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1. A History of Lost Tablets
Author(s): L. Roman
Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Oct., 2006), pp. 351-388
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011226
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2. L. ROMAN
I
A History of Lost Tablets
This study examines a recurrent scenario in Roman poetry of the first-person genres: the
separationof thepoet from his writing tablets.Catullus' tablets are stolen (c.42); Propertius'
are lost (3.23); Ovid's (Am. 1.11-12) are consigned todisuse and decay by theirdisappointed
owner.Martial, who does not reproduce the specific narrativeof loss, nonetheless engages with
the traditionof lost tablets fromwithin the fiction of festive gift-exchange inhisApophoreta
(14.1-21): ratherthan losing or rejecting the tablets,he gives themaway toguests/readers athis
Saturnalian party. I argue that the representation of writing tablets and their loss is involved
in theproduction of authorial presence. The scene of lost tablets demonstrates how the poet
retains the capacity for poetic speech even when deprived of the aid of his material medium.
The ostensibly accidental and sometimes lamented loss of the poet's tablets thus contributes
to a sophisticated strategy of authorial self-representation. The tablets do not somuch stand
for the literary text as provide a focus formetapoetic concerns with voice andwriting, author
and text, presence and absence, immortal ingenium and expendable materia. Examination of
the shifting representationof writing tablets fromCatullus toMartial will provide insight into
the invention of theRoman poetic author.
Catullus' writing tabletsare stolen (c.42); Propertius loses his tablets (3.23);
Ovid rejects his tabletswhen they disappoint him (Am. 1.11-12); Martial cir
culates writing tablets among his Saturnalian gift-objects (14.1-21). While the
traditionof lost tabletshas received some scholarly attention,' no systematic study
examines itsunderlying aesthetic concerns and transformationover time;nor has
Martial's contributionbeen recognized. This essaywill explore different versions
This essay has benefited both in its details and its general outlook from the many helpful remarks
of Ellen Oliensis and theanonymous readers forClassical Antiquity.
1. Close analysis and comparison of Propertius andOvid inErbse 1979; see also Baker 1973
on Ovid and Propertius; on Propertius, Fedeli 1985 ad 3.23; on Ovid, McKeown 1989 ad 1.11-12;
Davis 1977: 76-85; Damon 1990: 276-77; Du Quesnay 1973: 30-40. On the connection between
Catullus andPropertius,Williams 1968: 492.
Classical Antiquity. Vol. 25, Issue 2, pp. 351-388. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e).
Copyright C 2006 by The Regents of theUniversity of California. All rights reserved. Please
direct all requests forpermission tophotocopy or reproducearticle content through theUniversity of
California Press's Rights andPermissions website athttp:/www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintlnfo.asp.
DOI:CA.2006.25.2.35 1.

3. 352 CLASSICAL
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of the theme, andhow thosedifferences resonatewithin thecontext of each poet's
literaryproject.
A helpful starting-point isprovided byKathleenMcCarthy's exploration of
surrogacy,authorialpresence, and transcendenceofmedium in therepresentation
of writing tablets.2 In the second of two elegies onwriting tablets (1.12), Ovid
curses and rejectshis tablets,and thereby"separatesout thepoet's transcendentart
from ... the
material instrumentsthat
might seem toaffect itssuccess."His appeal
to the readerover thehead of his tablets"implies thathis voice (and subjectivity)
transcend thematerial carriersof his words, thathe can speak touswithout the
interventionof wood andwax."3 The argumentsofMcCarthy, andmore recently
Fitzgerald,4 show how these scenes of apparently fortuitous separation and loss
participate incarefully designed strategies of authorial self-representation.
The present essay assumes thevalidity of this recentwork and draws upon
its importantinsights,while simultaneously broadening thechronological scope
and narrowing the thematic focus. Imove beyond Ovid to consider the entire
traditionof Roman poems on writing tablets and, at the same time, isolate the
theme of tablets to allow for closer consideration of their specific connotations
within thebroaderclass ofwritten media. The association of wax tabletswith the
composition of roughdraftsbrings intoplay not onlywriting as ageneral concept,
but also distinctions amongphases ofwriting andcompletion. The absentpresence
of writing tabletsdraws our attention to thepath leading fromephemeralwriting
on wax to completed text, from raw material to poem: in a recurrent pattern,
the lost instrumentof composition is replaced by thepoetic author's immortal
voice-within-text. Writing tablets do not simply stand for the literary text, but
as bearer of the poet's words, provide a focus for concerns with writing and voice,
text and author.
The poet's writing tablets representboth thematerial medium of poetry and,
in thepoems under discussion, the subjectmatter (materia) of poetry. This dual
aspect depends in turn upon the metaliterary connotation of "wood" as literary
rawmaterial (materia, silva). In one familiar pattern, the conversion of wood
into awork of art comments on the process of literaryproduction: the poet's
inert, raw material becomes a living, breathing entity or the mimesis of one.
InHorace Satires 1.8, a wooden statue of Priapus recounts how, starting out
his existence as inutile lignum ("a useless piece of wood," 1), he became a
god-fashioned by a craftsman, but also by the poet Horace who crafted his
speech.The phaselus ("yacht")of Catullus c.4was oncemere wood (specifically
boxwood), and thenbecame somethingmore thanthat,abrilliantly self-parodying
2. McCarthy 1998, especially 182-84.
3. McCarthy 1998: 184.
4. Fitzgerald 2000: 59-68 discusses anxieties and tensions intheuse of slaves as intermediaries
inOvid Amores 1.11-12 and2.7-8; note also theextended discussion ofAmores 2.7-8 inHenderson
1991-1992, including a reading of 1.11-12 (1991: 74-81).

4. ROMAN:
AHistory
ofLost
Tablets 353
poem.5The poems examined in thisessay at once participate inanddiverge from
such narratives:writing tablets, typically constructed out of two joined pieces
of wood, trace a comparable path from inertmatter to speaking object, yet in
the lost tablets tradition, thisobject isno longerpresent and capable of speaking
on its owner's behalf.6 Now it is the owner/poet who speaks independently of
his instrument. Iwish to suggest that this absence is productive: the loss of the
tabletshelps articulate a furtherdimension of the literary textbeyond its status
asmaterial object. The author's ingeniumand deathless, immaterialvoice must
be differentiated from themere matter (materia) hemolds, animates, and finally
transcends. It isnot accidental, then, that the tabletsdisappear: their loss enables
theemergence of thepoetic author.
THE ACCIDENTAL AUTHOR
In c.42, Catullus calls upon his hendecasyllabic verses to help him pursue
his stolenwriting tablets:
Adeste, hendecasyllabi, quot estis
omnes undique, quotquotestis omnes.
iocumme putat essemoecha turpis,
et negatmihi nostra reddituram
pugillaria, si pati potestis.
persequamuream et reflagitemus.
quae sit, quaeritis? illa, quam uidetis
turpeincedere,mimice acmoleste
ridentemcatuli oreGallicani.
circumsistite eam, et reflagitate,
"moechaputida, reddecodicillos,
redde,putidamoecha, codicillos!"
non assis facis? o lutum, lupanar,
aut si perditius potes quid esse.
sed non est tamen hoc satis putandum.
quod si non aliud potest, ruborem
ferreocanis exprimamus ore.
conclamate iterumaltiore uoce.
"moechaputida, reddecodicillos,
5. Catullus c.4 andHorace Sermones 1.8 are influencedby dedicatory inscriptions and talking
objects inHellenistic epigram; see Davis 2002. Davis also observes thatboxwood is commonly
used formaking writing tablets (135); hence themetapoetic dimension of thephaselus. Catullus'
senescent yacht shares certain concerns with the theme of lost tablets-for example, the author's
condescending treatmentof hismateria.
6. Ovid is especially insistent on differentiating himself. InAmores 1.11 (discussed below),
he declares his intention to join the traditionof common wood (vile ... acer 1.11.28)marvelously
endowed with eloquence and agency, but in the following elegy inverts thepattern by praying that
hiswriting-tablets will go back tobeing a lifeless mass (inutile lignum, 13-14).

5. 354 CLASSICAL
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redde,putidamoecha, codicillos!"
sed nil proficimus, nihilmouetur.
mutanda est ratiomodusque uobis,
siquidproficere amplius potestis:
"'pudicaet proba, reddecodicillos."
Come tomy aid, hendecasyllables, all of you, fromeverywhere, asmany
of you as there are. A disgusting slut thinks I am a joke, and says she
will not returnourwriting-tablets, ifyou canbelieve it.Let us pursueher
and demand them back. You ask who it is? That's her, the one whom
you seewalking in a disgraceful manner, grinning the annoying grin of
amime-actress with themouth of aGallic pup. Surroundher anddemand
themback: "Filthy slut, give back the tablets,give back the tablets, filthy
slut!"You don't care a dime? 0 you filth, you brothel, orwhatever you
can be that isevenmore depraved!But we must not think this is enough
after all. If nothing else, let us squeeze a blush from thatbitch's brazen
face. Shout again in a loudervoice: "Filthy slut, give back the tablets!
Give back the tablets, filthy slut!" But we are getting nowhere; she is
not affected in the least. You need to change your plan and approach,
and see if you can do any better [this way]: "Chaste and virtuous lady,
give back the tablets!"7
C.42 alludes to theRoman speech-act of flagitatio, thepractice of surroundinga
thief inpublic and shouting, "Give itback!" (redde, redde).8
Catullus identifies the
woman accused of the theftand summons his hendecasyllabic verses toassail her
as shepasses on the street.They surround(circumsistite) thewoman, anddemand
back (reflagitate) the tablets,until her immunity toshamedrives thespeaker to try
flattery instead. The hendecasyllabic verses have been notionally composed on
thespurof the
moment andemployed forutilitarianaims (proficimus ...proficere)
in a contest over possession of an object of quotidian value.
The apparently utility-driven utterance of c.42 at the same time acts out a
dramaof literarycomposition.9 Catullus has lost the instrumentof composition
(and possibly the rough draft of some poetry) to the thief, but has evidently
not lost use of his literary ingenium.Under his direction, thepoet's metrically
7. Translations aremy own, unless otherwise indicated. Ihave consulted and borrowed from
various translations and commentaries, especially Goold 1990; Barsby 1973; McKeown 1989;
Shackleton Bailey 1993; Leary 1996.
8. On theflagitatio, Fraenkel 1961 andUsener 1900; note also Augello 1991. Selden 1992
remains themost importantapplication of speech-act theory toCatullus; on c.42, 482-84.
9. Scholars have long recognized how elements of a "literarymanifesto" are embedded by
Catullus in "statements [which are] immediate and a part of the poet's world," Thomas 1982:
144. AsWilliam Fitzgerald has argued, scenes of contested possession inparticularwork to define
Catullus' position as poet: Fitzgerald 1995, especially 93-104. Cf. c. 12,where Catullus criticizes
the theft of napkins as an instance of inept humor and threatens three-hundredhendecasyllabi as
punishment, and c.25, where Catullus confronts another thief,Thallus, who stole among other things
catagraphos Thynos-a phrase possibly referring towriting tablets (on thisquestion, Thomson 1997
ad loc.;Fitzgerald 1995 n.45).

