Helen, Laodamia, Lesbia: dispelling men’s myths about women

What man today would wish to be married to Helen of Troy? According to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, millennia ago King Menelaus of Sparta was married to Helen. They had serious difficulties in their marriage. In brief, after marrying Menelaus, Helen eloped with the handsome Trojan prince Paris. That adultery prompted the Trojan War and its massive slaughter of men. Helen called herself a shameless whore. Nonetheless, Menelaus welcomed her back as his wife.

Menelaus’s servant-man Eteoneus seemed to appreciate the risk of Helen committing adultery again. When two king’s sons, Telemachus and Pisistratus, arrived in regal style at Menelaus’s palace, Eteoneus asked if he should send them away. Not offering hospitality to these young men would be a serious violation of ancient Greek ethics. However, given Helen’s past behavior and the terrible Trojan War, sending the young men away might be a prudent choice.

Menelaus called Eteoneus a fool for thinking of sending the young men away. Menelaus, who favored forgetfulness with respect to Helen, instead welcomed them to his table. When Helen arrived and saw these regal, handsome young men, she was amazed:

Do we know, Menelaus, favored by Zeus, who these
men declare themselves to be who have come to our house?
Shall I lie or speak the truth? My heart bids me speak.
For never yet, I declare, have I seen one so like another,
whether man or woman — amazement holds me, as I look —

{ ἴδμεν δή, Μενέλαε διοτρεφές, οἵ τινες οἵδε
ἀνδρῶν εὐχετόωνται ἱκανέμεν ἡμέτερον δῶ;
ψεύσομαι ἦ ἔτυμον ἐρέω; κέλεται δέ με θυμός.
οὐ γάρ πώ τινά φημι ἐοικότα ὧδε ἰδέσθαι
οὔτ᾽ ἄνδρ᾽ οὔτε γυναῖκα, σέβας μ᾽ ἔχει εἰσορόωσαν }[1]

As an astute scholar has pointed out, Helen might be thought to be re-imagining Paris coming to meet her. But recognizing a different handsome young man, she continued:

as this man resembles the greathearted Odysseus’s son,
Telemachus, whom that warrior left in his home
a newborn child when for me, a shameless whore, you Achaeans
came to the walls of Troy, pondering in your hearts fierce war.

{ ὡς ὅδ᾽ Ὀδυσσῆος μεγαλήτορος υἷι ἔοικε,
Τηλεμάχῳ, τὸν ἔλειπε νέον γεγαῶτ᾽ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ
κεῖνος ἀνήρ, ὅτ᾽ ἐμεῖο κυνώπιδος εἵνεκ᾽ Ἀχαιοὶ
ἤλθεθ᾽ ὑπὸ Τροίην πόλεμον θρασὺν ὁρμαίνοντες. }

Helen acted like a shameless whore in committing adultery with Prince Paris of Troy. Moreover, Helen’s epithet for Menelaus, “favored by Zeus,” recalls that Helen’s father was Zeus. Having taken the form of a swan, Zeus cuckolded King Tyndareus of Sparta to engender Helen with Tyndareus’s wife Leda. Menelaus was thus in a royal line of cuckolds. He knew that Helen was not truly a goddess, nor even a faithfully loving, flesh-and-blood woman. Yet he remained married to her.

Before modern technologies of repression and censorship, men freely discussed the dangers of marriage. Late in sixteenth-century Europe, Ponticus questioned Cornelius’s interest in marrying:

Since, Cornelius, you wish to have a wife, I seek to know:
by what motive does marriage attract you?
You assume that you would live thereafter more happily. While
I may be wrong, you will not thus choose to be blessed.
Either your wife will be ugly (no lying, I implore:
if you’re joined to such a spouse, will you be blessed?),
or she’ll be average-looking. This moderate beauty, I admit,
is best, but this moderate beauty fades quickly.
If beautiful, she’ll have a thousand adulterous men,
and you could never say, “She’s wholly mine.”
Even if she’s faithful to you (if no other happens to ask),
she’ll bear a thousand births, and bear a thousand griefs.
If sterile, with you alone she’ll thus slowly spend years.
Out of many days, none would be without strife.
You may add she’ll be stubborn-headed, clinging to her opinion,
and other traits that you can learn from many husbands.
So cease to hope then for a blessed life;
rather, let your bed be celibate and without strife.
If the narrow path of happiness actually exists,
it isn’t hidden between a woman’s buttocks.

