Sulpicia

Sulpicia is the author of six short poems (some 40 lines in all) published in the corpus of Albius Tibullus's poetry (poems 3.13-18), one of the few female poets of Ancient Rome whose work survives.

This article is about the Augustan poet. For the Domitianic poet, see Sulpicia (satirist). For other uses, see Sulpicia (disambiguation).

Life

Sulpicia lived in the reign of Augustus and was born around 40 BCE. She was the daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus and his wife Valeria; her uncle and guardian was Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus (64 BCE – 8 CE), an important patron of literature. Sulcipia's family were well-off citizens with connections to Emperor Augustus, since her uncle Messalla served as the commander for Augustus.[1]

Poetry

The surviving poetry consist of six short elegiac poems (3.13–18), and five poems addressed to a lover called Cerinthus, which are possibly by Tibullus. The Tibullus collection contains works also by other poets.[2]

Cerinthus was most likely a pseudonym, in the style of the day (like Catullus's Lesbia and Propertius's Cynthia). Cerinthus has sometimes been thought to refer to the Cornutus addressed by Tibullus in two of his Elegies, probably an aristocratic Caecilius Cornutus. The similarity in consonants and the resemblance between the Greek keras ("horn") and Latin cornu (also "horn") are among arguments cited in favour of this identification.[3] Recent criticism, however, has tended away from attempting to identify Cerinthus with an historical figure in favour of noting the literary implications of the pseudonym.[4]

Some critics[3][5] have challenged the view that the Sulpicia poems were authored by a woman; Hubbard suggests the content of the poems is too risqué to have been penned by an aristocratic woman in Rome, while Habinek and Holzberg both suggest that the poems are too sophisticated.[6][5] In an overview of Sulpician criticism, Alison Keith described the logic of Hubbard's article as "tortuous" and also highlights problems in Holzberg and Habinek's attempts to efface female authorship.[7] In contrast, Hallett argues for increasing the numbers of poems attributed to Sulpicia to include poems 8-12 from the Corpus Tibullianum, which had previously been attributed to the amicus Sulpiciae (friend of Sulpicia).[8]

While academics traditionally regarded Sulpicia as an amateur author, this view was challenged by Santirocco in an article published in 1979,[9] and subsequently the literary merit of this collection of poems has been more fully explored.[10]

See also

Notes
  1. "Sulpicia, Carmina Omnia, section 1". www.perseus.tufts.edu.
  2. Howatson, M. C. (2013). The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. OUP Oxford. p. 570. ISBN 978-0-19-954855-2.
  3. Thomas K. Hubbard (2004). "The Invention of Sulpicia". Classical Journal. 100 (2): 177–194. JSTOR 4132992.
  4. L.T. Pearcy, L.T., "Erasing Cerinthus: Sulpicia and her audience", Classical World 100 (Fall 2006), pp. 31-36.
  5. Niklas Holzberg (1998). "Four Poets and a Poetess or a Portrait of the Poet as a Young Man? Thoughts on Book 3 of the Corpus Tibullanium". Classical Journal. 94 (2): 169–191. JSTOR 3298209.
  6. T. Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature (Princeton 1998)
  7. Keith, Alison (2006). "Critical trends in Interpreting Sulpicia", Classical World, 100 (Fall, 2006), pp. 3-10.
  8. Hallett, J., "The eleven elegies of the Augustan Poet Sulpicia" in: Churchill, L.J., and Brown, P.R., Women writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, vol. 1 (New York, 2002), pp. 45-65.
  9. Santirocco, M. S. 1979. "Sulpicia Reconsidered," Classical Journal 74.3: 229-39.
  10. An overview of Sulpician criticism until 2006 can be found in Allison Keith, "Critical trends in Interpreting Sulpicia", Classical World, 100 (Fall, 2006), pp. 3-10

References
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sulpicia". Encyclopædia Britannica. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 69.
  • Flaschenriem, Barbara L. (2005). "Sulpicia and the Rhetoric of Disclosure". Chapter 9 in Greene, Ellen (ed.) Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome. University of Oklahoma Press
  • Merriam, Carol U. (2005). "Sulpicia and the Art of Literary Allusion: [Tibullus] 3.13". Chapter 8 in [Greene, Ellen (ed.) Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome. University of Oklahoma Press
  • Stevenson, Jane (2005) Women Latin Poets. Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2005), especially ch. 1: "Classical Latin Women Poets" (31-48)

Poems of Sulpicia:

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