Interdictiones Domo et Ingenio: Timagenes and Propertius: A Reading in the Dynamics of Augustan Exclusion

In a dispute between the historian Timagenes and the emperor, Augustus, the latter excluded the former from his house, and the former responded by barring the emperor from his written work. This article maps the dynamic of this exchange onto Roman elegy. It suggests that the interdictiones domo et ingenio serve as useful condensed metaphors for looking at elegy from the point of view of the dramatic action in the discourse between its two principal characters, the domina and the poet-narrator. This parallel is illustrated through a reading of Propertius 2.11.