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.12.25, over whom twobulls are fighting.See also the sneering remark at 2.7.21 22 ( quis Veneris fa-mulae conubia liber inire /.velit? ).Unless otherwise indicated, all transla-tions are mine.15.In Asinaria, the contract is called a syngraphum (238, 746, and 802) con-taining leges (749 and 809).Despite this Greek name, the custom of the contractis recognizably Roman as well.See also Truculentus 31, where Diniarchus com-plains that the merces annua buys only three nights, and Hecyra 85 95, where theyoung meretrix Philotis has just returned from two years on tour in Corinthwith a soldier to whom she was under contract.See also Cohen in this volumeregarding the Greek sungraphê and the active agency of the Greek courtesanswho entered into them.16.See Davis (1993, 67) on iure at Amores 1.4.64 as meaning by right ratherthan by law.In Amores 1.4, as we shall see, this right is imaginary, residing inthe lover s head rather than in either law or civil contract.Davis argues (69) that Ovid uses the language of the law to mock it. Propertius 3.20 establishes thisplay with legal vocabulary as elegiac rather than purely Ovidian.17.Hence the adulescens needs money to keep his beloved from being leasedout to another man.The agreement of Phaedria and Gnatho at the end of Eunu-chus, for the division of Thais s services, thus stands out as abnormal.A similardeal is suggested but not arranged at the end of Asinaria.Notably both these ar-rangements to share a puella are suggested not by an enamored adulescens butby a practical parasite.18.The puella of Amores 3.8, for instance, like Delia in Tibullus 1.6, must beboth clever and careful: she is cheating on both her vir and her poet-lover witha third man.Treggiari (1971, 197) notes of Volumnia Cytheris that nothingwould have stopped her having several lovers concurrently though we mayassume that Antony for a time had exclusive rights. See Rosivach (1998, 13637) on various types of contracted relationships in comedy.19.This is presuming that the puella in both 1.4 and 2.5 is Corinna, whichseems likely, as she is the primary puella of book 1 and figures centrally in 2.614.The lover-poet likewise mentions his iura at 3.11.45; I take this puella not tobe Corinna, but the same objection stands he cannot have forgotten to men-tion a marriage.In addition, the puella of 3.11 seems to have her own home, inwhich the amator does not reside. A Courtesan s Choreography 24520.Even the nature of these rights (iura) is dubious.Elsewhere in elegy, theyare clearly identified as part of extramarital sexual relationships: Amores 3.11.45( lecti socialia iura ); Tibullus 1.5.7 ( furtivi foedera lecti ); see also Propertius3.20.21 ( non certo foedere.lectus ).Amores 2.17.23 24 likewise plays with thelanguage of law and the bed.See below, on the similar use of the word lex todescribe a contract with a courtesan at Asinaria 747.21.I have previously argued that marriage would be the end of elegy (James1998a, 12; 2003, 41 52).Nowhere in elegy does a lover propose legitimate mar-riage by asking a puella to divorce her husband and marry him or by threateningto divorce an unfaithful puella, etc.Since marriage and elegiac love are polar op-posites (see Amores 3.585 86), marriage is the last thing an elegiac lover wants.Thus, as Veyne (1988, 2) puts it, the elegiac lovers are ready to do anything fortheir beloved except marry her. Elegy would, as it were, say of a marriedwoman, tis pity she s a wife, as wives are generically of no interest to a lover.22.Concubinage is generically impossible here, as elegy requires persua-sion, which ownership does not.The elegiac puella must be an independentcourtesan, if elegy s arguments are to make any sense.23.See also the comment of McKeown (1998, at 2.5.36) about the girl seen byher new fiancé/husband, which he rightly calls a deliberately incongruouscomparison in this context. The amator speaks at Amores 2.5.10 not of a wife butof a girlfriend (amica).24.She does risk violence: Herodas 2, Terence Eunuchus, Horace Ode 3.26,and Amores 1.9 all advert to, or feature, violent assault on the courtesan s house,usually by an angry lover or disgruntled customer.Horace Ode 3.26 lists someof the lover s arsenal, designed for breaking open doors.Copley (1956, 57 58and 160 n.38) discusses this armature.Such assaults are usually intended togain a young man entry into the house and sexual access to the woman inside.25.Halporn (1993, 201 2) rightly criticizes the inadequate terms usuallyemployed to denote the Greek hetaira or Roman meretrix; he particularly singlesout the term courtesan as euphemistic.I am not convinced that his descrip-tion of Plautus s meretrices as working girls is accurate, as I see a range ofcourtesan-types operating in Plautus (nor does it adequately describe some ofTerence s meretrices, specifically Bacchis of Hecyra and Thais of Eunuchus).Asi-naria particularly offers evidence that not all meretrices are the same: Philae-nium, who seems relatively new to her profession (unlike, say, Phronesium ofTruculentus, perhaps the textbook example of the grasping comic meretrix), ac-tually loves Argyrippus and obeys her mother s instructions to disregard himwith sadness and some bitterness.Konstan (1993) identifies a type of hetaira inMenander whose character merits a marital-type relationship with a citizen;her presence further extends the range of meretrices in comedy; see also Wiles(1989) and Luck (1974, 19 20) on the different types of courtesans in comedy.Davidson (1997) distinguishes between elegant, high-class courtesans andother women who lived by their bodies; see particularly his chapter 4 on the he-taira.Though he discusses Athenian hetairai, much of his analysis applies toRoman meretrices as well.Bearing Halporn s objections in mind, I have chosento keep using the outmoded and inadequate word courtesan here for the sake 246 sharon l.jamesof convenience, as an accurate designation (such as young woman of no socialstanding or protection, relying on male sexual attraction to her youth andbeauty to support herself and her household ) would be both awkward andverbose.The word lena is similarly difficult to render into English, so I havechosen to leave it in Latin rather than translate it.26.As P.A.Miller (2004, 170) points out, this identification, argued moststrongly first in Stroh (1979), in opposition to G.Williams (1968), who consid-ered the elegiac puella an elite woman, is a minority view.I have argued this po-sition in detail (James 2003, 35 68)
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