6. ROMAN:
AHistory
ofLost
Tablets 355
ordered syllables firstform into theshapeof aminiatureflagitatio-poem complete
with rudimentary figures of repetition and syntactic variation: moecha putida,
redde codicillos, / redde, putida moecha, codicillos ("filthy slut, give back
the tablets; give back the tablets, filthy slut!"). The failure of this opening
gambit draws a suggestion from the poet: "raise the volume" (altiore voce).
When thatfails, furtherrevision isprescribed:mutanda est ratiomodusque uobis
("you need to change your plan and approach").Words are crossed out, letters
slashed and rearrangedto formnewwords (PUTIDA toPUDICA). Appropriately
enough for apoem about lostwriting tablets,c.42 depicts a scene of composition
and revision.
Composition, however, occurswithout theaid ofwriting tablets.The dispos
sessed Catullus, who cannot now place writing tablets on his knees likeCalli
machus, insteadproceeds orally by summoning or invoking his verses: adeste,
hendecasyllabi ("come tomy aid, hendecasyllables"). Not only does the poet
speak beyond the confines of his written medium; he composes poetry through
the independent power of his voice. Contributing to the fiction of voice un
mediated by manifestly absentwriting instruments is the simulation of ongoing
action and response: c.42 is one of relatively few poems in ancient literature in
which the speaker responds to events unfolding at the putative time of poetic
speech.'?Yet thisdramaof composition isminutely choreographed: c.42, for all
its simulation of oral compositional processes, is a finished piece of work. The
disappearanceof the tabletsmay even constitutemetapoetic acknowledgement of
thework's progress towardcompletion. The phase of composition, metonymi
cally representedby the tablets, has now been superseded:we are reading the
completed poem.
In tracing a trajectoryof poetic completion, c.42 at the same time traces the
emergence of the author responsible for thepoem. By contrastwith the jottings
which, we may imagine,were previously entrusted to the confines of thepoet's
writing tablets, the rich vocal performance of c.42 is a specifically poetic and
emphatically public one that marshals the force of his hendecasyllabic verses to
assail the thief on city streets.'1 It remains significant, however, thatCatullus
stumbles intopoetic utterance fortuitously: theunlooked-for theftmotivates his
versified response. Catullus' hendecasyllabic versifier does not (yet) occupy the
higher plane of the immortal,finishedopus, but comes intobeing on fleetingocca
sions of mockery and aggression-an accidental author. Even in exploring ideas
of literarycompletion and poetic authorship,Catullus privileges the appearance
of unfinishedness: he offers glimpses of poetry-in-the-making, of apoet emerging
from amidst the transactions of daily life.
10. Syndikus 1984: 227-28.
11. On the"dense acoustic texture"of Catullan poetry, see Fredrick 1999: 49. Inaddition to the
many alliterative sequences in c.42, Fraenkel 1961: 120notes the snarling of r's, the littera canina,
in ruborem Iferreo canis exprimamus ore.

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This stress on inchoatemodes of communication is particularly strong in
the poems designated "polymetrics" by modem scholars, nugae ("trifles")by
Catullus himself.12 In his polymetric nugae, Catullus provocatively combines
consummate artificewith the vivid simulation of jocular spontaneity. From the
beginning, thepolymetric Catullus ishesitant toannounce, inunequivocal terms,
a publishedwork of literature,13
andwary of simply proclaiming himself a poet:
he consistently values incipiency and informalityover thepretensions of (shoddy)
literarycompletion. C. 1 offers up toCornelius Nepos a finished book (lepidum
novum libellum, "my spruce new book," 1), but one that is "freshly" finished
(modo ... expolitum, 2), like Theocritus' cup that "still smells of the knife"
(Theoc. 1.28).Whereas Nepos was kind enough to see "something" (aliquid, 4)
inhis poetry,Catullus describes his verses as trifles (nugas, 4) and thecollection
itself insimilarlydubitative terms:quicquid hoc libelli, /qualecumque ("this little
book, whatever it is, of whatever quality," 8-9).'4 Other writers, less reluctant
to claim authorial status, and less humble in the face of the immense labor of
creating poetry, leave themselves open toCatullus' ruthlesscriticism. The failure
of these "authors"is specifically ascribed to theirlaxattitude towardcomposition
and completion. In c.22, Suffenus, urbane in person, writes bad poetry: idem
infaceto est infacetior rure / simulpoemata attigit ("the sameman is duller than
thedull countrysidewhenever he touchespoetry," 14-15). Evenworse, he admires
himself in theactofwriting apoem (15-17). Worst of all, he does notwrite rough
drafts on properly roughmaterials, but sets towork on already pumiced pages
from the start.15
Catullus appreciates an elegantly made book, but remains wary, even in the
case of his own pumiced libellus, of making grand claims for nugatorywriting.
Suffenus,who unanxiously equates aesthetic polishwith pumicedwriting materi
als, is the inverse imageof theCatullan polymetric author:he valorizes theexternal
appearanceof completion and takes his status as literaryauthorpompously for
granted. An illuminating contrastwith Catullus' criticism of Suffenus' poetics
of instantaneous completion is furnished by his praise of Caecilius' unfinished
poem on theMagna Mater. In this elegantly oblique epistolary poem, Catullus
responds tohis friend's submission of anominally completed poem by delicately
12. Persuasive arguments for thedistinctive style andpoetics of thepolymetric poems (c.1-60 )
can be found inRoss 1969; Svennung 1945; on polymetric literarycriticism, Solodow 1989. Skinner
1981 provides adetailed argument forapolymetric libellus (1-51). But note a recentchallenge of the
category in Jocelyn 1999.
13. He will announce such awork inanepigram-Cinna's, not his own (c.95); on thedifference
inattitude toward literarycompletion in theepigrams, Solodow 1989.
14. On some of theambiguities of c. 1,Fitzgerald 1995: 37-42.
15. C.22.4-8: "[he has composed a great number of verses] and not, as isusually done, written
them down on recycled scrap paper [palimpseston]: royal sheets, new rolls, new bosses, red ties
for thewrapper-all ruledwith lead and smoothed with pumice" (nec sic ut fit inpalimpsestonl
relata: cartae regiae, novi libri, Inovi umbilici, lora rubramembranae, /derecta plumbo etpumice
omnia aequata).

8. ROMAN:
AHistory of Lost Tablets 357
but emphatically (incohatam, 13; incohata, 18) suggesting thatnot enough labor
has been put into thispromisingwork.'6 Even as roughdraft,however, Caecilius'
poem is "attractivelyunfinished" (or "charminglybegun": venuste ... incohata,
17-18). Behind such reflections on inchoate or shoddily finished poetry is the
question of what is trulyand properly finished or "polished" (expolitum), as op
posed tomerely completed.'7 The Catullan pose of improvisatory scribbler of
nugae works tokeep overly hasty presumptions of literaryfinality atbay.
The tension between polish and improvisation, evident in c. 1and 42, also
informs the representation of poetic composition andwriting tablets in c.50.
Catullus and his friendCalvus improvise playful verses in differentmeters on
Catullus' tablets (tabellae).'8
Hesterno, Licini, die otiosi
multum lusimus inmeis tabellis,
ut convenerat esse delicatos:
scribensversiculos uterque nostrum
ludebatnumeromodo hocmodo illoc,
reddensmutua per iocum atquevinum.
50.1-6
Yesterday at leisure, Licinius, we played around a great deal on my
writing tablets, sincewe had determined to indulgeourselves. Each of us
took turnswriting verses andplaying now inonemeter, now in another,
answering back and forthamidst joking andwine.
Catullus went away so inflamed by Calvus' elegance that he was unable to eat
or sleep (7-13); when, at last, after much tossing and turning (or insomniac
poetic labor), his limbs lay exhausted on the bed, he completed a poem so
thatCalvus might "perceive [his] pain" (14-17). Now he entreats Calvus for
a repeat encounter, and threatens the anger of Nemesis if his prayers go unheeded
(18-21). The scene of composition with Catullus' close friend and literaryally
reflects back on the entire polymetric collection, recapitulating, in compressed
space, its defining themes: effeminacy/refinement (delicatos), play (lusimus,
ludebat), lightverse (versiculi),metrical variation (numero
modo hocmodo illoc),
exchange (reddensmutua), convivial sociability (per iocumatque vinum). C.50
can be interpretedas anoverarching, retrospectivemeta-fiction of thepolymetric
libellus:'9 we have been reading a series of improvised jokes and poetry-games
16. For interpretationof c.35, see especially Fredricksmeyer 1985.
17. And subsequently depleted in sub-literaryuse: e.g., wrapping for fish (c.95.8).
18. It is no doubt significant that the same pair, in c.14, exposed towitty mockery the bad,
completed book of the "worstpoets" (horribilem et sacrum libellum, c.14.23).
19. On theold problem of thecollection, see above allWiseman 1969 andSkinner 1981;more
recently, auseful overview in
Wray 2001: 53ff. On Skinner's reading, c.50 is thebook's penultimate
poem, paired with c.51 to form a double sphragis organized around themes of love, leisure, and
poetry: Skinner 1981: 80ff.

9. 358 CLASSICAL
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in playfully variedmeters written and successively scratched out on the ever
changing surface of wax tablets, theephemeral creations of a prolonged bout of
lusus ("play"). To represent this improvisatory interlude as lost to the poet is to
signal the closure of the book.
Like c.42, c.50 is a poem about loss and tablets. The poet's distance from
compositional lusus ismeasured both by his attitudeof solitary reflectionon past
enjoyment and, ingrammatical terms,by theprogression from the imperfectverb
and present participles describing theongoing process of composition (scribens
.... ludebat ... reddens) to the finality of poema feci ("Imade [this] poem,"
16).Like c.42,moreover, c.50 describes poetry's post-compositional phase: both
are concerned with the process whereby, out of scratchings on wax, the poem,
and ultimately the book, emerge. These poems, which are all about achieving
immediateoutcomes through language,nonetheless fall shortof representing the
final efficacy of their speech.Attempting todeterminewhether Catullus actually
succeeds in persuading Calvus to return formore poetic play in tabellis, orwhether
Catullus gets his tabletsback from the thief, seems especially dubious from the
perspective of the completed work. Who cares about regaining tablets when we
have the libellus? In both cases, the poet uses a threatening, coercing voice
in order to regain something he has lost (the tablets, Calvus as co-improviser
in tabellis), yet in the process of demanding back the lost item/person, ends
up creating something of more enduring value: thepoema itself.20 Integral to
the process of becoming a literary author is the reorientation of focus from the
ephemeral to the eternal, from immediate objects and aims to the endurance of the
literary monument among posterity. Catullus allows us to view not the author as
end-product, but the moment of the author's emergence, when the poetic speaker
must give up as lost an ephemeral pleasure or object he still keenly desires.
Even within the frame of Catullus' designedly nugatory aesthetics, thewriting
tablets of c.42 make an important contribution to the ideology of the Roman
poetic author. The fortuitous loss of the poet's instrument of composition allows
the author's voice to transcend (apparently) itsmaterial medium and, at the same
time, implicitly distances authorial speech from the inchoatemutability ofwriting
on wax. In c.42, as in c.50, writing tablets and the improvisatory/compositional
phase they represent are replaced by a poem projecting, and preserving in literary
form, the author's voice. Catullus makes much of resisting this loss; he demands
back the lost tablets, and demands back his co-improviser Calvus, as if he wished
to remain perpetually in the pre-publication phase of compositional lusus. The fact
that he expresses this retrograde wish with greater intensity than his successors
in the lost tablets genre is significant: unwilling to assume the mantle of literary
20. There is some ambiguity as towhat thepoema of line 16 is:most recent interpretations
assume thathoc poema refers to c.50, thepoem we, and notionally Calvus, are reading.ButWray's
revival of an older interpretation that makes the "poem" c.5 1, to which c.50 serves as accompanying
cover letter (2001: 88-109), ishighly persuasive.

