On the Road Again

Abstract

The space of empire also plays a starring role in Tibullus’ elegies; his obsession emerges around the word via, the road. It is not a great leap to assert that the road and the space of empire are inextricably intertwined. On the one hand, for Tibullus, the road and by extension the geographic expanse of empire are the root of all evils. Mobility belongs to the male world of commerce, exploration, and war—all activities he sets up in direct opposition to love. On the other hand, however, much as Tibullus struggles to divorce amor from the road, in particular, a dark and unholy alliance emerges between the two. Although he wishes to establish empire and amor as separate and opposing categories, bounded, fixed, and distinct, the fines do not hold. Characteristics of the man of politics, the warrior, and the merchant, players in the game of empire, turn up with increasing frequency as characteristics of the lover. And in the end, the viae appear on the very body of the puella, emblazoned on her most elegiac Coan clothing. Tibullus offers up a vision of the fallibility of fines, where things spill over the boundaries into places they are least welcome.