatic poems
(2.10–13) that function as an off-centre ‘proem in the middle.’ ” Those unpersuaded by the “single book” argument
may instead take my observations in support of a weaker structural argument, namely that the epiphanic arc that I
detect runs across multiple Propertian books, programmatically punctuated by the poems under discussion.

Palatine in 28 BCE.48 From its first words, the poem encourages the reader to
recall the opening of Book 2 and its representation of divine presence, only to
render more unstable the relationship between Cynthia, the poet, and his Apolline
poetics. The poem’s opening question, quaeris cur veniam tibi tardior? (“Do you
ask why I come to you somewhat late?” 2.31.1) recalls the first lines of 2.1:
quaeritis unde mihi totiens scribantur amores, / unde meus veniat mollis in ora
liber (“You ask from where so many loves are written by me, and from where
my tender book comes to my lips,” 2.1.1–2). Like quaeritis in 2.1, the verb quaeris
(now in the singular) sets up a dynamic whereby the Propertian narrator imagines
the addressee asking for an account or reason.
In both Prop. 2.1 and 2.31 the verb quaero is in dialogue with the verb venio.
Both poems initiate a poetics of movement that is intimately bound up with the
divine, but the subject of that movement and its relationship with the poem’s rep-
resentation of divine presence are quite different. In 2.1, the addressee was imag-
ined to ask about Propertius’ inspiration, which was expressed as an epiphanic
materialization of both elegiac woman and elegiac book (unde veniat . . .). In
2.31, by contrast, the addressee asks about the movement of the poet himself
(cur veniam . . .). But this appearance is no epiphany; rather, Propertius excuses
his absence from his addressee by explaining his presence somewhere else—the
temple of Apollo.
The epiphany of Cynthia in 2.1 is thus recalled in order to represent a very
different divine experience, Propertius’ visit to Apollo’s temple. With this trans-
formation, Propertius signals a shift from the erotic world of 2.1, where Cynthia
was presented in the intimate space of the bedroom in a form that hovered be-
tween that of girl, goddess, and statue. Now, Propertius presents himself in Ro-
man ritual space, immersed in witnessing public religious art as he views an
actual cult statue of Apollo. In this domain, Cynthia has no place and is conspic-
uous by her absence.
As Propertius enters the temple, the ekphrasis of the sanctuary’s multiple stat-
ues is framed as a kind of epiphany, which further develops the sense that Poem
2.1 is being rewritten. In an extraordinary act of hyperbole, the statue of Apollo
appears to be even more beautiful than the god himself: hic equidem Phoebo
visus mihi pulchrior ipso (5). In these lines, Propertius makes specific reference
to an idea that was also touched upon in 2.1: the extreme lifelikeness of statues
that can, thanks to the extraordinary mimetic ability of the artistic work, surpass
mortal reality and initiate, in a cult setting, the experience of divine epiphany.
This is suggested by Propertius’ use of the participle visus, which hovers be-
tween two different but related senses: the statue both seems more beautiful than
the god himself, and also makes the god appear to Propertius in his role as re-
ligious viewer.49
48. This poem and its companion, 2.32, have attracted much recent attention from scholars interested in its
description of viewing art within the text. See esp. Hubbard 1984; Laird 1996, 83–86; Barchiesi 2005a; Bow-
ditch 2009; Scioli 2015, 145– 47.
49. On the participle visus used to express a god’s epiphany in Latin poetry (especially Virgil) and Roman re-
ligious texts, see above, n. 18. Barchiesi (2005a, 284) says that Propertius presents the statues of Apollo in the temple
“almost like two distinct epiphanies.” Scioli (2015, 145– 48) connects the description of the statues to Propertius’