{ Cum velis uxorem, Corneli, ducere: quaero
Coniugium placeat qua ratione tibi?
Scilicet ut deinceps vivas foelicior: atqui
Fallor ego, aut non hac lege beatus eris.
Uxor enim aut deformis erit, (tune, obsecro, talis
Si tibi sit coniunx iuncta, beatus eris?)
Aut forma mediocris erit: modus iste, fatemur,
Optimus; at subito deperit iste modus.
Aut formosa, ideoque viris obnoxia mille,
Et de qua nequeas dicere, tota mea est.
Ut sit casta tamen, (nemo si forte rogarit),
Mille feret natos, taedia mille feret.
Aut sterilis tecum tardos sic exiget annos,
Nullus ut e multis sit sine lite dies.
His addas caput indomitum, mentemque tenacem,
Caeteraque a multis quae didicisse potes.
Desine sic igitur vitam sperare beatam,
Sic potius celebs et sine lite torus
Hic etenim si qua est felicis semita vitae,
Femineas iuxta non latet illa nates. }[2]

If Thersites had convinced all the Greek men not to marry, the Trojan War and its massive slaughter of men wouldn’t have happened. Juvenal attempted to warn his friend Postumus against marriage. Valerius sought to dissuade his friend Rufinus from marrying. None succeeded.

In most men’s minds, all women are like Laodamia of Phylace. Unlike the Spartan mothers instructing their sons to achieve victory or death, Laodamia urged her husband Protesilaus to enjoy her love. Nonetheless, Protesilaus joined all the other Greek men leaving home to besiege Troy. Laodamia urged him to guard his life in that horrific Trojan War:

Against Hector, whoever he is, if you have care for me, be on guard.
Have this name inscribed in your mindful heart!
When you have avoided him, remember to avoid others,
and think that there are many Hectors there.
And make sure that you say, as often as you prepare to fight:
“Laodamia herself commanded me to hold back.”
If it’s fated that Troy should fall to the Greek army,
it will fall without you receiving any wound.
Let Menelaus fight and strive against the enemy.
Let the husband seek his wife among enemies.
Your case is different. You fight only to live,
and to be able to return to your lady’s loyal breasts.

{ Hectora, quisquis is est, si sum tibi cura, caveto;
Signatum memori pectore nomen habe!
Hunc ubi vitaris, alios vitare memento
Et multos illic Hectoras esse puta;
Et facito dicas, quotiens pugnare parabis:
‘Parcere me iussit Laodamia sibi.’
Si cadere Argolico fas est sub milite Troiam,
Te quoque non ullum vulnus habente cadet.
Pugnet et adversos tendat Menelaus in hostis;
Hostibus e mediis nupta petenda viro est.
Causa tua est dispar; tu tantum vivere pugna,
Inque pios dominae posse redire sinus. }[3]

Laodamia truly cared about gender equality. She resisted the institutional sexism and deeply entrenched gender biases of war:

Mothers of Phylace gather and cry out to me:
“Put on your royal garments, Laodamia!”
No doubt I should wear cloth soaked in purple dye
while he wages war beneath the walls of Troy?
Should I comb my hair, while his head is pressed by a helmet?
Should I wear new clothes, while my husband bears harsh arms?
As I can, I imitate your labors in my rough attire,
so they say, and I go through these times of war in sadness.

{ Conveniunt matres Phylaceides et mihi clamant:
“Indue regales, Laudamia, sinus!”
Scilicet ipsa geram saturatas murice lanas,
Bella sub Iliacis moenibus ille geret?
Ipsa comas pectar, galea caput ille premetur?
Ipsa novas vestes, dura vir arma feret?
Qua possum, squalore tuos imitata labores
Dicar, et haec belli tempora tristis agam. }

Some women are combative, savage, and eager to fight men. Some men aren’t. Associating men as a gender with war is wrong. Laodamia appreciated her husband Protesilaus as a lover:

He is not suited to engage with naked steel
and bear a savage breast against opposing men.
He is able with far greater strength to love than to fight.
Let others wage war; let Protesilaus love!

{ Non est quem deceat nudo concurrere ferro,
Saevaque in oppositos pectora ferre viros;
Fortius ille potest multo, quam pugnat, amare.
Bella gerant alii; Protesilaus amet! }

Great men like Roland’s peer Oliver have distinguished themselves in love. Many other men could be love-heroes, but lamentably they live by misleading myths.

