Sulpicia


Sulpicia is the author of six short poems published in the corpus of Albius Tibullus's poetry, one of the few female poets of Ancient Rome whose work survives.

Life

Sulpicia lived in the reign of Augustus and was born around 40 BCE. She was the daughter of Servius Sulpicius Rufus and his wife Valeria; her uncle and guardian was Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, an important patron of literature. Sulcipia's family were well-off citizens with connections to Emperor Augustus, since her uncle Messalla served as the commander for Augustus.

Poetry

The surviving poetry consist of six short elegiac poems, and five poems addressed to a lover called Cerinthus, which are possibly by Tibullus. The Tibullus collection contains works also by other poets.
Cerinthus was most likely a pseudonym, in the style of the day. Cerinthus has sometimes been thought to refer to the Cornutus addressed by Tibullus in two of his Elegies, probably an aristocratic Caecilius Cornutus. The similarity in consonants and the resemblance between the Greek keras and Latin cornu are among arguments cited in favour of this identification. Recent criticism, however, has tended away from attempting to identify Cerinthus with an historical figure in favour of noting the literary implications of the pseudonym.
Some critics have challenged the view that the Sulpicia poems were authored by a woman; Hubbard suggests the content of the poems is too risqué to have been penned by an aristocratic woman in Rome, while Habinek and Holzberg both suggest that the poems are too sophisticated. In an overview of Sulpician criticism, Alison Keith described the logic of Hubbard's article as "tortuous" and also highlights problems in Holzberg and Habinek's attempts to efface female authorship. In contrast, Hallett argues for increasing the numbers of poems attributed to Sulpicia to include poems 8-12 from the Corpus Tibullianum, which had previously been attributed to the amicus Sulpiciae.
While academics traditionally regarded Sulpicia as an amateur author, this view was challenged by Santirocco in an article published in 1979, and subsequently the literary merit of this collection of poems has been more fully explored.