Magnum iter ascendo: Properzio, Apollo, Calliope e le possibilità dell’elegia

In the elegy 4,10 Propertius remodels Apollo and Calliope’s warnings in 3,3; at the same time, he resizes the ambitions expressed in 3,3. To Apollo’s words the poet answers in 4,10 with the purpose of singing three well-defined but discontinuous historical episodes; the crescendo of violence that marks the three events, linked to the ritual praxis of the temple of Iuppiter Feretrius, seems a response to Calliope’s words, who in 3,3 had led him back to sing the struggles of Venus in opposition to those of Mars.