Scenarios of Sulpiciae: moral discourses and immoral verses

Abstract

This discussion examines literary depictions of several Roman women who shared a name, and presumably membership in the same aristocratic family, with the Augustan elegist Sulpicia: by Livy in 39.8-10, in his account of the Bacchanalian conspiracy in 186 BCE; by Valerius Maximus, in an episode dated to 43/42 BCE that is also related by Appian at BC 4.39; and by Valerius Maximus again at 8.15.12, in an episode dated to the third century BCE that is also related in part by the elder Pliny in NH 7.120, and treated by Ovid at Fasti 2.157-160. It considers how these scenarios featuring these other Sulpiciae, mostly by authors with a moralizing message, help to contextualize the eleven Sulpicia elegies and their later Roman reception. It also considers why Ovid, who seems to have known Sulpicia and her work, never refers to a contemporary female elegist of this name.