10. ROMAN:
AHistory of Lost Tablets 359
authority,Catullus shows himself still atplay amidst his versified toys and trifles.
But the work itself, polished with pumice and released from the author's hand,
speaks against recuperating the lostworld of poetry's coming-into-being. The
poet's desire for his stolen tablets is the sign of their enduring absence.
THE LOST WORKS OF CYNTHIA: PROPERTIUS 3.23
In 3.23, Propertius complains that he has lost the writing tablets that were
so useful to him in pursuing his love affairs. In a surprise ending, the poet's words
are revealed to be an advertisement of loss and reward, dictated to a slave boy
(puer), who will post them on a pillar.
Ergo tamdoctae nobis periere tabellae,
scriptaquibus pariter totperiere bona!
has quondam nostrismanibus detriveratusus,
qui non signatas iussit habere fidem.
illae iam sine me norant placare puellas,
et quaedam sine me verba diserta loqui.
non illas fixum caras effecerat aurum:
vulgari buxo sordida cera fuit.
qualescumquemihi sempermansere fideles,
semper et effectus promeruerebonos.
forsitan haec illis fuerunt mandata tabellis:
"irascor, quoniam es, lente, moratus heri.
an tibi nescio quae visa est formosior? an tu
non bona de nobis crimina ficta iacis?"
aut dixit: "venies hodie, cessabimus una:
hospitium totanocte paravitAmor,"
et quaecumque volens reperit non stulta puella
garrula, cum blandis dicitur hora dolis.
me miserum, his aliquis rationem scribit avarus
et ponit duras interephemeridas!
quas si quis mihi rettulerit, donabitur auro:
quis pro divitiis ligna retenta velit?
ipuer, et citus haec aliqua propone columna,
et dominum Esquiliis scribe habitare tuum.
And so my learned tablets are lost, and so much good writing lost along
with them! Long use at my hands, which bade them, though unsealed,
be reliably counted [as mine], had worn them down. They had by now
learned how to appease girls inmy absence, and to speak certain eloquent
phrases in my absence. No gold setting had made them valuable: they
were cheap wax on common boxwood. Such as they were, they always
remained faithful tome, and they always achieved good results. Perhaps
these were the words entrusted to those tablets: "I am angry because,

11. 360 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 25 /No. 2/ October 2006
sluggard,youwere late inarrivingyesterday.Has some other girl seemed
prettier to you? Or are you spreading nasty slander about me?" Or she
wrote: "You are to come today; we will idle together. Love has prepared
lodging [for you] for the whole night," and all the clever things a girl,
willing and talkative, finds to say when a time is being assigned for
stealthy pleasures. Ah me, somemiser iswriting his accounts on them
and places themamong his unfeeling ledgers! If anyone returns them to
me, he will be rewarded with gold: who would wish to keep wood instead
of wealth? Go, slave, and quickly post this notice on some pillar, and
write thatyourmaster lives on theEsquiline.
Propertius 3.23, like Catullus c.42, presents the poet in the act of pursuing
his lost/stolen writing tablets: he too laments the loss, and uses his powers of
persuasive speech inattempting to regainhis tablets.Furtherexamination reveals
deeper similarities: both Propertius 3.23 andCatullus c.42 replace the lost tablets
with the voice of the autonomously composing author, and both employ a sub
literarygenre as surrogateof the literary text (flagitatio, posted advertisement).
Both poems are concerned, then,with literaryand sub-literaryuses of language,
processes of composition and completion. There is.little in theway of explicit
verbal allusion.2' There does not need to be, however, for a comparison to be
meaningful: Catullus' poem is the "code-model" for poems on lost tablets.F In
translatingCatullus' lost tablets into elegy, Propertius focuses on transforming
the structure of the situation, redefining the position of the author vis-'a-vis subject
matter andmedium.
Especially salient changes include Propertius' strong identification of the
content of the tablets with elegiac poetry, and the striking publicity of his status
as poetic author. While Catullus never specified his tablets' content or function,
the literariness of the Propertian tabellae is clear from the start: they are doctae
("learned"), i.e. endowed with the kind of doctrina that marks out an expert poet
and that is appreciated by a docta puella ("learned girl"), and they contain scripta
... bona.3 The tablets, moreover, have been so thoroughly and continually used
21. See thecomments ofHubbard 1974: 91.
22. Fedeli 1985 ad 3.23.23-24 and 660; on the term "codemodel," see Conte 1986: 31. It
might be going too far to concede no Catullan allusion whatsoever: qualescumque, in a context
involving Propertius' writing and a gesture of deprecation, recallsCatullus' poem of dedication ta1
Nepos (quare habe tibiquidquid hoc libelli Iqualecumque; Fedeli 1985 ad loc.).
23. The meaning and correct translationof these lines have often been disputed: bona refers,
in an immediate sense, to thewelcome nature of the tablets' contents, e.g. pleasing conceits of
the beloved such as those described lines 15-18; but especially in close connection with doctae.
bona also alludes to the fine quality of Propertian elegy (cf. a comparable joke atHorace Satires
2.1.82-84). Fedeli 1985: 659 offers a series of such double meanings identifying the tabletswith
Propertian elegy: note inparticularverba diserta, the longuse (or rigorousCallimachean reworking)
they have been subjected to-which also means they have no need of a sphragis. (There is an
intriguingsuggestion inAlvarez Herniandez 1997: 258 thatthe
Monobiblos inparticular isevoked
theone book of Propertius inwhich his name does not occur.) Note also Baker 1973. But insofar
as the poet-lover's words have always been simultaneously messages of amatory persuasion and

12. ROMAN:
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ofLost
Tablets 361
by Propertius that they signify his ownership even without an identifying seal
and even inhis absence (sineme). Propertius awardsmore overt recognition to
thedynamic of origination and subsequent circulation inherent in theconcept of
literaryauthorship.Whereas Catullus focuses on theobject hewishes to receive
back intohis "fist,"24
Propertius representshis tablets as thebearer of messages
sent forth from his hands to represent their owner at a distance. Propertius' erudite,
persuasive tabletsassume amore unambiguously literary identity thanCatullus'
stolenpugillaria.
Within theelegy's temporalframe,however, Propertius' tabletsareno longer
present, but are replaced by a vivid authorial voice that stands somehow beyond
the textualmedium.While Catullus c.42 pursues a similar strategyof privileging
theauthor's voice, Propertiusmore explicitly defines his authorial role andmaps
that role onto urban topography and social hierarchy. Propertius shows both the
framed utterance (an advertisement of loss and reward) and the framing image:
an author/masterdictating to a slave on theEsquiline. The advertisement,while
involved in its own way in the idea of sub-literary, use-driven communication,
significantly no longer remains tied to the fiction of privacy, i.e. of unpublished
writing that we as readers somehow happen to overhear. Propertius., in posting
his announcement for all to see, has moved closer to an image of writing that
approximates the public nature of the literary text and its urban audience.5
Propertius returns to the question of literariness posed by the Catullan flagitatio
of c.42, but whereas Catullus refuses to bridge the gap between his ferocious,
sub-literary speech-act and the accomplished poem representing it, the elegist has
carefully designed his nominally sub-literary script-genre to dovetail with key
aspects of his literary text (publicity,writing, authority).
Catullus' poem resembles Propertius' in bringing issues of voice and writing,
author and work, literary and sub-literary, into play through a dramatic scenario in
which an author addresses commands to his own medium. But Catullus, even if he
does devise an occasion of public, poetic speech (the hendecasyllabicflagitatio),
does not explicitly stage a transition from private, ephemeral communication to
publicly visible text. Propertius' elegy does chart this movement. Propertius.
moreover, takes greater care than Catullus to define the author's position as
vertically differentiated and as a distinct modality of communicative power.
Whereas in Catullus we cannot at all times rigorously distinguish between the
medium and its creator, both of whom remain uselessly exerting their unified
voice in the street-scene at the poem's end, Propertius devotes two lines at the
end of his elegy to carefully separating out the slave-borne message from the
elegiac poetry, thedebate overwhether the tabellae contain Propertius' poetry or not is something of
apseudo-controversy.
24. On pugillaria and pugnus, Selden 1992: 504n. 14.
25. On the increasingly public voice assumed by Roman poets in the early imperial period,
Citroni 1995; on thegenre of thepublic advertisement, Fedeli 1985: 323.

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master/authorwho sends it fromhis Esquiline residence.A strongauthorialvoice
emerges, doubly removed frommediation, which isdisplaced both onto the lost
tablets and onto the dictated notice carried off by the slave. Up until the last two
lines, we might actually imagine ourselves reading such a notice, in which case
the author's voice would be mediated by the posted advertisement, but with the
addition of the last two lines we realize that we have been privy to the voice of
the dictating author, not conveyed by the notice but actually creating the notice.
This doubly ingenious simulation of voice that putatively makes its readers hear
the author in the very act of composition nonetheless occurs in a literary text.
Propertius' poem, which engineers authorialpresence through the representation
of authorial absence (sine me ... sine me), which locates speaking (dicit) and
garrulousnesS26 in an instrument of writing, and which ends dramatically with a
spoken command to the slave to "write" (scribe), displays a complex awareness
of the interplay of writing and speaking, voice and text, that cannot be reduced
to a simple strategy of concealment. As in Catullus, voice is privileged as the
final surviving layer of the poem's rich weave of media; but whereas Catullus
leaves the poem's status as written text to be tacitly assumed by reader or hearer.
Propertius goes one step further inoffering an explicit correlative of thewritten
text in the form of the posted notice. The power to produce and circulate a
written document, which will carry out its author's will at a distance, is central
toPropertius' privileged position as definedwithin thepoem.
Just as Propertius heightens the emphasis on the poem's status as written text,
so he also works to create a stronger impression of finality, the completion both of
his love affair and of a phase in his literary production. In the last section, I argued
that Catullus c.42 in sometimes paradoxical ways occasions reflection on literary
completion from within the fictive frame of an ongoing interaction. Whereas
Catullus keeps his literary ideas immanent within the occasion of spontaneous
speech, Propertius, in line with his broader project of articulating explicit frames
and hierarchical distinctions defining authorial status, builds more palpable mark
ers of finality into his scene of lost tablets. Scenarios of ongoing communication
between lover and beloved belong now to the past: once the hour of assignation
(hora) was at stake; now the writer takes a broad, retrospective view of the entire
affair. Propertius seeks the return of the lost tablets with markedly less urgency
than the Catullan speaker. Propertius, whose tablets have simply vanished into
the city, does not demand them back in direct confrontation with a specific person,
but appeals from a distance to the financial interests of the presumed finder of
the tablets: he presents an impersonal conditional statement (quas si quis mihi ret
tulerit, donabitur auro. "if anyone returns them to me, he will be rewarded with
gold," 21) for the benefit of the urban population. Propertius nominally wants
26. 3.23.17-18 are notoriously difficult to sort out; a number of interpretations are possible. My
translation has non stulta with quaecumque and garrula qualifying puella along with volens (for
dolens in the
MSS).

