The Poet as Pimp: Elegiac Seduction in the Time of Augustus

In this article, I want to consider how the elegiac poet (particularly Ovid) uses the imagery of venal sexuality and the negative metaphoric associations of poems with prostitutes and poets with pimps as means to poetic empowerment within the historic and social climate of the establishment of the Augustan principate. The recent work of various classical scholars emphasizes how prostitution serves as a powerful metaphor for patronized poets. Such studies show how these poets attempt to situate themselves within models of venal sexuality (hetaira/meretrix, porne/scortum) that are either validated or denigrated from the perspective of aristocratic culture. In this manner, patronized poetic composition can be seen as struggling to embed itself in aristocratic culture and thus demonstrate “the dilemma of the artist in a money economy” (Carson 1993.75). The response of the poets to this dilemma was various. Leslie Kurke argues persuasively that, in the case of Pindar, the poet attempts to appropriate the new economics for old social structures and to construct “a new aristocratic ethos, which depends on embracing the money economy” (1990.254). Thus aristocrats are encouraged not to spurn a monetary system, but to use it wisely. In this way, the nobility are persuaded to demonstrate their gentility and superiority by sponsoring a form of Pindaric composition