420 LAUREN CURTIS
Details of the cult statue’s appearance further recall Cynthia’s epiphany in 2.1.
Apollo holds his lyre and sings just as Cynthia did in 2.1 (tacita . . . lyra, 2.31.6,
cf. lyrae, 2.1.9; carmina, 2.31.16, cf. carmen, 2.1.9); there is emphasis on the
beautiful stone texture of his skin (marmoreus, 2.31.5; cf. eburnis, 2.1.9); and
the god’s majestic clothing (veste, 2.31.15) recalls Cynthia’s Coan garment
(Coa veste, 2.1.6).50 With these linguistic markers, Elegy 2.31 reorients Cyn-
thia’s earlier epiphany, so that contemplation of the Apolline girl is replaced
by the sight and experience of Apollo himself. I say “replaced,” because I read
the distancing of Cynthia in 2.31 as deliberately emphatic. In echoing the open-
ing of 2.1, Propertius now recalls that poem’s conflation of elegiac woman and
divine—especially Apolline—presence in order to self-consciously disassociate
those things as the book reaches its conclusion.
Such a reading takes its cue from the opening setup of Prop. 2.31. The imag-
ined interlocutor who “asks” Propertius why he is late (quaeris, 2.31.1) is not
named; but given the ongoing erotic narrative of Propertius’ elegies, in which
assignations between the lovers take place all over the city of Rome, Cynthia
is the most likely candidate.51 If so, being with Apollo involves delaying his en-
counter with Cynthia, and so the presence of Apolline god and Apolline woman
has become mutually exclusive. As if to reinforce this point, Cynthia is an absent
presence inside the temple. At lines 15–16, the cult statue of Apollo is described
as being beside his mother and sister (sororem, 15).52 Apollo’s sister Diana, was
also known by the cult title “Cynthia.”53 Apollo’s divine female twin is inside
the temple, which only serves to make the absence of his human namesake, Pro-
pertius’ girlfriend, all the more visible.
Cynthia’s absence becomes even more marked if we take the lines that follow
closely with the temple ekphrasis of 2.31.54 The narrator changes his gaze from
the temple to Cynthia herself: hoc utinam spatiere loco, quodcumque vacabis, /
Cynthia! (“If only you would promenade in this place, Cynthia, whenever you
have leisure!”). The unnamed second-person address with which 2.31 began be-
comes a more pointedly directed address to the girlfriend herself. These lines
bear a close relationship with the ekphrasis of 2.31 since in them the poet wishes
for Cynthia to inhabit the space of the temple (spatiere picks up on the poem’s
opening reference to the temple portico’s “space” [spatium] in line 3).
description of his dream-vision of Apollo in 3.3: both scenes purport to “[bring] the god to life” and allow the god to
“[transcend] the usual boundaries, whether material or spatial, that prohibit interaction” (p. 147).
50. The description of Apollo citharoedus also draws on Callim. Hymn 2.32–46 (Heyworth 1994, 57–58), a
passage which, as I argued above, the description of the lyre-playing Cynthia at Prop. 2.1 earlier recalled.
51. Assumed by Barchiesi (2005a, 284) and considered likely by Fedeli (2005, 874). The adjective tardus is
often an erotically charged word in Propertius, characterizing the “slow” lover in contrast to the “swift” (velox)
girl. See Gardner 2011; 2013, 68–72.
52. The statues of the Danaids, called a “womanly crowd” ( femina turba, 6), also hints at a feminine pres-
ence inside the temple complex, making Cynthia’s absence even more pronounced.
53. Propertius does not use this cult title for Diana, but among the Augustan poets it is used as an epithet for Diana
once by Horace (Carm. 3.28.12) and multiple times by Ovid (Her. 18.74; Met. 2.465, 7.755, 15.537; Fast. 2.91, 2.159).
On one of these occasions, Fast. 2.91, Ovid seems to pun on Cynthia as both epithet of the goddess Diana and the
name of Propertius’ mistress (see Newlands 1995, 182–83; Robinson 2011, 121–22).
54. While the manuscripts present 2.31 and 2.32 as one continuous poem, modern editors and commentators
(e.g., Butler and Barber 1933; Barber 1960; Enk 1962; Camps 1967; Fedeli 2005) tend to posit a poem break
after 2.31.16. I follow Bowditch (2009) as reading 2.32 as a companion piece that follows closely from 2.31 and
further develops its central theme of visuality.

