Ah pereant, si quos ianua clausa iuvat: Propertius 2.23 and the revision of the elegiac code

Propertius’s second book presents a drift away from the masochistic erotics of the elegiac lifestyle. Where writing and loving are so entwined, the consequences of this new direction are felt with both the pen and the heart. The poem that best illustrates this constant duality is 2.23. In this remarkable poem, the dynamics of loving and writing eddy around each other in a dizzying swirl of poetic and erotic revisionism