Common Contracts
1 similar null contracts
License: Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the Institutional Repository of the University of LeidenOctober 18th, 2010
The peculiarity of Propertius 1.20 raises as many questions today as it did three centuries ago. Whereas the preceding poems in book 1 all deal with heterosexual love, and in particular the speaker’s passion for Cynthia, elegy 1.20, the longest poem in the book, is about a certain Gallus’ love for a boy. Another striking feature of the poem is the mythological exemplum, a retelling of the story of Hercules and Hylas. Although the elegiac topos of the poet as praeceptor amoris, “teacher in love”, is common enough in book 1, the story told in this poem to warn Gallus to keep an eye on his love, is much longer than any other mythological passage in Propertius’ first book. Scholars have also often commented on the language and style of the poem, which is “quite unlike anything in the rest of the book”,348 and have been puzzled by its “conspicuous position near the end of the book”.349