The desperation of the poet’s plea for Cynthia to appear in the next poem,
2.32, however, shows how futile it is. The rest of this elegy imagines her spend-
ing her free time in a range of other places, both secular and sacred (Aricia,
Praeneste, Tibur, and Lanuvium). Propertius complains that in making these
journeys, “you flee our eyes” (lumina nostra fugis, 18) only to fall into the de-
sirous gaze of others ( facti lumina crimen habent, “the eyes bear guilt for the
deed [i.e., of looking],” 2). Here the theme of vision recurs, in a very different
key. Cynthia is subjected to the gaze of others, but crucially not that of Propertius
himself, and certainly not within the Apolline space that Propertius wishes her to
inhabit. There are echoes of Cynthia’s approach in 2.1 (incedere, 2.1.5), but now
her poetics of movement is very different. In 2.1, the movement was inward and
private, toward the intimate space of Propertius’ bed. Now, Cynthia threatens to
flee outward, into the arms of other men.
In the temple of Apollo, then, the presence of the god is described in terms
very like the apparition of Cynthia at the beginning of the book. Yet the poet re-
fuses to locate his Apolline girl there at all. Instead Propertius, the eager ritual
viewer, feasts his eyes on a statue of the god himself. The arc of Book 2 thus
shows Propertius’ relationship with Apollo’s divine presence undergoing a trans-
formation, as viewing Cynthia is replaced by seeing a representation of the god
himself. Elegy 2.31 apparently generates a movement from the poetics of divine
metaphor to divine reality, as Propertius begins to lay bare the artifice of his love
poetry and its premise—that the girl can be a substitute for the god. As the book
closes, the poet wishes to reach out and touch the real thing.
But what is the “real thing” in the context of a book that thematizes so deeply,
as we have seen, the mediating nature of poetry?55 As in Propertius 2.1 and the
Hellenistic epigrams discussed above, the focus in Apollo’s temple is very much
on the arts of representation. The medium of the temple and its statues are front
and center (aurea, 1; marmoreus, 6), as is their status as crafted objects (artificis,
8).56 Moreover, Propertius does not see Apollo directly, but rather a statue that
is “more beautiful” ( pulchrior, 5) than the god himself. Such an art object might
be aesthetically astounding, but it creates an effect of distance rather than close
likeness between the god and his agalma, as does the fact that Apollo’s lyre is
“silent” (tacita . . . lyra, 6) as the god “gapes” (hiare, 6) in an incomplete mimetic
representation of divine song. In 2.31, Propertius is left seeking but not quite find-
ing an unmediated encounter with the divine.
A face-to-face encounter with either Cynthia or Apollo, then, is somewhat
paradoxically deferred inside the god’s own temple. As Book 2 comes to a con-
clusion and briefly contemplates an elegiac world without Cynthia, Propertius
once again draws attention both to his book’s potent capacity for summoning
and commemorating divine presence and, through the emphasis on the temple’s
strategies of visual representation, to the layers of mediation involved in its epi-
phanic poetics. The contrast between Apollo and Cynthia sharpens the effect.
The silent, gaping statue of Apollo may, in the end, make the reader long for
the (apparently) living, breathing presence of Cynthia, who returns in a final flurry
55. I appreciate the journal’s Reader A pressing me on this question.
56. Cf. Scioli 2015, 145–47 on how “the narrator reveals his awareness of the mechanism at work for mak-
ing the image seem lifelike” (p. 147).

422 LAUREN CURTIS
of poems about love, jealousy, and sex before the book’s end (2.32, 2.33A,
2.33B). Propertius 2.31 provides the poet with his closest glimpse of Apollo be-
fore the opening sequence of Book 3. But within the parameters of his elegiac
world it may, in fact, be Cynthia who comes closest to embodying the immediacy,
excitement, and fear of divine epiphany.
EPIPHANY AND CLOSURE: PROPERTIUS 2.34

The figures of Apollo and Cynthia appear together for a final time in the book’s
closing poem, 2.34, where the closely allied strands of the erotic and self-reflexive
poetics of the elegiac book are brought together in one last expression of divine
manifestation. This long and textually vexed poem addressed to Lynceus begins
by lamenting the vagaries and complications of the elegiac life of love. By the
end, Propertius has set his work within the history of Latin poetry, employing
on the one hand Virgil’s career as a foil and, on the other, the roll call of Roman
erotic poetry as a canon which, in the final lines, Propertius and Cynthia join. The
elegy does not contain a scene marked as epiphanic, such as that of Cynthia in 2.1
or of Apollo in 2.31. But it does present a series of connected moments centered
on Apollo as viewed through a range of literary models that culminate in Proper-
tius’ own work, where Cynthia’s and Apollo’s identities merge into each other.
This elegy, constantly engaging with Cynthia’s appearance in 2.1 and with the
epiphanic themes which opened the book, lays open the literary history behind
the book’s association of Cynthia and Apollo. As it does so, it looks forward
to the book’s future readership. In this elegy, unlike in 2.31–32, ritual vision is
not used to position Cynthia within the physical landscape of Rome. Rather, it
locates her within the literary landscape of the poetic canon.
Elegy 2.34 recalls 2.1 in many ways, especially its return to the mode of re-
cusatio and its associated disavowal of mythological, epic material.57 In this
context, the reader is primed to revisit the epiphany of Cynthia that, as I argued
earlier, framed the book’s beginning as a divine experience. This moment is
transformed in an interrelated series of references in the programmatic core of
2.34, where divine inspiration is located in the experience of Lynceus, the poem’s
addressee; Virgil, Propertius’ literary foil; and Propertius himself.
Propertius first pardons Lynceus for stealing his girl because he too now
knows what it is to love. This idea is then restated in terms of poetic affiliation:
Lynceus, once he has claimed the persona of elegiac lover, has no use for phil-
osophical writings, but, instead, for the Muses of Philitas and “the Dream of Cal-
limachus, not overblown” (non inflati somnia Callimachi, 32). The structural
play here is very pointed. At the beginning of Callimachus’ Aetia, the “Dream”
positioned Callimachus’ own poetic ambitions in relation to Hesiod’s epiphany
of the Muses, one of the very earliest Greek expressions of literary inspiration. In
Propertius’ hands, the embedded reference to Callimachus’ opening epiphany is
transferred to the end of his book, but also comes at what we are to imagine is the
beginning of Lynceus’ projected elegiac career. While epiphany is tied to mo-
57. On echoes of the language and themes of Prop. 2.1 in 2.34, see Butler and Barber 1933, 255 (“the book ends as
it began with a refusal to tread the path of Epic”); Alfonsi 1943– 44, 462–63; Vessey 1969–70, 64; Stahl 1985, 172–73;
Newman 1997, 220; Lowrie 2009, 185: “the poem matches 2.1 in offering a display piece of poetic self-definition.”

