Reception of Elegy in Augustan and Post-Augustan Poetry

Love elegy is the characteristic poetic production of the first thirty years of Augustan rule, for while that period produced one outstanding epicist and one exceptional lyric poet, it produced no fewer than four love elegists: Gallus, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. And yet it would be possible to read the next hundred years of Roman literary history primarily as the story of the reception of Virgil's Aeneid pre-eminance, engagement with all four elegists is an important aspect of Augustan and post-Augustan literature. I propose to concentrate on just five authors: Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Valerius Flaccus and Statius.