Conclusion

The conclusion takes a final, closer look at empire’s toll on the subject in elegy. The juxtaposition of the puella of erotic elegy with the exiled Ovid in Chapter 5 highlights the differences between the ways that the aggressive pressure on Roman fines affect our textual characters. For the puellae, from Catullus to Ovid, the encounter, without fail, has consequences at the level of the body, although the specific manifestation is different in each text (or set of texts). The effects are not the same for the masculine subject. His corporeal self escapes the pressures, but as a subject he comes, or threatens to come, unhinged, incoherent, unstable.