ments of poetic opening throughout the Greek tradition from Hesiod to Callim-
achus (and, as I argued earlier, at the beginning of Propertius’ second book), the
idea of epiphany is appropriated in this poem for Propertius’ poetics of closure,
but in quite a complicated way.
After further describing the nature of Lynceus’ verse, Propertius returns to
himself as an example of both elegiac poet and elegiac lover (“look at me,” aspice
me, 55).58 The experience of divine presence is now a marker of his own poetic
identity (59–60):
me iuvat hesternis positum languere corollis,
quem tetigit iactu certus ad ossa deus.
It delights me to lie idle among yesterday’s garlands, since the god with a sure aim has
touched me to the bones with his blow.
Figuring erotic experience as a divine wound is a conventional motif. But in the

logic of the elegy’s narrative, the moment of divine presence looks back to Lyn-
ceus’ expectations of epiphany and also forward to the next lines, where a third
literary figure, Virgil, is introduced (61–80):
Actia Vergilio est custodis litora Phoebi
Caesaris et fortes dicere posse rates,
qui nunc Aeneae Troiani suscitat arma
iactaque Lavinis moenia litoribus.
cedite, Romani scriptores; cedite, Grai: 65
nescioquid maius nascitur Iliade. 66
tu canis Ascraei veteris praecepta poetae, 77
quo seges in campo, quo viret uva iugo;
tale facis carmen docta testudine quale
Cynthius impositis temperat articulis. 80
Vergil has the ability to speak of the Actian shores of guardian Phoebus, and of Caesar’s bold
ships—who now is rousing the weapons of Trojan Aeneas and the walls laid down on Lav-
inian shores. Make way, Roman writers, make way, Greeks! Something greater than the Iliad
is being born. You sing the edicts of the ancient poet of Ascra: in what plain grows the crop, on
what hill the grape. You compose such a song as the Cynthian god moderates with his fingers
placed on the learned lyre.
Suddenly, divinity is very much in the picture as Propertius introduces Virgil

as a figure whose career is parallel to his own. These lines center around Apollo,
prepared by the earlier references to Callimachus’ “Dream” and to Propertius’
own experience of divine touch. References to Virgil’s poetic trajectory, from
the Eclogues to the Georgics to the Aeneid, shed light on the nature of Proper-
tius’ own work.59 Apollo, I suggest, is an important hinge of the comparison be-
cause of the connection that Propertius has repeatedly drawn in Book 2 between
Cynthia and Apollo. Propertius reveals the meaning and literary history behind
his book’s connection between girl and god.
58. Even though Propertius will go on to describe himself as a witness of divine presence in lines 59–60, it is
striking that the phrase aspice me briefly reverses the dynamic of vision and makes him the object of sight.
59. The bibliography on Propertius’ treatment of Virgil is immense, and stretches back to antiquity. See esp.
Stahl 1985, 172–88 and Thomas 1996, 241– 44 on the Eclogues, and more recently O’Rourke 2011 on Proper-
tius’ generally “optimistic” reading of Virgil’s career in 2.34.

