1. Although nearly every Propertius scholar has directed her or his attention at some time to the Cornelia elegy, I have confined my citations in this chapter to a representative sample of opinion on the principal enigmas, rather than attempt an exhaustive inventory of previous scholarship.

As for Scaliger's enthusiastic evaluation of the poem, it may not, in fact, have been original to himself. Emil Hübner credits “Scaliger oder Valckenaer” with originating it (Hübner 1877, 98).

2. Though scholars debate over the precise ratio of the tribunal's function in the poem between judging Cornelia and inducting her into Hades as its “naturalized” citizen; Pirrone's copious annotation of this locus conclamatus with parallels drawn from Latin literature and inscriptions offers a useful conspectus of the bases for varying translations (Pirrone 1904, ad 4.11.18). Hertzberg (Hertzberg 1843–1845, III.508–509) argued that iura dare meant to assign privileges or status in a state, and thus that judging Cornelia (denoted by the phrase ius dicere) did not come into question; Postgate and Butler both agree (Postgate 1881, ad 4.11.18; Butler 1905, ad 4.11.18). Shackleton-Bailey, on the other hand, demurs: “no doubt iura dare and ius dicere normally mean different things, but I cannot think that iura means anything but judgment here” (Shackleton-Bailey 1956, ad 4.11.18); and Sandbach, while agreeing with Hertzberg's formal distinction between the two phrases, points out that “this can imply a previous inquiry into merit; and it may be doubted whether the author of carm. epigr 1109.23, nec Minos mihi iura dabit, sharply distinguished ius dicere and iura dare ” (Sandbach 1962, 274n2).

3. Stahl 1985, 262.

4. Wyke 1987a, 171–72.

5. Plessis 1884, 288–89; Alfonsi 1945, 84–86; Grimal 1952, 449; Highet 1957, 98–105; Celentano 1956, 53–54; Luck 1959, 115; Soría 1965; Reitzenstein 1969. K.-W. Weeber also sees the poem as a paean to Cornelia, but considers its admiration to be for an embodiment of early Roman ideals, rather than for Augustus' attempt to revive those ideals—hence, the poem does not (for Weeber) mark any detente in Propertius' skepticism toward Augustus (Weeber 1977, 217–49).

6. Richardson 1977, 481; Curran 1968.

7. La Penna 1951, 86–88 and La Penna 1977, 94–95; Hallett 1971, 163–75; Hubbard 1974, 145–49; Sullivan 1976, 44.

8. Williams 1968, 398–99 (Mynors' OCT text reads “fas obstat, tristisque palus inamabilis undae / alligat et novies Styx interfusa coercet,” but Williams accepts readings that Mynors assigns to the apparatus criticus); Curran 1968, 135.

9. On Law as implicated with enjoyment, see SVII, esp. 225–41/191–217; on jouissance as non-meaning, see SXX; the relevant passages are cited above in chapter 5, note 32, along with scholarly discussions of the concept.

10. This is another way of putting the question Lacan formulated as Is there an Other of the Other?—i.e., is there a foundation or anchor of meaning in signification beyond signification itself? To this he answers a resounding “No!” (as in the title and subject matter of

11. Frier traces the transition to casuistry in (for example) the Roman judicial system's shift away from dependence on rhetorical advocacy toward reliance on juristic responsa (Frier 1985, esp. xi-xvi, 185–96).

12. The comitia centuriata was a political assembly based on the centuries, the smallest units of the Roman legion (a legion contains sixty centuries); the assembly's constituency was not strictly military, however, since five centuries of non-combatants were also included among its ranks.

13. Epicurus Kuriai Doxai 33.

14. Testimony to the content of Carneades' speech is found in Cicero Rep. 3, and Lactantius Div. Inst. 5. Anthony Long thoughtfully discusses the evidence (Long 1986, 104–106).

15. My discussion is heavily indebted to R. M. Ogilvie's excellent analysis of the legal fine points that allow Verginia's entrapment; he illustrates his commentary with meticulous references to the Twelve Tables, as well as to further helpful bibliography (Ogilvie 1965, 481–83).

16. Livy 3.45.2.

17. Just as the repeated imagery of urns in Cornelia's speech—both the urns that receive jurors' votes (4.11.19, 49) and the urns that punished the Danaids for crime (4.11.28)—ostensibly symbolize the Law's impartial and unbending judgment, but in fact impugn the Law as nothing more than the prejudice of its executors. I discuss these passages more fully below (“Objet a: Patching the (W)hole”).