The depth and passion of men’s love for women can hardly be understood. Probably sensing his love for her, Laodamia of Phylace ardently loved her husband:

No snow-white dove ever so rejoiced in her
partner, though it’s much said that she shamelessly,
always nipping with her beak, gathers kisses,
more so than a much-willing woman sex-worker.
But you alone overcame the great madness of these doves
as soon as you were first matched with your golden-haired man.

{ nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo
compar, quae multo dicitur improbius
oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro
quam quae praecipue multivola est mulier:
sed tu horum magnos vicisti sola furores,
ut semel es flavo conciliata viro. }[4]

Laodomia’s golden-haired husband Protesilaus didn’t go to Troy because he wanted Helen or was lacking a woman’s love at home. He suffered from a mythic understanding of what it means to be a hero:

His wife, her cheeks torn in wailing, was left in Phylace
and his house was but half completed when a Trojan warrior killed him
as he leapt from his ship, by far the first of the Achaeans to Trojan land.

{ τοῦ δὲ καὶ ἀμφιδρυφὴς ἄλοχος Φυλάκῃ ἐλέλειπτο
καὶ δόμος ἡμιτελής· τὸν δ᾿ ἔκτανε Δάρδανος ἀνὴρ
νηὸς ἀποθρῴσκοντα πολὺ πρώτιστον Ἀχαιῶν. }[5]

Protesilaus was thus killed in violence against men at Troy, “hateful Troy, unhappy Troy {Troia obscena, Troia infelice}”:

Troy, the evil, a communal grave for Asia and Europe,
Troy the bitter ashes of men and all manliness,
have you not even brought pitiful death to our brother?
Oh, brother in misery taken from me,
you a delightful light taken from your miserable brother.

{ Troia (nefas) commune sepulcrum Asiae Europaeque,
Troia virum et virtutum omnium acerba cinis:
quaene etiam nostro letum miserabile fratri
attulit. Hei misero frater adempte mihi,
hei misero fratri iucundum lumen ademptum }[6]

Love lost for many of our brothers. Men who are dead cannot entertain women with stories of their daring deeds. Men need not entertain women with stories of their daring deeds. Men’s very selves are more than sufficient for truly loving women.

Men and women must be realistic. To Catullus, a woman like Lesbia was “a shining-white divine woman {candida diva}.” Although adored with all-too-common gyno-idolatry, that woman like Lesbia didn’t love like Laodamia. Catullus explained:

I will bear the rare infidelities of my modest mistress
so as not to be too annoying in the manner of fools.
…
Nonetheless, not led to me by her father’s right hand,
she comes into the house smelling of Assyrian perfumes
and gives a stolen, sweet gift in a wonderful night,
taken from the very embrace of her husband himself.
That is enough, if that alone is given to me.

{ quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo,
rara verecundae furta feremus erae,
ne nimium simus stultorum more molesti:
…
nec tamen illa mihi dextra deducta paterna
fragrantem Assyrio venit odore domum,
sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte
ipsius ex ipso dempta viri gremio.
quare illud satis est, si nobis is datur unis }

Catullus dearly loved Lesbia, or another woman like Lesbia, even though she wasn’t faithful to him:

And far before all, she who is dearer to me than myself,
my light, who living, makes it sweet for me to live.

{ et longe ante omnes mihi quae me carior ipso est,
lux mea, qua viva vivere dulce mihi est. }[7]

Medieval lyric, which developed across many more centuries than Catullus’s poetry, offered a way that suits many men better:

I say that it’s a great folly
to investigate or test
one’s wife or one’s lover
as long as one wants to love her,
since one should rightly keep
from investigating through jealousy
what one would not like to discover.

{ Je di que c’est granz folie
d’encerchier ne d’esprover
ne sa moullier ne s’amie
tant com l’en la veut amer,
ainz s’en doit on bien garder
d’encerchier par jalousie
ce qu’en n’i voudroit trover. }[8]

Men’s love for women doesn’t actually arise from mythic ideals in men’s minds. It arises from men’s desire to love and be loved in the flesh, with all the weaknesses and conflicts of human desire born within the chain of merely human being.