424 LAUREN CURTIS
Virgil’s Apollo is biform.60 First Propertius treats the warlike Apollo of Ac-
tium (Actia Vergilio est custodis litora Phoebi, 61), whom Virgil will commem-
orate in Aeneid 8. This is firmly part of the recusatio: it is not the kind of material
that love elegy treats, and it is for Virgil, rather than Propertius, to represent. But
the second appearance of Apollo is more complicated. Recalling Virgil’s earlier
Georgics, Propertius compares Virgil to the Cynthian god himself: tale facis car-
men docta testudine quale / Cynthius impositis temperat articulis (“You compose
such a song as the Cynthian god moderates with his fingers placed on the learned
lyre,” 79–80). The allusion to Virgil’s work is multiple but precise. Only twice
does Virgil use the epithet Cynthius for Apollo: at Eclogues 6.3, when Apollo
tweaks the poet’s ear and gives him programmatic Callimachean instructions
for writing his poetry; and at Georgics 3.36, Virgil’s other “proem in the middle,”
when he describes the imagined temple that will house statues of the heroes of
Troy and also the city’s divine founder, Apollo Cynthius.
Propertius’ choice of the epithet Cynthius, used only here in his elegiac col-
lection, recalls both these Virgilian moments.61 As it does so, it surely brings to
mind Cynthia herself and recalls her own Apolline connection in Book 2, which
was revealed through her epiphany in 2.1 and then deconstructed in 2.31. It is as
if, after writing two books of love poetry that began with Cynthia’s very name,
Propertius finally throws back the curtain, revealing and explaining the poetic
workings of his elegiac world. Cynthia’s history lies in a poetic tradition stretch-
ing back to Callimachus and brought into Latin by Virgil.62 Inspiration and po-
etic affiliation have, throughout the ancient poetic tradition, been expressed
through a poet’s experience of divine presence, and especially his relationship
with Apollo. In Propertius, the figure of the beloved woman is where this tradi-
tion is reworked, and where the relationship between the god’s numinous pres-
ence and the poet’s written text come, in his particular poetics, to intersect. This
was implicit in the epiphany of 2.1, but now, in a further reflection at the book’s
end, the book’s underpinning is made clear. Just as Virgil had Cynthius, now
Propertius has Cynthia.
The point is driven home in the elegy’s final lines, which explicitly place Cyn-
thia in the history of female poetic subjects, from Varro’s Leucadia to Gallus’
Lycoris (85–94). The focus on literary history continues the previous lines’ train
of thought, but shifts from Virgilian hexameter to a tradition of Latin love poetry
to which Cynthia more naturally belongs. The elegy, and the book, ends with the
following couplet (93–94):
Cynthia quin vivet versu laudata Properti,
hos inter si me ponere Fama volet.
Indeed Cynthia will live, praised in the verse of Propertius, if Fame wishes to place me among
these poets.
60. Miller (2009, 76–78) examines the contrast that Propertius sets up between the Actian and Cynthian Apollo,
and how this represents Propertius’ elegies as having an affinity with Virgil’s earlier works rather than his new epic.
61. So O’Rourke 2011, 486. On the double Virgilian allusion, see also Loupiac 1999, 290; Robinson 2006, 202.
62. Cf. Wyke 2002, 28 (on Prop. 2.34): “The alignment within a single poem of Callimachus, Virgil, Cynthius,
and Cynthia constructs for Propertian elegy and its elegiac mistress a literary ancestry.” See also Newman 1997,
227–28.

