O Galo de Propércio no Monobiblos: amizade Poética e rivalidade amorosa. 1 (original) (raw)

Gallus is mentioned five times in Propertius’ Monobiblos (elegies 5, 10, 13, 20 and 21). Scholars have thoroughly debated how these constructions may provide concrete evidence of Roman life. The possibilities found were presented on well-researched studies, which, nevertheless, were based on a false premise: that the names cited by the poet were necessarily identified with real people. This paper argues that the name Gallus refers to one and the same character: Cornellius Gallus, as it is clear in elegy 2B.34.91. Thus this name, in Propertius, may function as a marker of the elegiac genre, or refer to a rival in the erotic narrative of the book or point to the structure of the Monobiblos. We must keep in mind that Gallus is evoked not as a historical character, but as persona ficta, whose ἦθος was constructed observing Propertius’ poetic program, and whose fides resides in the contiguity with the homonym elegiac poet, the poet-lover, whose beloved is Lycoris, his scripta puella. Thus although these characters can be real, they pass through the filter of this poetic genre. This article aims to demonstrate how the name Gallus functions as a marker of the elegiac genre in Propertius’ Monobiblos, in which it may refer to the poetics, the erotic narrative or the structure of the book.