Many women and men today understand their love to depend on a shared commitment to social justice. Biological parental knowledge has long been a stark gender inequality. Women know for certain who their biological children are. Without modern DNA testing, men don’t. Moreover, modern societies impose crushing financial obligations on men who suffer unplanned parenthood and even on men who are cuckolded. Women and men in love with social justice should join hands and walk side-by-side in the struggles for equal parental knowledge for men and reproductive choice for men.[9]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Catullus to Secundus, then fall to ignorance, bigotry & intolerance
• Aeneid against Rhome & Trojan women burning ships to found Rome
• Versus Eporedienses playfully mythologized Pavia’s lovely women

Notes:

[1] Odyssey 4.138-42, archaic Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Murray (1919). The subsequent quote is similarly from Odyssey 4.143-6. A. S. Kline’s translation is freely available online.

Konstan (2015), pp. 304-6, identified the subtle wit in this incident. Konstan remarked:

Telemachus is no longer a boy; he is later described as entering upon manhood, and now possessing beauty or κάλλος (18.219), a word associated with sexual attractiveness and applied in the Homeric epics particularly to Paris and Helen, as well as to Odysseus when he is rejuvenated by Athena and meant to look sexy (Nausicaa falls for him).

Id. p. 306.

[2] Théodore de Bèze, Iuvenilia (first edition, 1548), Epigrams 91, “Ponticus to Cornelius, on not getting married {Ponticus Cornelio, de uxore non ducenda},” Latin text from Summers (2001) p. 304, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. p. 305. For a freely available Latin text, Machard (1879).

Like many medieval and early modern scholars, Bèze was well-versed in the classics. His reference to “moderate” beauty as being best alludes to an Aristotelian ethical precept. In v. 11, “if no other happens to ask {nemo si forte rogarit},” Bèze invokes Ovid, Amores 1.8.43, “The only chaste woman is one who hasn’t been propositioned {Casta est quam nemo rogavit}.”

Bèze’s subsequent epigram presents Cornelius’s contrasting evaluation. It concludes:

The path of virtue is tight, so it’s truly said.
That’s what I’m seeking, Ponticus, the road that is tight.

{ Semita virtutis stricta est, si vera loquuntur.
Haec quoque quam quaero, Pontice, stricta via est. }

Epigrams 92, “Cornelius to Ponticus, on getting married {Cornelius Pontico, de uxore ducenda}” vv. 17-8, sourced as previously. Cf. Matthew 7:14. Within this apparent double-entendre is Cornelius’s desire for a virgin’s tight vagina. Summers (2001) p. 432, note to v. 18. The contrast between semita and via similarly plays across chastity and promiscuity in women.

Théodore de Bèze became the Geneva-based spiritual leader of the Calvinists late in the sixteenth century. Today’s hate-guardians scrutinize years of social-media posts to denounce persons who have uttered offensive words. These commissars are far more doctrinaire and intolerant than Bèze and other sixteenth-century Calvinists ever were.

[3] Ovid, Heroines {Heroides}, “Laodamia to Protesilaus {Laodamia Protesilao},” vv. 65-78, Latin text from Ehwald (1907) Teubner edition via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from those of James M. Hunter (2013), A. S. Kline (2001), and the Showerman (1931) Loeb edition. The subsequent two quotes above are similarly from Heroides, vv. 35-42 (Mothers of Phylace…) and 81-4 (He is not suited to engage…).

Laodamia’s love for Protesilaus is nearly incomprehensible in modern literary criticism. Underscoring the need for meninist literary criticism, Manwell (2007) includes the following section titles: “Studying Masculinity, or Why Should we care about men?” and “Studying Roman Masculinity or Why Should We Care about Dead White Men?”

[4] Catullus, Poems {Carmina} 68.125-9, Latin text of Merrill (1893) via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from those of A. S. Kline (2001) and Smithers (1894) via Perseus.

Pliny the Elder observed about doves {columbae}:

These possess the greatest modesty, and adultery is unknown to either sex: they do not violate the faith of marriage. They maintain house together. Unless unmated or widowed, a dove doesn’t leave its nest.

{ inest pudicitia illis plurima et neutri nota adulteria: coniugii fidem non violant, communemque servant domum: nisi caelebs aut vidua nidum non relinquit. }

Pliny, Natural History 10.104, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Rackham (1940). Propertius 2.15.27-8 similarly suggests doves’ fidelity.

Laodamia, along with the female dove, are best interpreted as figuring Catullus:

One thing is made clear by the end of the dove simile: that Laodamia has stood for Catullus all the time. He is the extravagant kisser, and he has expressed feelings of almost fatherly love toward Lesbia.