18. “Cum promptum hoc ius velut ex oraculo incorruptum pariter ab iis summi infimique ferrent, tum legibus condendis opera dabatur” (Livy 3.34.1).

19. Livy 3.34.8–3.35.1.

20. “decem Tarquinios,” Livy 3.39.3.

21. Livy 3.40.11–13. See especially Ogilvie's commentary ad 3.40.11, with its discussion of the shrewdly dilatory demand for a praeiudicium (a judicial proceeding for examining a preliminary question upon which the decision of a case depends) put forward by Lucius Cornelius Maluginensis, brother to one of the decemvirs and thus Appius' clandestine supporter.

22. Sulla and Julius Caesar: Ogilvie 1965, 454, with references; Second Triumvirate: Ogilvie 464, ad 3.36.3.

23. “Factione respectuque rerum privatarum,” Livy 2.30.2.

24. “Civitas secum ipsa discors intestino inter patres plebemque flagrabat odio, maxime propter nexos ob aes alienum,” Livy 2.23.1–2.

25. Plutarch also records the anecdote (Coriolanus 6.2–4). Emily Gowers shrewdly analyzes these and other “digestive” metaphors for the harmonious or inharmonious body politic (Gowers 1993, esp. 1–49).

26. Just as Woman's sexuality, in Cornelia's speech, becomes both the “cause” and “cure” for social harmony, depending on whether it is “properly” channeled toward chaste reproduction, or not. I discuss this point further below.

27. Acanthis, in 4.5, similarly assumes the function of objet a when her hetaira-catechism “explains” everything about Cynthia that enrages Propertius; Acanthis, despite the fact that she infuriates Propertius and that he blames her for all Cynthia's “bad” behavior, proves essential to him, insofar as she allows him to preserve his fantasies about Cynthia as (in herself, apart from Acanthis' putative influence) the “perfect” object of desire.

28. See Ogilvie 1965, 390 on libertas as the central theme of Livy's third book, and the tale of the decemvirs and Verginia as its focal point.

29. “Et, ne gratuita crudelitas esset, bonorum donatio sequi domini supplicium,” Livy 3.37.8.

30. Similarly, the constant refrain of hysterical terror in Cornelia's speech makes it clear that the demands of the tribunal she faces are intrinsically unsatisfiable, because wholly arbitrary; nothing she can bring before the court can possibly satisfy them of her innocence. The subject of the tribunal's implacability is discussed further below (“The Urns of the Danaids”).

31. The deteriores offer tonsa (“shorn”) for tunsa, but, as Butler and Barber note, this “is a needless alteration” (Butler-Barber 1933, ad 4.11.38).

32. On “qui” as Aemilius Paullus, see, e.g., Rothstein 1966, ad loc.; Richmond 1928, ad loc. (reading Achive instead of Achille in the pentameter, thus making it refer to Paullus' military exploits in Greece); Camps 1965, ad loc.

33. “As Aeacus was the founder of the dynasty over which Cornelia's forebears had triumphed, his examination of her case might be expected to be the most severe” (Richardson 1977, ad 4.11.19).

34. For Perses cited only as conquest, rather than witness, see Santen 1780; Munro 1876, 53–62 (who conjectures that a distich has dropped out between 38 and 39); Richmond 1928.

35. Cf. Joplin 1990, 1991, Joshel 1992, both discussed in greater detail in chapter 4 (“A Bend in the Wall”).

36. “Censura Planci et Paulli acta inter discordiam neque ipsis honori neque rei publicae usui fuerat, cum alteri vis censoria, alteri vita deesset, Paullus vix posset implere censorem, Plancus timere deberet nec quidquam obicere posset adulescentibus aut obicientes audire, quod non agnosceret senex” (Velleius Paterculus 2.95.3). Richardson offers an attractive reading of l.41 that has Cornelia herself imply as much by calling upon her ancestors to witness “me neque censurae legem mollisse”—“that I was not the one who softened the rule of censorship” (Richardson 1977, ad loc.).

37. Consider, for example, their wholesale condemnation of marriage as such (not just marriage with the Aegyptioi) in Supp. 104–11, and their twice-repeated wish to remain forever virgin (Supp. 141–43, 151–53). Caldwell 1974 and Gantz 1978 both argue the case for the Danaids' misandry and misogamy (contraFriis Johansen-Whittle 1980, 1.29–33, who see the Danaids' revulsion as limited to their cousins). Garvie 1969, 215–24 judiciously lays out the evidence for both sides of the question, with an admirable conspectus of previous scholarship.

