Sulpicia and Her Fama: An Intertextual Approach to Recovering Her Latin Literary Image

Fāma ~ae, f. . . . 1 News, tidings. b a malicious report, slander. 2 Rumour, hearsay (as a source of information). b (personified). 3 Tradition, story. 4 Public opinion, talk; . . . 5 The report which a person has, one's reputation. . . . 6 a One's good name, reputation; (spec. of a woman. w. ref. to chastity). b ill repute, notoriety. 7 Fame, glory, renown. b (personified). c (transf.) a source or object of fame, 'pride'.

So the Oxford Latin Dictionary, defining the multiplicity of connotations conveyed by a noun that literally means "what is said," by third-person others, about "first-person me" and "second-person you," for better or for worse, in veracity or mendacity.¹

I begin with the word fama most obviously because it occurs twice in poem 13 of Tibullus' third book of elegies. A programmatic text by its speaker and presumed author, a woman named Sulpicia, 3.13 has attracted more than its due share of scholarly attention and will be subjected to scrutiny yet again in my discussion.² But my discussion will also consider the role that is played by fama in recent scholarly interpretations of Sulpicia's poems as well as in Sulpicia's poetry itself. I will then reflect upon how an intertextual approach to the eleven Sulpicia elegies in Tibullus book 3 may allow readers of these elegies to rely less on fama than has been the case in the past when seeking to recover Sulpicia's literary reception among her Augustan contemporaries.

In the first couplet of 3.13, the first-person speaker expresses concern that the fama, here presumably meant in the sense of "ill-repute," of having concealed her love affair would cause more shame than having revealed it (Tandem venit amor, qualem texisse pudori / quam nudasse alicui sit mihi fama magis, 1–2). In the final couplet she first admits that she enjoys her "bad behavior" in the past (sedpeccasse iuvat, 9). Nevertheless, she then voices her weariness at accommodating fama, here apparently meaning "public opinion," by behaving as if she were conventionally virtuous (vultus componere famae / taedet: cum digno digna fuisse ferar, 9–10).³

These two references to fama may emulate Homeric-style ring composition, as befits a poem with Iliadic resonances. By asserting that Cytherea, Venus, has dropped her beloved in her lap, Sulpicia recalls the scenario of Iliad 3, in which Aphrodite spirits Paris from the battlefield, drops him into Helen's bedchamber, and brings him to her for a rendezvous.⁴ Yet as Alison Keith has observed, these references to fama also function as an intertextually strategic move within the realm of Augustan poetry. They help evoke Vergil's Dido—who is portrayed as achieving, and victimized by, fama in two of its different senses, "public opinion" and "slander"—as the context, and as a literary parallel, for Sulpicia's own amatory situation.⁵

Sulpicia consequently characterizes her fama as a powerful presence shaping her text, one that she (unlike Dido) resists and actively tries to reshape in the act of writing. Still, certain senses of her fama exist beyond her text, and beyond her time. Indeed, how could her later reception be anything but fama? No other ancient Roman author mentions her outright. It is merely conjecture that eleven poems—numbers 8 through 18—of Tibullus book 3 are about, and mainly by, an aristocratic female belonging to a literary circle surrounding Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, which included Ovid as well as Tibullus.

The conjecture initially derives from several internal textual details: first, the name of the central female figure in these poems, provided at 3.8.1 (Sulpicia est tibi culta tuis, Mars magne, kalendis) and 3.16.4 (Servi filia Sulpicia); second, the reference to this woman in the latter as Servi filia, "daughter of Servius"; and third, the address at 3.14.5 to Messalla, who is also called a close kinsman (propinque) in the following line, and depicted as in control of how and where she spends her time.

We also know from external, extratextual evidence that Messalla's...