Possessive pronouns in Latin love elegy

Abstract This essay attempts to energize discussion about a crucial but neglected aspect of elegiac, especially Propertian, language. It takes as its starting point the observation that possessive pronouns of the class meus/tuus/suus (but especially the first-person meus), used of a beloved, constitute a fundamental verbal feature of Latin elegy. §1.1 demonstrates that elegy is the first genre to develop the predicative (as opposed to attributive) use of the pronoun, which §1.2 argues to be a defining element of elegiac amor in Propertius (as well as Ovid and the Appendix Tibulliana). §1.3 moves from literary to sociocultural implications and sets out how Propertius’ predicative use of the possessive pronoun, especially in Books 1–2, offers a window on recent traumatic events, namely the triumviral land confiscations and subsequent anxiety about property rights in the late 40s bc (as articulated in Virgil Eclogues 1 and 9).