38. Cf. Sissa 1990, 127–46, discussed above in chapter 4 (“In a Strange Land”).

39. Of rapina, Richardson notes: “a strong word, almost in accusation of the court she faces” (Richardson 1977, ad 4.11.62).

40. Curran 1968, 138. Lacan discusses the idea that Law springs from an inaugural act of Crime—so that Crime, far from being an aberration from Law, in fact logically founds Law—in his only partially published SVI (Le désir et son interprétation); he bases his analysis chiefly on Freud's Totem and Taboo, which sketches the germ of the idea. See Lacan 1981–1983, 26/27:34–36/1977a, 42–45.

41. Cf. Copley 1956, 80–82.

42. Cf. Curran 1968, 135—though he oddly misses the parallel to Persephone, instead identifying Cornelia with Eurydice.

43. Cf., as a representative sampling, Curran 1968, esp. 136, 138; Paduano 1968; Reitzenstein 1969; Richardson 1977, 481–82.

44. See Paduano 1968.

45. The Romans have, of course, no word for this concept, which would have been at odds with the dominant paradigm of masculinity as above obsessive fascination with something so unimportant as a woman—hence I must fall back on Holt Parker's neologism ^*unifeminus^* (from Parker 1992).

46. As Paduano notes (Paduano 1968, 26–27).

47. Hermann Fränkel, in the context of discussing Ovid, also notes that “a strange sense of propriety forbade the Romans to publicize even the most innocent details of their family life,” and cites Cornelia's silence on the subject of her love for her husband as an example (Fränkel 1956, 184n43). Saara Lilja demonstrates, however, that this reticence is not as uniform as Fränkel suggests, so that Cornelia's taciturnity is not entirely explained by the Roman sense of comme il faut (Lilja 1978, 237–38).

48. Alc. 305–10.

These lines paint the stepmother as on her guard (cauta), thus likely to interpret words of praise for Cornelia as damaging to herself; this could be the worse for the children. Cornelia's image of her seems to imply as much: the stepmother, properly handled, offers her hands to the children like a captured barbarian (Richardson 1977, ad 88)—but a slighted “barbarian” could be savage to them. Otherwise, it is hard to see why Cornelia should care what her children say to their stepmother: what to the former wife are her successor's emotional wounds?

50. Given the often-fatal dangers of childbirth for women in the ancient world, bearing three children was to risk one's life to repopulate the state—a quite reasonable claim to virtue. On the dangers of reproduction for women, see Burn 1953, 10–13.

51. See Gardner 1986, index s.v. “ius liberorum”; Dixon 1988, 71–72 and also 98n2 on ancient evidence, and modern scholarly analysis, of the specific content of the laws.

52. Purcell 1986.

53. The institution of clientela (“clientship”) tied people (as clientes [“clients”]) to their superiors in wealth, power, and status (as patroni [“patrons”]) in a relationship of exchange. The cliens was expected to reciprocate his patronus for favors and benefits received by supporting the latter in his political and social life. See Brunt 1988, 382–442.

54. Dixon 1983.

55. Dixon 1988, 71–103; Purcell 1986, 85–93.

56. My discussion of the Cornelia elegy in the light of The Phenomenology of Spirit is heavily indebted to Slavoj Žižek's analysis of Bildung and the subject in Hegel (Žižek 1993, 22–27).

57. See, for example, Borch-Jacobsen 1991.

58. Hegel 1977, 362.

59. Žižek 1993, 25.

60. Žižek points to Lacan's riposte to Dostoevsky in his second Seminar as also illustrating this point. Lacan cites the passage in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov where the

61. Richardson 1977, ad 4.11.84.

62. Cicero Off. I, 54; Lucretius DRN 5.1011–27.

63. Cf. Lacan: “Il n'y a pas La femme, article défini pour désigner l'universel. Il n'y a pas La femme puisque—j'ai déjà risqué le terme, et pourquoi y regarderais-je à deux fois?— de son essence, elle n'est pas toute” (Lacan 1975, 68). Being “pas toute”—unable to be organized into a Whole according to a single principle—She cannot guarantee Man's consistent and coherent identity.

64. Cf. 4.7.89–90.

65. Livy offers eloquent tribute to Rome's notion of its own moral superiority, though he is hardly the first or last Roman to do so: “Nulla umquam res publica nec maior nec sanctior nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit, nec in quam civitatem tam serae avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint, nec ubi tantus ac tam diu paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit” (Praef. 11). Catharine Edwards shrewdly analyzes Roman claims to preeminence in virtue (Edwards 1993, esp. 1–33).