Revisiting Tarpeia's myth in Propertius (IV, 4) - Leeds International ...

MYRTO GARANI, REVISITING TARPEIA’S MYTH IN PROPERTIUS (IV, 4)
violence. In the first place, she envisages her capture by the king (IV.4.33-4). Next
she imagines her marriage to Tatius (IV.4.55-6). She then offers herself to be
raped in revenge for the rape of the Sabine women (IV.4.57-62), suggesting that a
violent action, i.e. war, can bring about peace. Then again, Tarpeia imagines a
different scenario for peace: while in Livy the abducted Sabine women separated
the fighting lines by pleading with their Sabine brothers and fathers on the one
hand and their Roman husbands on the other to make peace (1.13.2), here she
invents a counter-version to this and believes that she is able to release the forces
engaged in battle by means of her wedding (IV.4.59-62). 32 What is even more
noteworthy, within this monologue, Tarpeia makes allusion to two mythical tales
involving sexual violence with a similar historical bearing (as we will see below)
to that of Tarpeia’s betrayal, since both of them ultimately led to significant
political changes. 33 In the first instance, when she mentions Romulus’ connection
with the wolf that suckled him (te toga picta decet, non quem sine matris honore /
nutrit inhumanae dura papilla lupae / The coloured toga suits you, not the one
whom the hard teat of an inhuman she-wolf nourished since he had no mother,
IV.4.53-4), she calls to mind the rape by Mars of another Vestal Virgin, Rhea
Silvia, while she was performing her Vestal duties, and her punishment for it to be
buried alive. 34 This rape brought about the birth of Romulus, the founder of
Rome. At the same time, as we have just seen, Tarpeia explicitly refers to the rape
of the Sabine maidens, which ultimately resulted in the fusion of Sabines with
Romans. In both cases, there is a parallel process: it is strife—not love—that
precedes a historical development and is revealed to be its precondition. 35
As a consequence of Propertius’ double allusion to the Vergilian intertext,
while Tarpeia still appears to oscillate between love and war, these two notions
acquire now a cosmological dimension, since they can be viewed as the
Empedoclean powers of creation and destruction. 36 In other words, given the fact
that Tarpeia is already in love at the moment of Vesta’s appearance, the reader is
now uncertain as to whether Vesta can be identified with the embodiment of the
32
Stahl (1985) 294: ‘Tarpeia pictures a story of “The Rape of the Roman Woman” as a
countermove against the abduction of the Sabine Women.’
33
See Arieti (1980), although his case about Empedoclean echoes in Livy is not convincing.
34
Cf. Livy 1.4; Ovid Fasti 3.11-24; Dionys. Hal. 1.77.1.
35
For a different approach to violence as a factor in political development see Janan (2001) 75,
who comments that ‘sexual unions, whether rapes, marriages or seductions, regularly “breach” the
polity’s defining limits so that it may move on to a new phase... The Sabines in general figure
importantly in Roman history. Their stealthy entry into Rome sets the stage for eventually
reconciling the two warring factions and, gradually, for Rome to absorb her former enemies
completely.’
36
To add another possible intertext, in Book 3 of Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica Aphrodite
bribes Eros with a ball which represents the Empedoclean cosmic sphere, Σφαῖρος, into which all
the elements unite when Love takes control over them (Argon. 3.131-44). Eros then shoots his
arrow at Medea: in this case, it is Empedoclean Love that regulates the cosmic order. See Hunter
(1989) 111-3 ad loc. As Nelis (2000) 100 puts it: ‘Empedoclean Love and Strife seem to alternate
within the epic tradition with almost the same cyclic regularity that characterizes their control of
the elements.’ For more Empedoclean echoes in Apollonius Rhodius see Kyriakou (1994); Nelis
(2000).
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