Theodorakopoulos (2007) p. 327. Put less starkly, Laodamia refers to both Lesbia and Catullus, with Catullus more like Laodamia than Lesbia is. de Villiers (2008).

For good scholarly companions to reading Catullus 68, Theodorakopoulous (2007) and Leigh (2015). Some scholars have divided Catullus 68 into two or three poems. Leigh (2015) convincingly argues that it is one poem.

[5] Iliad 2.700-2, archaic Greek text of Allen & Monro (1920) Oxford edition via Perseus, English translation (modified slightly) of Murray (1924) Harvard edition via Perseus. Here’s A. S. Kline’s translation.

[6] Catullus, Carmina 68.89-96, sourced as previously. Troia obscena, Troia infelice is from id. v. 99. The subsequent three quotes are from vv. 70 (shining-white divine woman), 135-7, 143-7 (I will bear the rare infidelities…), and 159-60 (And far before all…). A woman being led by her father’s right hand signifies a marriage ceremony.

Brotherhood among men potentially threatens gynocentrism. Scholars working in support of the dominant ideology strive to make brotherhood among men suspect, e.g. by pitting it against men’s love for women:

But this idea of brotherhood, absorbed from the Catullan corpus, takes its place in a certain emotional geography in which brotherhood has as its concomitant, or even its motivation, a rejection of the woman.

Fitzgerald (1995) p. 213. As Walahfrid Strabo so poignantly illustrated, men are fully capable of loving men and women, both of whom are commonly their neighbors.

Literary studies of Catullus have generally lacked adequate appreciation for men within critical understanding of men’s social position. For example:

In this article, I argue that Catullus, having found the masculine vocabulary of grief inadequate, turns to the more expansive emotions and prolonged focus on the deceased offered by mythological examples of feminine mourning.

Seider (2016) p. 280. The gendered disposal of men in war, with resulting massive slaughter of men represented in epics such as the Iliad, socially constrains possibilities for men’s grief. To be adequately understood, gendered distinctions in mourning must be considered within the context of social devaluation of men’s lives. Similarly, Catullus’s wide-ranging and often outrageous performance of masculinity is best understood with respect to the constraints of dominant gynocentrism. Cf. Wray (2001).

[7] For contrasting views on Lesbia’s relation to Catullus’s beloved woman in Catullus 68, Öhrman (2009) and Rawson (2016).

According to Lowrie, aspects of the third section of Catullus 68 suggest movement to “a verbal artifact that exists outside the realm of physicality,” and it also emphasizes “blessing and life.” Lowrie (2006) pp. 129, 130. That section seems to me to embrace a mundane, embodied appreciation for women and men’s love for each other — love that’s entrenched and rooted in the realm of physicality.

Under regimes of paternity attribution by marriage, a man having sex with a married woman not his wife doesn’t face the risk of forced financial fatherhood. In a twelfth-century pseudo-Ovidian poem, Ovid recognized this advantage of having sex with married women:

If furtive sexual intercourse, as often happens, produces
a birth, her spouse will always raise it for you, because
the wife’s son is always presumed to be the husband’s.

{ … si coitum furtivum ut saepe, sequatur
fetus, semper eum tibi sponsus alet, quia semper
filius uxoris praesumitur esse mariti. }

About the Old Woman {De vetula} 2.397, Latin text from Hexter, Pfuntner & Haynes (2020) pp. 146-8, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. On the other hand, men committing adultery have throughout history been subject to being punished with castration.

[8] Jean Renart, The Romance of the Rose or of Guillaume de Dole {Le roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole} vv. 3625-31, Old French text from Lecoy (1962), English translation (modified slightly) from Psaki (1995). The French trouvère Gace Brulé composed this lyric that Renart inserted into Le roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole.

In a thirteenth-century Galician-Portuguese song, the main trobairitz complained that a noble husband ignored being cuckolded:

Never have I seen such wrong
as what this nobleman does to me,
and everybody in these parts
knows exactly what I mean:
the nobleman, whenever he likes,
goes to bed with his lovely wife
and doesn’t pay me the slightest heed!

He doesn’t fear me in the least
but holds me in disdain instead,
for his wife, whom he adores,
will give him sons until she’s dead:
what nerve he has to give his name
to the three children that I made
without giving me a shred of credit!