The naming of Cynthia in the final couplet, conjoined with Propertius’ name and
the assertion of their ongoing fame, rewrites the earlier comparison of Virgil to
Cynthian Apollo (2.34.79–80), now reappropriating the epithet Cynthius for his
girl.63 At the same time, Cynthia’s naming also mirrors the beginning of Proper-
tius’ first book, which opened with her name, and the first lines of Book 2, with
their explicit association between Cynthia’s form and the poetry book in which
she appears. Indeed, despite the several epiphanic moments of divine contact,
around which the literary history in 2.34 is oriented, we have moved far away
from the apparently spontaneous epiphany of Cynthia at the beginning of Book 2.
Instead, the book closes with a markedly self-conscious positioning of the entire
project in the material form in which it will be read and remembered.
Poem 2.34 is as explicit about the materiality of his book as was 2.1: Proper-
tius talks about Gallus’ “page” ( pagina, 89) and his own versus (93), just as he
used the verb “to write” (scribere, 1), and the reference to the “book” (liber, 2) in
the opening lines of 2.1.64 Now, however, the book is not imagined to take its
form and lasting effect from a version of Cynthia conjured as a divine and
numinously present source of inspiration, as it was in 2.1. Rather, the book ends
by enclosing both the girl and the god who is her double, Apollo, within a
library’s table of contents. The roll call of names, from Varro to Propertius him-
self, reads as a list of books in a library shelf or catalogue, and the physicality
of the verb ponere suggests the tactile action of placing Propertius’ book among
its peers.65 Callimachus, in his own way, mediated divine presence through the
material form of the book, when the opening of his Aetia described Apollo dictat-
ing instructions as he wrote on his writing tablet. At the end of Propertius’ second
book, the complexities of the opening poem’s negotiation between the evanes-
cent beauty of Cynthia’s presence and the textual space of the book feel re-
solved, and at the close of the book the text’s stable materiality is the dominant
note.
But not for long. This fundamental tension will be reopened, again in terms of
experiencing the divine, at the beginning of Book 3. There, Cynthia will be left
behind and Propertius will come face to face with his most important elegiac
predecessor, Callimachus, and also with Cynthia’s own divine namesake, Apollo.
Before this, however, as this article has demonstrated, epiphany has an impor-
tant presence in Book 2. Its mode of religious viewing paradoxically acts as both
an ingressive and a closural element that frames the reader’s experience of the
book, exploring in a range of different ways how a textual artifact can mediate
to its reader an experience as immediate, personal, and fleeting as a love affair.
Epiphany locates Cynthia’s visuality not just in human terms, but also ties it to
an experience shared by the poet and his reader that extends into the realms of
63. O’Rourke 2011, 486: the final sphragis reasserts Propertius’ “pre-eminence in Cynthian poetics.” While Pro-
pertius earlier compared Virgil to Cynthian Apollo, now the naming of Cynthia herself shows that “Virgil resembles
Propertius as much as, if not more than, Propertius resembles Virgil” (p. 487).
64. On the primacy of writing here, see Lowrie 2009, 185–88.
65. Compare the use of insero at Hor. Carm. 1.1.35, with its similarly physical connotations of “placing”
Horace among the canonical lyric poets (Nisbet and Hubbard 1970, 15).

426 LAUREN CURTIS
mythology, literary tradition, and poetic inspiration. The sublime, transient expe-
rience of divine presence, and the human longing for it, helps Propertius’ elegy
create its distinctive metaphysics of desire.66
Bard College
66. This article is dedicated to the memory of Albert Henrichs. I would like to thank Zoa Alonso Fernández,
Robert Cioffi, Sarah McCallum, Naomi Weiss, and the two anonymous readers for their generous feedback on a
number of drafts; Duncan MacRae for bibliography on Roman epiphany; and Georgia Petridou for sharing
proofs of her book. An early version of this article was presented at Feminism and Classics VII: Visions, an
opportunity for which I warmly thank the faculty of the University of Washington.
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ELEGIAC WOMEN AND THE EPIPHANIC GAZE:

THE CASE OF PROPERTIUS’ CYNTHIA

I watch her step forth gleaming in Coan silks . . .1

Classical Philology 114 (2019): 406–429

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CYNTHIA’S EPIPHANY IN PROPERTIUS 2.1

Quaeritis unde mihi totiens scribantur amores,

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ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit.

Cynthia appears in a range of attitudes, beginning with her initial approach

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approaching her lover.21 Cynthia is also described as “gleaming” ( fulgentem, 5),

Apollo’s approach (εἶσι) is echoed in Propertius’ incedere (5), and as in both

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a candida diva stepping over the threshold in an epiphanic arrival at 68.70–72,

EPIPHANY, ELEGY, AND THE POETICS OF THE BOOK

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In Propertius, the representation of Cynthia in divine terms is part of a wider

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In elegy 2.1, Cynthia’s appearance soon blends into a recusatio addressed to

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43. On epiphany and poetic inspiration, see Petridou 2016, 195–228.

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EPIPHANY IN THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO: PROPERTIUS 2.31 AND 2.32

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EPIPHANY AND CLOSURE: PROPERTIUS 2.34

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Figuring erotic experience as a divine wound is a conventional motif. But in the

Suddenly, divinity is very much in the picture as Propertius introduces Virgil

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Miller, John F. 2009. Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets. Cambridge.

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Wiggers, Nancy. 1977. Reconsideration of Propertius II.1. CJ 72: 334–41.

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