14. ROMAN:
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ofLost
Tablets 363
to see his tablets returned,but his quietly nostalgic tone of fond remembrance
may lead us towonder if he really seriously expects, or strongly wishes, to get his
tablets back. The wistful sigh and elegant resignation of the opening lines (ergo ...
periere ... periere) present amarked contrastwith Catullus' abruptcall to arms.27
The effort to recover the tablets now retreats to a remoter plane than the
tug-of-warCatullus'flagitatio enacted on city streets.The option of employing a
languageof forcehas faded:Propertius' posted noticewill project itsdisembodied
voice into the midst of an urban population already long grown used to the
echoing of story and scandal resounding from his circulated libelli.28To the
degree that he de-emphasizes the utilitarian aim of securing the return of his
writing instruments,Propertius devotes more attention to broadly paradigmatic
and self-representational themes-his position as dominus, his status as elegiac
poet-lover, his literary(asopposed tomaterialistic) values. The elegy's pervasive
mood of valedictory finality is reflected in the speaker's apparentfondness forhis
writing tablets, not as theenabling tool of his currentproject, but as souvenir of
hismistress' pleasing eroticmessages. These messages belong to an earlier stage
of Propertius' career as writer: now, the author's poetic voice stands in splendid
isolation and final,marmoreal form.
We cannot be certain of the place of Catullus c.42 within the collection
or of any significance that may attach to that position. The case of Propertius
3.23 is different: this elegy falls within a valedictory sequence at the end of
Book 3 that culminates in a farewell to Cynthia and to love elegy itself.29 In
Catullus, the possible positioning of c.42 near the end of the collection may
contribute to reflections on finality, the passage from ludic improvisation to
published libellus. In Propertius, the loss of writing tablets coincides with a
more explicit, unmistakably closural moment within the collection. Propertius
is ending the love affair with Cynthia and thereby bracketing Books 1-3 as the
completed monument of Cynthia-centered elegy. In approaching the end of the
affair, Propertius continually contemplates its beginnings. Much of Book 3, as
Putnam has eloquently appreciated, is about time and the passage of time, the
marking of transitions, anniversaries, endings, and fresh beginning. 3.10, which
27. Propertius' opening ergo,which affects to summarize anoutcome with which the speaker is
already familiar, isusually comparedwith 3.7.1; Fedeli 1985 ad loc. observes, with Nisbet-Hubbard
1978: 283, thatanopening ergomay also connote resignation in the face of irreparableloss.None of
thevarious reconstructions of thecircumstances of the loss (e.g..Cynthia really appropriated them,
etc.) are convincing.
28. Consider, for example, 2.1 .1:quaeritis, undemihi totiens scribantur amores . . . ("Youask
how it is that Iwrite love poetry so often . . . "); or 2.5.1-2: hoc verum est, tota te ferri, Cynthia.
Roma, Iet non ignota vivere nequitia? ("is this true, thatword of you is carried throughoutRome,
Cynthia, and thatyou live a life of well-known wickedness?").
29. The best account of Book 3 as awhole is still Putnam 1980,who persuasively argues for the
central importanceof the theme of temporality; note also Solmsen 1948; Hubbard 1974: 68-115;
Ross 1975, esp. 107ff.Many have commented on and interpretedtheclosing sequence and farewell
toCynthia; on 3.23 in thiscontext, see, for example,Williams 1968: 492; Baker 1973.

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celebrates thebirthdayofCynthia, implicitlymeasures the life spanof Propertius'
elegiac production. Cynthia was "born" in line 1,word 1, of theMonobiblos: thus
it is not surprising that for her birthday rites she is asked to put on the dress inwhich
she first "capturedPropertius' eyes" (oculos cepisti ... Properti, 15)-a phrase
alluding to thatopening line (Cynthiaprima suismiserum me cepit ocellis). In
3.23, Propertius returnsto thesame line inorder toreproducethe lover's signature
pose of abjection (memiserum!), but in a pointedly different context: Propertius
cries out in dismay because he imagines the miser uses his tablets in order to
write out his accounts (19-20). The cry that initiatedhis elegiac production now
seems to lament its closure-perhaps only seems to lament because the poet, who
manufactured this scene of loss, no doubt has reasons for wanting to discard the
tabletsand replace themwith something else.
But what reasons, and replacement with what? In an immediate sense, the
loss of the tablets that contained the communication of Cynthia and her lover
advertises the widening gap between Cynthia and Propertian elegy, preparing for
the final break in 3.24/5. But the deeper implications of this strategic loss, as well
as the question of what ultimately replaces the tablets, can be better addressed
through brief consideration of the broader project of the third book: Propertius,
who in Book 1kept his identity as poet closely embedded within the fiction of
poetry-as-courtship, inBooks 2 and3 increasinglyengages inovertly poetological
modes of self-definition. Propertius opens Book 3with a programmatic triptych:
he seeks a place in the "grove" (nemus) of Callimachus and Philitas (3.1.1-2).
compares the eternity of poetic ingenium with the limited endurance of physical
monuments (3.2.19-26), and receives Hesiodic/Callimachean dream-inspiration
from Apollo and Calliope (3.3).3? In his project of isolating the unique value of
poetry, Propertius focuses on temporality, utility, and financial value.3' Drawing
upon and subverting the language of finance, Propertius defines the poetic work
as an investment that will repay posthumously the losses its author suffers in his
lifetime: atmihi quod vivo detraxerit invida turba, /post obitumduplicifaenore
reddet Honos ("but Esteem will pay back with double interest after my death
what the envious mob takes from me while alive," 3.1.21-22). The utility-driven
poetics of the earlier books, already deconstructed within the fictional fabric of
elegiac courtship-poetry, are now openly repudiated in favor of the deathless
splendor of the monumentum. This new construct of poetry goes hand in hand
with changes in authorial self-fashioning, a new valuation of the authority of the
elegiac author, no longer a slave, but a triumphing general and master (dominus).
30. Ross 1975: 59-60 shows how a focus on Cynthia is progressively replaced by a focus on
Apollo andCalliope in subsequent books, how Propertius becomes more explicitly programmatic
frombook tobook: of course,Apollo andCalliope were present from thebeginning, if lessprominent
(1.2.27-28; seeRoss 1975: 60).
31. On this new interest,Fedeli 1985: intr.;on Book 3 as a response toHorace, Wyke 1987b:
154 andFedeli 32-33; as statementof "thepoet's visionary power andof thepotency of hiswords,"
Putnam 1980: 101.

16. ROMAN:
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By the time we reach the lost tablets in 3.23, we are well prepared for the
encounter between poverty and profit, between poetic and financial interests.
As in the elegy for Paetus (3.7), which contrasts the lover's safe, unambitious
existence with themerchant lost at sea in pursuit of wealth, Propertius juxtaposes
the figure of the poet, not motivated by a desire for wealth (as attested by his
willingness to tradegold forwooden tablets, 21-22), with another figure (the
miser) focused on immediate gain. The tablets themselves embody theprinciple
of the lover's paupertas: it is not their cheap materials that make them valuable,
but their fidelity or reliability (fides)-a key term inelegiac ethics. These tablets
emblematic of elegiac values, however, are in danger of being conflated with the
scribbling of the accountant. Both in their use and etymology, themiser's account
books (ephemeridas) are located in the realm of day-to-day transactions. We
might expect the words of the elegiac lover to transcend such quotidian banality,
yet, in conveying the details of ephemeral assignations, the elegist's writing is
disturbingly similar to theaccountant'sboth intermsof itsutility (usus, 3; effectus
... bonos, 10) and its orientation toward the day-to-day (heri ... hodie, 12, 15).32
The varying responses given by themistress mimic the fluctuations inprofit and
loss to which the miser is exposed. In this convergence may lie the ultimate
explanation for the tablets' vulnerability and the need for theirdeparture: the
tablets remain too closely linkedwith the fictionof ephemeralwriting devoted to
immediateends and as suchobstruct theelegist's new ethics of immortality.33
The
notice to be posted on a column by a slave constitutes a communication similarly
useful and short-lived,34 but as previously remarked, this scene of writing at the
same time evokes amore public voice and prominence in the city, associations
that are also implicit in the images of writing as monument featured in the book's
opening elegies. The lost tablets representing immediacy and instrumentality,
now worn out and "trite" (detriverat usus), are to be replaced by the elegist's
emerging vatic identity and monumental poetics. In the closing line, the author
assumes the position of master (dominus), securely established on the Esquiline,
distanced both from his previous circumscribed identity as elegiac lover and from
the financial concerns of those who will take interest in his notice.
This strategy of differentiation has a gendered aspect: the tablets, which
presumably also conveyed their owner's messages, are here only specifically
represented as bearing the words of the mistress, otherwise afforded all too
few opportunities for speech in the Elegies. The employment of the woman's
32. Putnam 1980: 106.
33. But note also Fedeli's explanation of theappearanceof the lost tablets themeat thisparticular
moment: Propertius, just as he is about to reject Cynthia once and for all, alludes to a poem of Catullus
which takes a viciously negative view of awoman. themoecha putida (1985: 659-60).
34. For comparable authorial instruction to a slave, see Horace Satires 1.10.92; Fedeli 1985
ad loc.
35. Putnam 1980: 106.The contrastwith 1.8b.46 (istameam nioritgloria canitiern) is instructive:
Propertius links the theme of immortality with an image of his own aging, not Cynthia's.

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voice at this point is hardly accidental. As Propertius isolates and elevates the
figure of the poet, extricating him from the confines of amatory speech, he
singles out terms that refer to thepoet's intrinsic capacity to confer memorial
(ingenium,monumentum),while Cynthia's role as (ephemeral)materia becomes
simultaneouslymore patent andmore precarious.36She now only contributes to
the story of thepoet's overcoming of death; she does not define it. In 3.24/25,
immediately following thepoem on lost tablets,Propertius at long lastunwrites
his scripta puella, andwhereas the ingenium lauded at thebook's opening will
evade death, Cynthia becomes a kind of living document of the effects of time
on flesh.37 The book's closing words perpetuate the image of her fading, as
if, in order to enshrine the essence of his work as immortal, Propertius had to
deflect temporality onto themerely mortal portion of his writing, themateria
thatwould absorb time's destructive force.Here too thepoet recalls theopening
of the Monobiblos, but this time in order to ascribe Cynthia's beauty to a flaw
in his vision (oculis, 2), a falsification of poetic language. The book's opening
elegies maintained the connection between poetry's power tomemorialize and
themistress' beauty: carmina eruntformae totmonumenta tuae (3.2.18). Now
feminineforma is repudiated, leaving themale poet'smonumental song standing
in isolation. In 3.23, where the perishability of wooden materia, not flesh, is
at stake, Cynthia's words, rather than her beauty, are lost and consigned to the
domain of theephemeral.
MATERIAL TRANSFORMATIONS: OVID AMORES1.11--12
Ovid's obsessive Propertian intertextuality,inolder scholarship a symptomof
the emaciation of a genre, inmore recent assessments is the basis for the originality
and power of his elegy.38 But in order to write the figure of the lover back into
existence, Ovid needs to reverse themomentum of Propertius' transcendence
of subjective elegy and its defining themes (servitude, utility-driven poetry, the
primacy of Cupid). Whereas Propertius used the occasion of the tablets' loss to
extricate his immortal authorial voice from the confines of its perishable materia,
Ovid testsandexposes thecontradictionsof Propertius' strategyof differentiation,
depicting an author still enslaved to desire, vitally dependent on the offices
of surrogates, exposed to the dubious fides (reliability) of persons, language,
and media. He comes to curse and reject his tablets, which, however, in their
duplicity, resemblenothing somuch as thecompulsively deceiving loverhimself.
In the Ovidian reading, the separation of author-master from lover-slave, 39writer
36. On Cynthia asmateria, Wyke 1987a, 1987b.
37. Putnam 1980: 108.
38. Boyd 1997: 1-18, and passim.
39. Hinds 2003: 1084: "Erotic elegy before Ovid had featured a disjunction in the first-person
voice between avery knowing poet and a very unknowing lover.Ovid closes thisgap, and achieves a