I feel such pain I’m sure it must
be worse than any other kind:
he takes my lady off to bed,
says she’s his and spends the night
in peace without a second thought,
and when she bears a son or daughter,
he doesn’t recognize it’s mine!

{ Nunca [a]tan gran torto vi
com’ eu prendo dun infançon;
e quantos ena terra son,
todo-lo tẽẽ por assi:
o infançon, cada que quer,
vai-se deitar con sa molher
e nulha ren non dá por mi!

E já me nunca temerá,
ca sempre me tev’en desden;
des i ar quer sa molher ben
e já sempr’ i filhos fará;
si quer três filhos que fiz i,
filha-os todos pera si:
o Demo lev’ o que m’en dá!

En tan gran coita viv’ oj’ eu,
que non poderia maior:
vai-se deitar con mia senhor,
e diz do leito que é seu
e deita-s’ a dormir en paz;
des i, se filh’ ou filha faz,
nono quer outorgar por meu! }

Joam Garcia de Guilhade, song of scorn {cantiga d’escarno}, manscript B 1498, V 1108, Galician-Portuguese text and English translation from Zenith (1995) pp. 70-1. Also freely available online at Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas.

[9] Men have long struggled to understand themselves, not as instances of “man,” but as distinctively gendered human beings. Consider an academic vignette from the beginning of the twenty-first century:

the implied reader of this monograph has just staggered into my office to turn in his seminar paper after pulling an all-nighter.

He slumps into the nearest chair, then leans forward, frowning and steepling his fingers. “Remember back in the introduction, where you say ‘Catullus, c’est nous’? In reader-response terms, you mean the mental picture you get of the author is an essential part of the reading process. The reader imagines him, in the flesh, speaking to her as she reads, right? OK, according to Iser, she draws on her own knowledge and experience to fill in the gaps and naturally, if she’s a classicist, she’s going to give the author she imagines a background and life story, based on the immediate historical context, any biographical data, and so on. So what do you think happened to your Catullus, the one you imagined when you were reading the poems?”

He looks over at me expectantly. The kid has absorbed all the theory, and he can talk it even when brain-dead. He should go far in this profession.

Skinner (2003) pp. 181-2. This man graduate student in the humanities suffers from learned gender abstraction. In the U.S. today, about twice as many women as men are now earning advanced degrees in literary and humanistic fields. For data, see note [8] in my obituary for Peter Dronke. Even as this man graduate student speaks as a reader of Catullus, he imagines a woman reading Catullus. For men students’ personal well-being and the intellectual development of all students, meninist literary criticism must be welcomed and included in university literary courses.

[images] (1) Neoptolemus killing King Priam of Troy. Painting on an Attic black-figure amphora, made c. 520-510 BGC in Vulci, a Etruscan city on the west coast of central Italy. Preserved as accession # F 222 in the Louvre Museum (Paris, France). Credit: Canino Collection, 1837. Source image thanks to Jastrow / Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Catullus’s beloved Lesbia holding a sparrow. Painting by Edward John Poytner in 1907. Generously made available by flickr user eoskins under CC BY 2.0.

References:

de Villiers, Annemarie. 2008. “The Laodamia simile in Catullus 68: reflections on love and loss.” Akroterion. 53 (1): 57-65.

Fitzgerald, William. 1995. Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hexter, Ralph J., Laura Pfuntner, and Justin Haynes, ed. and trans. 2020. Appendix Ovidiana: Latin poems ascribed to Ovid in the Middle Ages. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 62. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Konstan, David. 2015. “Wit and irony in the Epic Cycle.” Ch. 9 (pp. 303-327) in Fantuzzi, Marco, and Christos Tsagalis, eds. The Greek Epic Cycle and Its Ancient Reception: A Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lecoy, Félix. ed. 1962. Jean Renart. Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole. Paris: Champion. Publié en ligne par l’ENS de Lyon dans la Base de français médiéval, dernière révision le 30-12-2010.

Leigh, Matthew. 2015. “Illa domus illa mihi sedes: On the Interpretation of Catullus 68.” Ch. 10 (pp. 194-224) in Hunter, Richard, and S. P. Oakley, eds. Latin Literature and its Transmission: Papers in Honour of Michael Reeve. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lowrie, Michele. 2006. “Hic and Absence in Catullus 68.” Classical Philology. 101 (2): 115-132.

Machard, Alexandre. 1879. Les Juvenilia de Théodore de Bèze. Paris: I. Liseux.

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