The Poet as Pimp: Elegiac Seduction in the Time of Augustus

In this article, I want to consider how the elegiac poet (particularly Ovid) uses the imagery of venal sexuality and the negative metaphoric associations of poems with prostitutes and poets with pimps as means to poetic empowerment within the historic and social climate of the establishment of the Augustan principate.

The recent work of various classical scholars emphasizes how prostitution serves as a powerful metaphor for patronized poets. ¹ Such studies show how these poets attempt to situate themselves within models of venal sexuality (hetaira/meretrix, porne/scortum) that are either validated or denigrated from the perspective of aristocratic culture. In this manner, patronized poetic composition can be seen as struggling to embed itself in aristocratic culture and thus demonstrate "the dilemma of the artist in a money economy" (Carson 1993.75).

The response of the poets to this dilemma was various. Leslie Kurke argues persuasively that, in the case of Pindar, the poet attempts to appropriate the new economics for old social structures and to construct "a new aristocratic ethos, which depends on embracing the money economy" (1990.254). Thus aristocrats are encouraged not to spurn a monetary system, but to use it wisely. In this way, the nobility are persuaded to demonstrate their gentility and superiority by sponsoring a form of Pindaric composition that serves to perpetuate an aristocratic ethos by re-embedding the use of wealth in gift-exchange between similarly minded aristocrats. Hence, Pindar, so he would have it, always depends on the kindness of friends.

This same form of poetic, metaphoric anxiety can also be perceived in the work of Horace in his similar attempt in such poems as Epistles 1.17 and 1.18 to trope the dependent poet as a matrona fidelis rather than a levis meretrix: a literary spouse rather than poetic whore. ²

However, such an accommodation of patronized poetry to aristocratic culture was not the only possibility. As Anne Carson has shown in the case of Simonides, this poet "made his mark on economic history by refusing to be embarrassed by money" (1993.76). Thus Simonides' response seems to have been to embrace wholeheartedly the growing tide of disembedded economics and to turn himself, with a degree of shrewd self-promotion, into an unabashed poetic salesman. I shall be arguing that elegiac poetry, as in the case of Simonides, involves a similar form of poetic empowerment through the embrace of metaphoric notoriety.

As Pindar, Simonides, and Horace demonstrate, the metaphoric equation between poems and prostitutes and pimps and poets is not something unique to elegiac poetry. In a Roman context, both Horace (in Epistles 1.20) and Catullus (in his opening poem) present their poetic products as textualized incarnations of venal sexuality. In both these texts, a literary product is personified and possesses a flaunting sexual attractiveness (Catullus 1.1-2, Horace Epistles 1.20.1-4):

Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
arida modo pumice expolitum?

To whom do I present my new witty book, just now polished with dry pumice? ³

Vertumnum Ianumque, liber, spectare videris,
scilicet ut prostes Sosiorum pumice mundus.
odisti clavis et grata sigilla pudico;
paucis ostendi gemis et communia laudas.

Book, you seem to be looking at Vertumnus and Janus, of course, so that, spruced-up with the pumice of the Sosii, you might go on sale/prostitute yourself. You hate the key and the seal that are welcome to a modest book; you groan at being shown to only a few and you praise the public.

With regard to the Catullan poem, William Fitzgerald shows how the use of pumice conflates literary endeavor (it was used as an eraser), external literary presentation (it was used to smooth the ends of the scroll), and sexual attractiveness (it was used as a depilatory). ⁴ In this manner, the literary artist is responsible for the production of a poetic prostitute. He creates a poem that will seek public circulation through the merits...