18. ROMAN:
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ofLost
Tablets 367
frommedium, poet frommateria, immortal from ephemeral, thatproduces the
Propertian elegist's authority is ripe for deconstruction. In thusconfronting and
rewritingPropertius' negotiation of authorial status,Ovid at thesame timebrings
back into play the anarchic energy and comic fury of the Catullan author-figure of
c.42, who, when his tabletswere stolen, ragedwith impotentvirtuosity.40
In his third book, Propertius rose above his ephemeral creations in a staged
agon: the autonomy of poetry as a differentiated domain of activity won out over
fictions of utility, immediacy, and situationally embedded speech; the triumphant
poet over the enslaved lover.4"This process, beginning in enslavement and
ending in triumph, ismeaningfully altered inOvid. The Ovidian speaker does
not approach the author's lectern by degrees; nor does he work hard to conceal
literariness within a fabric of amatory pretexts.42 Ovid easily takes for granted the
statusof poet/bard (vates) andauthor(auctor)Propertiusonly gradually achieved,
yet the fiction of a domineering Cupid drives him back to the quotidian struggles
and servility of the exclusus amator ("shut out lover"). Ovid recommences
elegiac love-servitude, yetwith persistent intertextualglances at itsdismantling in
Propertius Book 3.43The Ovidian lover creates his beginning in constant dialogue
with theclosure of thePropertian affair/text.
This project of rewriting the ending as an intertextually laden fresh start is
at work in Ovid's location of his lost tablets in his first book of Amores, when
Corinna has only recently appeared herself: ecce, Corinna venit (1.5.9). After
establishing her bodily presence in the poet's bedroom, she next appears as the
reluctant object of his epistolary attentions (dubitantem ... Corinnam, 1.11.5)
in a pair of poems that rewrite the lost tablets scenario in a dramatic present
tense. 1.11, which contains the second occurrence of Corinna's name, on one
level seems intentionally juxtaposed with the immediacy of 1.5, plunging lover
and reader into the murky uncertainties of mediation and absence, but in another
sense, the implicit textuality of 1.5 is concretely embodied and explored within
this complementary framework of faulty go-betweens and duplicitous media. The
bedroom scene in 1.5 may seem finally to make the mistress vividly present
to Ovid's readers after his various strategies of withholding, displacing, and
delaying (Amores 1.1-4); yet here too Ovid creates a literary vision of Corinna,
closer fitbetween literaryand erotic conventions, by featuring aprotagonistwho loves as knowingly
as hewrites."
40. See the remarksof Dimundo 2000: 244.
41. Alvarez Hermnndez 1997 traces the themeof servitium throughPropertius' oeuvre; onBook
3 and its "adi6sdefinitivo al servitium amoris," see 197ff.; on 3.23, 257-61. Ross 1975: 122writes of
theparvi Amores inPropertius' chariot: "these happy creatures have nothing in common with the
dominatingAmor of theprevious books."
42. Keith 1992.
43. AsMcKeown (1989: 75-76) observes, OvidAmores 1.1-3 answerPropertius' programmatic
sequence in3.1-3. Cameron 1968 argues that the sequence of threeprogrammatic elegies opening
Amores I is abyproduct of the revised edition. But the fact (or fiction?) of the second edition should
not qualify the significance of the elegies' arrangement.

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whose namemeans both "girl"and "pupil"of the eye, andwhose appearance is
characterizedby Philip Hardie as a "set-piece of enargeia."" The description of
Corinna's fleshconsists ina series ofwords enumeratingbody parts in"fetishistic
metonymisation," while the act of love itself is teasingly omitted (cetera quis
nescit?, "Whodoes not know the rest?"25).45The epiphany of Corinna in 1.5 isa
textual simulation of presence and erotic immediacy, on which the crepuscular
light and revealing/concealing mode of description provide apt commentary.46
The doubtful, mediated Cynthia of Amores 1.11-12, on this reading, does
not represent a dramatic departure from theCynthia of 1.5, who emerges in
many ways as a "shadowy presence."47 Even as Ovid apparently moves from
presence/availability/immediacy (1.5) to absence/refusal/mediation (1.11-12),
from "yes" in person to "no" by letter,he continues, albeit in a different key,
hismeditation on absence and therepresentationof persons in/throughtexts.This
persistent interest inmediated amor marks an Ovidian innovation: Propertius
waited until theend of theaffair to reveal the roleplayed bywriting tablets inhis
courtship of Cynthia; Ovid brings thedynamic of textual surrogacy powerfully
to the fore in his firstbook. The immediacy of Propertian elegy is commonly
overestimated, yet it remains significant thatPropertius did not overtly stage a
scene of communication-via-tablets until theywere conveniently lost: we are
allowed to see themediating device only at themoment of its obsolescence.48
Ovid locates themediating capacities (andopacities) of written messages at the
core of amatory experience.49
Whereas Propertius presented the fragile vessel of elegiac communication
in a valedictory gesture,Ovid recovers theday-to-day transactionsof the tablets
along with the vacillating temper of the lover. No longer the object of nostalgia
for a vates on the Equiline, the tablets now appear in active use, the unreliable
mediator of aprofoundly duplicitous author.
Colligere incertoset inordine ponere crines
docta neque ancillas inter habenda Nape
inqueministeriis furtivaecognita noctis
utilis et dandis ingeniosa notis,
saepe venire adme dubitantemhortataCorinnam,
saepe laborantifida reperta
mihi,
44. Hardie 2002: 43; onCorinna's name, 2.
45. Hardie 2002: 45.
46. Hardie 2002: 42-44.
47. The phrase is
McCarthy's (1998: 184).
48. Comparably, tabletsmake an appearance inTibullus only at the end of the second book,
and in the disreputable hands of the lena: lena necat miserum Phryne furtimque tabellas Iocculto
portans itque reditque sinu, 2.6.45-46.
49. McCarthy 1998: 184 notes the absence of Corinna from these elegies ostensibly focused
on her as love-object: "instead ... the instrumentswith which the lover attempts towin her occupy
center stage."

20. ROMAN:
A History of Lost Tablets 369
accipe et addominam peraratasmane tabellas
perfer et obstantes sedula pellemoras.
nec silicum venae nec durum inpectore ferrum,
nec tibi simplicitas ordinemaior adest;
credibile est et te sensisse Cupidinis arcus:
inme militiae signa tuere tuae.
siquaeret quid agam, spe noctis vivere dices;
cetera fertblanda cera notatamanu.
dum loquor,hora fugit: vacuae bene redde tabellas,
verum continuo fac tamen illa legat.
aspicias oculos mando frontemque legentis:
et tacitovultu scire futura licet.
necmora, perlectis rescribatmulta iubeto:
odi, cum late splendida cera vacat.
conprimatordinibus versus, oculosquemoretur
margine inextremo litterarasameos.
quid digitos opus est graphio lassare tenendo?
hoc habeat scriptum tota tabella "veni."
non ego victrices lauroredimire tabellas
necVenerismedia ponere inaedemorer.
subscribam
VENERI FIDAS SIBINASOMINISTRAS
DEDICAT.ATNUPER VILE FUISTISACER.
Nape, skilled at gathering and putting in order scattered locks and not
tobe reckoned among handmaids, of proven usefulness in the services of
the stealthynight andgifted in thegiving of signs,who have often urged
Corinna to come to me when she was hesitating, and have often been
found faithful tome in times of difficulty, take these tablets inscribed
[with a message] this morning and bear them to your mistress and
zealously drive away any delays that stand in your way. You have no
veins of flint or hard iron in your heart; nor do you have a lack of
sophistication greater than [is usual for] your station. It is believable
that you too have felt Cupid's bow: defend the standards of your own
campaign in helping me. If she asks how I am, you will say that I live
by the hope of a night; the wax marked by my loving hand conveys
the rest. While I speak, time flees. Give her the tablets when she is
quite free, but make sure that she reads them right away all the same.
I bid you watch her eyes and forehead as she reads: even from a silent
expression one may learn what is to come. Without delay, when the
whole letter has been read, enjoin her to write back a long answer: I
hate it when the gleaming wax is broadly blank. Let her compress the
lines in rows, and let letters marked on the far edge of the margin detain
my eyes. What need is there to tire her fingers by holding the pen?
Let the whole tablet have only this written on it: "Come!" I should not
hesitate to wreath the victorious tablets with laurel and set them in the

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middle of Venus' temple. I would write underneath: "To Venus Naso
dedicates the servants thatwere faithful to him; but recently you were
cheapmaple."
Ovid's most striking innovation is the introductionof the slave-girl toaccom
pany the tablets andmonitor Corinna's response. It is true that the incorporation
of paired intermediaries, far from being unprecedented, is one of the few true
elements of continuity in the tradition:Catullus' tablets and hendecasyllables;
Propertius' tablets and puer; Ovid's tablets and ancilla. Yet Ovid is the first
to depict both tablets and slave simultaneously involved in ferryingmessages
between lover andbeloved. Catullus' hendecasyllables andPropertius' slave are
put in play after the loss of the tablets: in neither instance is the sending of
messages itselfmade theproblematic focus. InAmores 1.1 1,Ovid broodswith
some intensity on the intricacies and anxieties of communication-by-surrogate:
he amplifies themediating role of the tablets through their servile double. The
two figures complement and comment on each other: both tablets and Nape are
marked with an illomen, both are subordinate"ministers"of the lover-poet's de
sires (ministras,ministeriis), both arepresumed useful (utilis) and faithful (fida;
fidas), andwhile the tablets areduplices (see discussion below on 1.12), Nape is
not (entirely) simplex (nec ... simplicitas).50Finally, theslave girl, like the tablets,
is an aesthetically freighted figure: she is skilled (docta) at ordering (in ordine
ponere) stray locks,5' and resourceful (ingeniosa) at giving signs. The tradition
of lost tablets has hitherto examined issues of authorship and textual mediation:
Ovid's poem is no exception, but he is the most emphatic in splitting the office
of mediator into two figures, and presents the most richly elaborated scene of
mediated communication.
Yet the key question, insistently posed throughout Ovid's oeuvre from Hero
ides to exile poetry, iswhether messages can be relied upon to reach their target
and achieve their intended effect. While the Ovidian lover appears optimistic, his
numerous (sometimes conflicting) admonitions and suspiciously rosypredictions
only serve to underline the absence of any real certainty regarding Corinna's
response.52 The problematic status of intermediaries and the difficulty of asserting
control over them in the Ovidian perspective can be inferred from comparison of
the long honorific address toNape with the spare imperatives directed atCatullus'
hendecasyllables and Propertius' slave-boy. Propertius' puer is the instrument of
50. All of thisandmore observed byHenderson 1991: 76; note alsoDamon 1990: 227;McCarthy
1998: 183;Fitzgerald 2000: 61.
51. Nape ingeneral is imbuedwith metapoetic traits (Henderson 1991: 77ff.): her namemeans
"grove" inGreek (Henderson78 andFitzgerald 2000: 61);Nape's "very function echoes thefunction
of writing" (McCarthy 1998: 183); hair and arrangement of hair are closely linkedwith poetic
concerns inRoman poetry (Oliensis 2002).
52. The inability of Ovid's letter to "compel Corinna's reply" and consequent importance of
theancilla as supplement to the letterarediscussed byMcCarthy 1998: 182-83.

22. ROMAN:
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a newly commanding author-figure: the role of writer now aligns with that of
master (dominus) by contrastwith the servus amoris ("slave of love")who used
the tablets to entreat his domina ("mistress"). Propertius does not go out of his
way, asOvid does, toput inquestion his intermediaries' reliability.Ultimately,
as recent readings have demonstrated, the maid Nape cannot but confirm Ovid's
position asmaster: he is thecontrolling forcebehind thisdepiction of thewriter's
failure to control his surrogates.53 But it still matters that Nape is yet another
figure of low status, like the doorkeeper of 1.6, towhom the lover is driven by his
condition of amor toaddressundignified pleading and flattery.
Ovid's still servile
status is neatly emphasized by the ambiguous phrase ad dominam at 1.1 1.7, which
means both "to my mistress" and "to your mistress."54 The master's power is at
leastqualified in the fictional register.55
The lover-author'sobsessive attempts to
control the reception of his message and the recipient's response (1.1 1.15-24) are
inproportion tohis lively perception of theunreliability ofmedia.
The ominous hints of the failure of mediated communication in 1.11 are
confirmed in 1.12: the revelation of the full extent of this failure goes hand in
handwith theoverturning of Propertian claims of utility and triumph.Propertius
observed thathis tablets, thoughmade of common boxwood (vulgari buxo), had
been faithful and useful to him (mansere fideles; effectus promeruere bonos).
Ovid prospectively imagines that he will make the same past-tense statement as
Propertius (1. 11.27-28). As it turns out, he does not. The following poem converts
thevictrices tabellae ("victorious tablets") intoduplices tabellae ("twofold/two
faced tablets")who delude the loverwith false hope.56
Fletemeos casus: tristes rediere tabellae;
infelix hodie litteraposse negat.
omina suntaliquid:modo cum discedere vellet,
ad limen digitos restitit icta Nape.
missa foras iterum limen transire memento
cautius atque alte sobria ferre pedem.
Itehinc, difficiles, funebria ligna, tabellae,
tuque,negaturis cera refertanotis,
53. On anxiety over surrogacy,Fitzgerald 2000: 59-68; McCarthy 1998: 182-84. On theclaims
of mastery behind the elegiac lover's apparent powerlessness, McCarthy 1998: passim. Note in
particular 184: "[Nape] is an instrument that isuseful to thepoet precisely because she escapes the
control of the fictive lover."
54. McKeown 1989 ad loc.
55. McKeown 1989: 122; on "the ironiesof an eliteman being dependent on a slave,"McCarthy
1998: 182; onOvid's deliberately incongruoususe of lofty language inaddressingNape, Du Quesnay
1973: 31.
56. Damon 1990: 227 demonstrates how 1.12 at leastpartially responds to and overturns 1.11.
Two other allusions lie behind the reversal, both observed by Du Quesnay 1973: 33-35. First,Ovid
alludes toPropertius 2.14a.23-28, the dedication of the triumphant lover's "spoils," but replaces
present triumphwith overhasty anticipation. Second, in line 15 (dum loquor,horafugit), he alludes
toHorace Odes 1.11.7-8 (dum loquimur,fugerit invida / aetas), conspicuously disregarding the
appended advice (quamminimum credula postero).

23. 372 CLASSICAL
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quam, puto, de longae collectam florecicutae
melle sub infamiCorsica misit apis.
at tamquam
minio penitusmedicata rubebas:
ille color vere sanguinulentus erat.
proiectae triviis iaceatis, inutile lignum,
vosque rotae frangatpraetereuntisonus.
illum etiam, qui vos ex arborevertit inusum,
convincam puras non habuissemanus;
praebuit illa arbormisero suspendia collo,
carnifici diraspraebuit illa cruces;
illadedit turpesraucisbubonibus umbras,
volturis in ramiset strigis ova tulit.
his ego commisi nostros insanusamores
molliaque addominam verba ferendadedi?
aptiushae capiantvadimonia garrulacerae,
quas aliquis duro cognitor ore legat;
interephemeridasmelius tabulasque iacerent,
inquibus absumptas fleretavarusopes.
ergo ego vos rebusduplices pro nomine sensi:
auspicii numerus non erat ipseboni.
quid precer iratus,nisi vos cariosa senectus
rodat,et inmundocera sit alba situ?
Weep for my misfortune: the tablets have returned with a sad reply.
The unhappy message says she cannot today. There is something in
omens: when she was about to go out just now, Nape struck her toes
against the thresholdand faltered.Next timeyou are sent out, remember
to cross the thresholdmore carefully and lift your foot high in sober
manner. Go hence, obstructive tablets, funereal pieces of wood, and
you, wax crammed with marks that convey refusal, gathered, I be
lieve, by the Corsican bee from the flower of the long hemlock and
sent beneath its infamous honey. Yet you had a blushing color as if
you were dyed deeply with cinnabar: that color was in fact the color
of blood. Lie on the crossroads where I throw you, useless piece of
wood, and let the weight of a passing wheel crush you. As for that
man who converted you from a tree to an object of use, I will prove
that he did not have pure hands. That tree furnished a gallows for a
wretched neck, furnished dreadful crosses for the hangman. That tree
provided disgraceful cover for grim-sounding horned owls, and bore
in its branches the eggs of the vulture and screech-owl. Did I madly
entrust my love to tablets such as these and give them soft words to
carry to my mistress? More appropriately would these wax tablets re
ceive wordy guarantees for some legal representative to read in dour
tones; they would be better lying among account books and day-ledgers
in which a miser weeps over his lost wealth. Therefore I have found
you "double" in reality in accord with your name; your very number

24. ROMAN:
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was not of good omen. What am I to pray in my anger, except that
rotting old age gnaw at you, and that your wax grow white from foul
neglect?
Ovid putsPropertius' claims of fidelity andutility to the test,exposing the tablets
as an ineffective betrayer, thePropertianending as a false conclusion. Thewriting
tablets, largely successful, transparentconveyors ofmessages inPropertius, are
now re-invested by Ovid with amood of ironic failure reminiscent of Catullus'
ineffectualflagitatio. IfPropertius is thepresiding intertextualdeity of 1.1 1, the
tablets' failure in 1.12 activates theCatullan poetics of comically exaggerated
verbal violence.57 In retrospect,we can see how 1.11was already preparing for
this failurebefore ithappened:Ovid hovers overCorinna's anticipated response,
wavering, in his desiring mind, between images of scriptorial plenitude (the
wax filledwith letters frommargin tomargin) andminimalism (the singleword
"come").The duplicitous tablets,offering aperverse response toboth prayers, are
"stuffed"with a single, unvaryingmessage (negaturis cera refertanotis, 1.12.8).
The duplicity of the tablets can be read on several levels. First, Ovid's
pun finds in the tablets' physical form ("double tablets") an augury of their
dishonest nature (27-28).58 Further, the tablets' double structurealludes to the
poet's literarydevice: Ovid literally doubles the lost tablets poem, making two
elegies out of one theme, and thus consciously introduces one of his signature
techniques.59The revelation of the tablets' "duplicity" reinforces the already
strikingduality of tabletsand slave introduced in 1.11 (discussed above). In1.12,
duality becomes disjunction: the tabletsarecursed and rejected (1.12.7ff.);Nape,
still considered useful for futureendeavors, is letoffwith a light admonishment
(5-6).6" More broadly, duplicity plays a central role in the poetics of Ovidian
elegy.6' The Propertian lover is hardly innocent, hardly indifferent to the allures
of other women, but the dominant stress falls on his own self-deluding mind,
prey to paranoid (occasionally vindicated) fears of Cynthia's infidelity. From
the beginning, Ovid makes it clear that his lover is a cunning and cynical
player in the field of love. His text revels in its own duplicity, perhapsmost
impressively in a later pairing of elegies where the ancilla reappears as a lover
incompetition with Corinna (2.7-8): the two-fold structureof thependant-piece
is the hinge aroundwhich deception turns.62
Ovid curses his tablets for their
57. Yet note howOvid's emphasis on destruction anddecay opposes thecreative, compositional
gesture of his predecessor:Ovid's rudesend-off of his tablets (itehinc, "gohence!") pointedly inverts
Catullus' invocation of his hendecasyllables (adeste, "be present"; "come help").
58. Hardie 2002: 1-2, on the complicated play with notions of literal and figurative in these
lines.
59. On paired poems inPropertius andOvid, Davis 1977; note the observations of Henderson
1991: 78 on doubling.
60. Ovid isnot ending courtship-oriented elegy: he still needs a go-between: Davis 1977: 81.
61. And inOvidian poetry generally: Hardie 2002: 1-3.
62. On thispairing,Henderson 1991-1992; on theconnections with 1.11-12, 1991: 76.

25. 374 CLASSICAL
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duplicity, but as textual surrogates, theynot inappropriately
mirror the tendencies
of theirmaster.63The immoderate rage exhibited by the poet-lover towardhis
tablets in 1.12 is at least partly explained by their infuriating duplication of his
own duplicity.
Unlike Propertius,who representshimself as amaster/author calmly incontrol
of his slave/medium, Ovid depicts the lover's bright hopes of triumphcrumbling
into vindictive rage. Once again, the key issues of surrogacy and control are played
out simultaneously in the textualand servile registers: to fail, asmaster, tocontrol
the slave/surrogate, is to fail, as author, to control the text. When Nape trips
unluckily over the threshold-physically acting out the role of unsteady vessel64
-she supplies yet another instance of amedium (starting with the hexameter verse
at the book's opening) that goes awry and thwarts its author. As if to emphasize
the hint of a slippery poetic medium not always obedient to its author's controlling
will, Ovid places special emphasis, as in the book's opening joke, on a problem
with Nape's foot (ad limendigitos restitit ictaNape. / missa foras iterum limen
transirememento / cautius atque alte sobria ferre pedem; "Nape struckher toes
against the threshold and faltered. Next time you are sent out, remember to cross
the threshold more carefully and lift your foot high in sober manner," 1. 12.4-6).
Propertius 3.23 belongs to a closural sequence inwhich thepoet/bard achieves
control over his materia, detachment from love-mania, and transcendence of
his perishable wooden medium. InAmores 1.12, by contrast, the poet-lover
is at the mercy of the contingencies of message-bearing and messengers: this
representationof authorial impotence coheres well with thebroaderdynamic of
theAmores,whose foundinggesture ascribes thedeterminationofmeter andgenre
toCupid's mischievous theft.
In representing a less than masterful author-figure, Ovid keeps his persona
close to the pulse of utility-driven poetry and its frustrations. Unlike Propertius'
poet/bard, who recalls occasions both of quarrelling (3.23.12-14) and reunion
(15-19) with apparent equanimity and detachment, the Ovidian lover's angry
cursing of the tablets shows that his writing is firmly established in the domain
of servile courtship: the mollia verba ("soft words") directed at his mistress
are valuable only insofar as they succeed. When they fail to serve his uses
(inutile lignum), the lover concludes that the tablets have been schooled inmore
sinister modes of utility (vertit in usum; praebuit . . . praebuit ... dedit). It
was simply too convenient that Propertius happened to lose his tablets at the
particular moment when he was renouncing his amatory persona. Ovid rewrites
the origins of the loss: because the tablets did not get their author what he
63. This isnot theonly place Ovid connects duplicity, love,writing, andwax tablets. InOvid's
instructions to the lover inArs Amatoria 1,wax tablets andmessages sent on them are accorded
a lengthy discussion (437-86), perhaps not by accident separatedby only one topic fromdiscussion
of theuse of ancillae as intermediaries (351-98). Both here and atArs Am. 3.463-98, writing tablets
are explicitly associated with duplicity.
64. Cf. Horace Epistles 1.13 andOliensis 1998: 185-88.

26. ROMAN:
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Tablets 375
wanted (they did not succeed in seducing themistress), he actively consigns
them to destruction and decay. Propertius pretends to have moved beyond the
poetics of utility; Ovid suggests that the tablets were lost or cast aside because
they were not useful enough to the impatient lover.65Ovid's act of willful
rejection not only reverses Propertius' disavowal of a utility-driven poetics; it
exposes thepretext of fortuitous loss,which afforded at least amodest veneer of
protection from the charge of tendentious self-representation.Ovid's terminally
self-interested amator rewritesPropertius' coy expression of regret to reveal the
darker impulses of an authorwho deflects onto his ownmedium thedestructive
anger thataccompanies failure.
Ovid's extended commentary on Propertius becomes especially explicit at
1.12.23-26, where he again replaces reluctantdispossession with willful rejection:
interephemeridasmelius tabulasque iacerent,/ inquibus absumptasfieret avarus
opes ("[the tablets] would be better lying among the day-ledgers and account
books inwhich amiser weeps over his lost wealth," 1.12.25-26). The language
describing the fateof the tablets (iacerent) and themiser (fieret) recalls theabject
pose of the lover (cf. flete, 1.12.1). The lover likewise lives or dies as each
day records a "profit"or "loss" (infelix hodie litteraposse negat, "theunhappy
message says she cannot today," 1.12.2). Propertius ascribes this focus on a
minute timescale to his own previous persona; forOvid everything seemingly
hangs on present outcomes.66Yet even asOvid relocates thepoet-lover's interests
emphatically in thepresent, he remainsawarehow Propertius deflected the force
of time onto his mistress in order to conserve immortality for his own ingenium,
jettisoned the tablets in order to cast his authorial voice in bronze. The closing
words ofAmores 1.12, alluding toPropertius'malicious prophecy in3.24/25 of
Cynthia's aging,67 condemn his writing tablets to old age and neglect: quid precer
iratus, nisi vos cariosa senectu / rodat, et inmundo cera sit alba situ? ("What am I
to pray inmy anger, except that rotting old age gnaw at you, and that your wax
growwhite from foul neglect?" 29-30). For thedisillusioned Propertian loverof
3.24/5, anger belongs to the past: nec tamen irata ianuafracta manu ("[farewell
... ]door never, in spite of all, shattered by my angry fist," 3.25. 10).68Ovid's irate
lover (iratus, 29) answers Propertius' detached equanimity by reverting to the
comically ferocious cursing of Catullus. At the same time, Ovid's allusion to the
destructive end of thePropertian affair/textprospectively signals the limited life
span of Ovid's own mistress and elegiac project, not yet repudiated, but eventually
65. The inversionof Propertius' scene byOvid, who replacesPropertius' saddepartureof tablets
with theunsuccessful returnof the tablets, is emphasized, as noted byMcKeown 1989 ad 1.12.1,
by an echo of sound: tristes rediere tabellae; doctae nobis periere tabellae; on self-interest and
utility,Davis 1977: 77.
66. As Davis 1977: 80 observes, the paired elegies appear to be setwithin a tight time frame
(mane, 1.11.7; hodie, 1.12.2); but seeDamon 1990: 276n.33.
67. McKeown 1989 ad loc.
68. Translation based closely onGoold 1990.

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to be replaced by other objects of poetic attention: he too will make a transition to
higher literaryground (Amores3.1).
Amores 1.11, like its predecessors in the lost tablets genre, is a drama of
composition tracinga path frommutable writing onwax (cera notatamanu, 14)
tocompleted text (the anticipated temple inscription in lines 27-28). Indeed, the
elegy's opening words already draw the reader'smind to thoughts of aesthetic
ordering and composition: colligere incertos et inordine ponere (1.11.1). 1.12
erases the putative victory inscription of 1.11.27-28 with its reportof failure,
anddestabilizes theneatly tracedtrajectoryfromwax topermanent scriptwith its
counter-narrativeof de-composition. The tabletswill rot inneglected senescence;
they are to be crushed (frangat) by a passing wagon. Previously viewed as an
integralentity (tabellas, 1.11 7),69 thepoet's writing tablets are now dismantled
verbally into their component parts (cera, "wax," 1.8-10; lignum, "wood,"
1.12.13-20).70 The lines of cursing at the same time recallHorace's schetliasmos
of the planter of the near-deadly tree in c.2.13.7' Horace juxtaposes this story
of a close call with a falling branch with Alcaeus' and Sappho's singing in the
underworld so as toarticulate"anunspoken thought:ifhe escapes the
meaningless
accidents of fortune. . .,perhaps he may himself have the same capacity to enthrall,
toconsole, and to survive."72
Horace engineers a special status forhis own person
as author,physically vulnerable in thepresent, yet vouchsafed auniquepromise of
canonization alongside his lyricpredecessors. However gently humorous in tone,
c.2. 13 is rightlycounted byDavis among thoseodes that"authenticate"
Horace's
role as lyric author:73themiraculous preservation of thepoet's life attests tohis
unique, sacrosanct status.Amores 1.12 responds inelegiac terms: if initially the
lover "lives in hope of a night" of love (spe noctis vivere, 1.1 1.13), refusal means
death. Ovid consciously trivializesHorace's (already semi-facetious) narrative
of life and death, and at the same time undermines the lyric poet's distinction
between "themeaningless accidents of fortune"andpoetry's transcendentpower
bymaking hiswooden literary instrumenttheagent of trivialmisfortune. Yet the
fact that Ovid lives to tell this story makes him more like the lyric speaker of
Horace c.2.13 thanhis irreverenttonemight initially suggest. Ovid's near-death
69. But also in two instancesmetonymically as cera ("wax," 1.1 1.14, 20).
70. McCarthy 1998: 183 observes that the eloquent tablets and capable Nape of 1.11 are
converted in 1.12 respectively intomere "wax andwood" and amere body "clumsywith drink."
71. On thisode's own dense fabricof topoi:Nisbet-Hubbard 1978 ad 2.13. On Ovid's allusion
to it,
McKeown 1989 ad loc.,Davis 1977: 77 among others.Note inparticular: theuse of thepronoun
ille in connection with cursing and the (grim) history of a tree;"mock-ferocious" (Nisbet-Hubbard
1978: 202) invective against pieces of wood (triste lignum,Odes 2.13.1 1; inutile lignum,Amores
1.1.2.13); the funereal atmosphere infusing both passages (funebria ligna, Amores 1.12.7); the
notion of awooden entity thatbetrays itsownmaster (caducum / indomini caput immerentis,Odes
2.13.12); poison (cicutae,Amores 1.12.9; venena, Odes 2.13.8); thenotion of impurehands (sacrilega
manu, Odes 2.13.2; puras non habuisse manus, Amores 1.12.16); bloody deeds (sanguinulentus,
Amores 1.12.12; cruore,Odes 2.13.7); andviolence tonecks (fregisse cervicem, Odes 2.13.6; misero
suspendia collo, Amores 1.12.17).
72. Nisbet-Hubbard 1978: 205.
73. Davis 1991: 78-89.

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experience similarly occasions privileged contact with poetic predecessors; his
poetry, likeHorace's, survives themisfortune itdocuments.
In precisely targeted acts of literary aggression, Ovid subverts the other
worldly ethos of the vates with magnificent, imaginative panache, yet without
foregoing either his eternity or his worldly prestige. Ovid's predecessors, how
ever, aremore thanjustgrist forhis ironic, intertextual
mill: Catullus,Horace, and
Propertius exert a powerful pull on theOvidian lover, defining the territoryand
termsof his subversion.Ovid playsCatullus' frustratedutility against theProper
tiandialectic of nostalgia and transcendence,while alludingmischievously to the
eternity of Horatian poetic voice amidst falling,wooden objects.Ovid's counter
vatic elegy nonetheless adheres at adeeper level to thedivision of authorialvoice
fromwooden materia thatiscommon to all three
models. Inburying his despised
tabletsbeneath a rich inventoryof invective themes, thepoet's virtuoso perfor
mance of cursing demonstrates independentpowers of vocal composition. Yet the
speakerofAmores 1.12, unlike his predecessors, receives no overtlymarked help
from intermediaries;he pushes himself toa furtherextremeof isolation, emphasiz
inghis separateness from thenow hated tablets throughcontrastive juxtaposition
of pronouns (his ego ... 1.12.21; ego vos ... 1.12.27).74Ovid's disreputable lover
ends upmodeling an authorial autonomy, and imposing a distinction between
ephemeralmateria and immortalpoetry,matched only by Horace, the "morally
serious" Augustan vates conventionally situated at the opposite end of the po
litical/poetic spectrum. In thebook's highly Horatian closing elegy, Ovid rivals
Horace inhis conception of poetry's supremacyover time:he distinguishes mere
mortalworks frompoetry's eternal fame (1.15.7-8), runsthroughexamples of po
etic immortality (9-30), asserts the superiorityof song over proverbially durable
materials (31-32), andpredicts thathis authorialEgo will go on living and speak
ing after his physical body is consumed by fire (ergo etiam cumme supremus
adederit ignis, Ivivam,parsque mei multa superstes erit, 41-42).
One final intertext, removed fromOvid by a considerable expanse of time,
provides illuminatingcommentaryon the themesof literary
materiality andpoetic
eternity examined above. In "The
Wood-Pile," thepenultimate poem inRobert
Frost's North of Boston, the speaker goes out "walking in the frozen swamp one
gray day," and is about to turn back, when he decides to continue on: "No, Iwill
go on farther-and we shall see" (1-3). At last he comes upon an old abandoned
pile of firewood-"older sure than this year's cutting, /Or even last year's or the
year's before" (27-28). This curiously neglected wood-pile becomes theobject of
thepoet's contemplation.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And thepile somewhat sunken.Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it, though, on one side was a tree
74. On Ovid's independence of his surrogates, seeMcCarthy 1998: 184.

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Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall.
29-34
The wood is viewed both as poetic subject matter and as raw material: "his
handiwork on which /He spent himself, the labor of his ax" (36-37). Saved from
the continual cycle of useful works by accidental neglect, thewood-pile is now
immortalized by Frost in its sublime uselessness ("far from a useful fireplace,"
38). Frost, not unlike Roman poets who lose theirwriting tablets, represents the
loss (or in this case, forgetful abandonment) of a wooden item of everyday use
in order to isolate the unique power of poetry and the unusual interests of the poet.
The final cadences of the poem slow down to evoke a process of decomposition
captured in freeze-frame, an ephemerality exquisitely prolonged: Frost's wood
pile, likeCynthia's body and theOvidian tablets, is endlessly exposed to "the
slow smokeless burning of decay."
AUTHORIAL OBJECTS:MARTIAL APOPHORETA
1--21
Martial inherited from Ovid a sophisticated awareness of his own ubiquity
as circulated text. Martial makes a phrase from Ovid's exile poetry (toto notus
inorbe, "known throughout the entire world")75 the theme introducinghis first
numbered collection of epigrams and a key facet of his poetic self-representation
throughout his oeuvre. The choice of epigram as a genre contributes a new
element to issues of authorship and circulation: epigrams afford the impression
of being linked with, even literally inscribed on, a given object, occasion, or
person (whose body ismarked with the epigrammatist's stigmatizing words).76
The epigrammatic author is thus everywhere and nowhere: he "lives," like Ovid,
expansively in the mouths and hands of readers scattered over the world. To a
certain degree we must concede the fictional nature of the notion of epigrammatic
dispersal: whereas many individual epigrams affect to be wholly absorbed in
discrete, momentary transactions, the book as awhole conveys the poet's carefully
integrated design along with the stamp of authorial identity.77 Yet Martial's many
remarks about plagiarism and spurious works published under his name imply
that his witty creations, easily memorized for recitation in a diversity of contexts,
often passed singly into the hands of an avid public, who might not always scruple
to distinguish master from imitator. The epigrammatist, who does not so much
75. Epigrams 1.1.2, 6.64.26 ifwe readorbe; cf. Ovid Tristia 4.10.1 28;Amores 1.15.8.
76. Epigrams 6.64.24-26: at si quid nostrae tibi bilis inusserit ardor, / vivet et haerebit totoque
legetur inorbe, / stigmata nec vafra delebit Cinnamus arte; or 12.61.11, frons haec stigmate non
meo notanda est. Cf. Suetonius Div. Jul. 73: perpetua stigmata inflicted on Caesar by Catullus'
poem.
77. On books andbook arrangement in
Martial, Fowler 1995, Citroni 1988,Merli 1993,White
1974 and 1996.

30. ROMAN:
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suppress as advertise this conversion of his poetry into awidely circulated (and
sometimes counterfeited) commodity,78is interested, likeOvid, in subverting the
imageof the literaryauthor: inplace of the exclusive doctus poeta, Martial sets
up a humorously disreputable figureprofiting (orvainly seeking to profit) from
immensecelebritywhile being exposed to the indignities, venality, and sordidness
ofmass circulation.YetMartial's innovations arguablygo furtherthanOvid's in
deconstructing poetic authority.All lost tabletspoems up to and includingOvid
installavividmimesis of authorialvoice-whether exerting itself inangeragainst
a petty thief, dictating to a slave from anEsquiline residence, or playing thepart
of frustratedlover-in place of the stolen/lost/demoted object thatwas inscribed
with thepoet's words. Martial challenges the priority of voice over object that
was the implicit themeof the lost tablets tradition,andperhaps for thatreason,has
not been understood as partof it.
Martial's predecessors struggle to replace the speaking tabletswith the lively
force of authorial personality. In each case, issues of utility, integrityof voice,
temporality, and literary value are at stake. In Propertius' version, where the
strongestcase ismade for theauthor's transcendenceof hismedium, thephysically
vulnerable, use-oriented tabletsare replacedby an integralvoice thatspurnsday
to-day transactions,values poetry overwealth, and lives on after the instruments
that made it available have decayed and perished. Martial, in one of his earliest
collections entitled Apophoreta, engages with these themes on several fronts.
In this book, Martial devises the fiction of a Saturnalian party at which guests
receive small gifts "to be taken away"with them:79each epigram notionally
functions as a gift-tag for thecorresponding object. This fiction can be analyzed
in termsof a series ofmoves thatinvert the traditionalstrategieswhereby Roman
poets defined literaryvalue.Whereas Roman poetry traditionallydistinguishes
its own value from that of quotidian utility, Martial's book composes itself
out of objects of everyday use. Propertius and others carefully shield poetry
from the ephemerality associated with expendable objects;Martial enters into
the world of such objects to the extent that they "are" his poetry. By bringing
about so close a convergence between poetry and object, gift-tag and authorial
voice, Martial destabilizes the ingeniumlmateria distinction that traditionally
separated the poet's deathless talent from the ephemeral matter he molded in
devising his creations.80These novel fictions have consequences for theconcept
of authorialvoice: ratherthantranscending
materiality, theepigrammatist's voice
78. On awriter who publishes slander falsely ascribed to
Martial: 10.3, 5; on plagiarists, 1.29,
38, 52, 53, 66, 72; 2.20; 10.100; 11.94. Martial's representation of plagiarism and its aesthetic
implications are examined in a forthcoming article byMira Seo.
79. On theSaturnaliancontext ofMartial's poetry,Citroni 1989;Leary 1996 and 1998; regarding
apophoreta, cf. Petronius Satyrica 56, Leary 1996: 9 andUllman 1941; but see the remarksof Fowler
1995: 223.
80. On Martial's striking phrase materiarum ingenium (12 praef.), Gowers 1993: 245 and
Salemme 1976.

31. 380 CLASSICAL
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isdispersed amidst a series ofmoveable objects, theauctor absorbed intohis own
materia.
The poetry-book itself can be counted among such objects. In the book's
best-known sequence,Martial presents a setof "portableclassics," centralworks
of Greek and Roman literature converted into a compressed-appropriately
epigrammatic-format (14.183-96). In
Martial's materialistic universe, theworks
of his predecessors are scrutinizedasobjects, attractiveparty-gifts noted forphys
ical characteristics.The book seen as attractiveobject of consumption now takes
center stage in
Martial. The qualities that
make thebook interestingareprecisely
itsvenal qualities thathelp it sell at thebookshops.8'The authorhimself becomes
a charming, physical featureof thebook: his portrait is featuredon theopening
page (14.186). But Martial is also interested in the production side of things.
The book's opening poem with disarming jocularity introduces central issues
surrounding theact of writing.
Divitis alternas et pauperis accipe sortes:
praemia convivae det suaquisque suo.
"suntapinae tricaequeet siquid vilius istis."
quis nescit? vel quis tammanifesta negat?
sedquid agam potiusmadidis, Saturne, diebus,
quos tibipro caelo filius ipsededit?
vis scribamThebas Troiamvemalasve Mycenas?
"lude," inquis, "nucibus."perdere nolo nuces.
14.1.5-12
Receive the lots of rich and poor man in alternation: let each one give
his table companion gifts suited to his means.82 "They are trifles and
distraction and anything of lessworth, ifpossible."Who does not know
it? Or who denies what is so evident? But what have I better to do
on thedrink-soaked days which, Saturn, your son himself gave you in
exchange for the sky? You want me to write about Thebes, Troy, or
wicked Mycenae? "Play with nuts" you say. I do not want to lose my
nuts.
Martial's readersarehere offered anearly example of his famous self-denigration.
the conceit that the gifts he is offering up, viz., his epigrams, are worth nothing
(sunt apinae tricaeque et si quid vilius istis);83 they are at the same time treated
to the first instance of self-defense through the tactic of anticipation (quis tam
manifesta negat?). The epigrammatist testily asks if instead he should write
about "Thebes,Troy, orwicked Mycenae" (ThebasTroiamvemalasve Mycenas).
The interlocutor, tellingly, does not take him up on this offer, but evidently
81. Cf. 1.1: ne tamen ignores ubi simvenalis....
82. Iadopt here the text and interpretationof Leary 1996.
83. Leary 1996 ad loc. observes that,within the scheme of gifts suited to guests' means,
epigrams are gifts appropriate to apoor poet.

32. ROMAN:
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Tablets 381
preferring no poetry to bad or pretentious poetry, suggests: "playwith nuts"
(lude ... nucibus).84
Martial, returningyet more forcefully to the theme of self
denigration, replies thathe does notwant to lose his nuts (perderenolo nuces). In
otherwords, he will play with his epigrams, which, in being utterly valueless,
affordno riskof loss.85
The evident concern here with aesthetic "play" (lusus) builds on elegiac
precedent. For thewell-known elegiac pairing of ludere/amorousplay and lud
ere/poetic play,Martial substitutesapairing ofwriting (scribere)with Saturnalian
dice-playing (ludere). Infact, thealternativepresentedby the introductorypoem's
closing couplet (vis scribam ... ? lude . . .nucibus) precisely defines theorganiza
tionof thebook's opening sequence.86Following the two introductoryepigrams,
thebook's first 19 gifts fall into highly coherent groupings of object-types: 3
11 (writingmaterials), 12-13 (cash boxes), 14-19 (materials for dice-playing),
20-21 (writingmaterials). The twomajor series concernwriting (scribere) and
dice-playing (ludere).20-21 roundoff thesequence, embracing thegamingwithin
thewriting sequence; the interveningpair on cash boxes (12-13) make an appro
priate transition, and balance 20-21. The return towriting in20-21, moreover,
suggests that the sequence 3-21 constitutes a cohesive structuralunit-a "pa
rade"sequence ofmetapoetic objects. Saturnaliandice-playing, thusalignedwith
writing and poetic composition, introduces a new element into the traditional
use of financialmetaphor to describe poetic practices and values. The themes
of arbitrarinessand chance, furtherreflected in thedinner party's lots,may find
an aesthetic correlate in the reader's enjoyment of surprising juxtapositions and
unusual objects fortuitously cropping up fromepigram toepigram.The epigrams
that compose the work, moreover, are gambled with insofar as they stand poised
between thevast gain of literaryeternityand immediatewastage or loss-although
Martial consoles himself with the realization that, by comparison with the vast
outlay of epic, epigrams entail little risk.
Why not roll thedice, then?
Yetmore relevant is the specific confrontation betweenMartial's Saturnalian
fiction and the elegiac tradition.Whereas elegy distinguished poetic memorial
frommere wealth, Martial introducesaprovocative new emphasis on the simple
price of objects: the reader is invited to scrutinize each gift within the scheme
of alternating lots in terms of its cash value.87 Gambling is all about money, an
84. Martial may also be implying that themythological topics listed are a kind of lusus or
frivolity in theirown right; cf. 4.49, where he defends his epigram against the charge of triviality
(nescit, crede mihi, quid sint epigrammata, Flacce, / qui tantum lusus illa iocosque vocat, 1-2),
suggesting that thewriter on trite,mythological subjects ismore truly frivolous (ille magis ludit
qui scribitprandia saevi ITereos ... ,3-4). See Citroni 1968 andPreston 1920 onMartial's defense
of epigrammatic aesthetics.
85. For this interpretation,Leary 1996 ad loc.
86. On principles of ordering inBook 13 and 14, see Leary 1996: 13ff. and 1998: 40ff..
87. Whether or not the scheme of alternating lots can be applied to our text ofMartial 14 has
been long debated andmostly doubted: see, e.g., the remarksof Shackleton Bailey 1993: 2. I follow
Leary 1996 inbelieving that in our text of theApophoreta the principle of alternating lots largely