Abstract

Elegy configures the household ( domus ) as a response to emerging concepts of the Roman family, an institution whose constitution had been disrupted during the civil wars that preceded the Principate. The Tibullan amator, foregrounding the domus ' role in shaping personal identity, weighs allegiance to his ancestral estate against the houses of Messalla and puella, and finally professes devotion to Nemesis' threshold; the Propertian amator, exposing the nomenclature of familial relationships as an unstable resource for self-representation, also turns to Cynthia in a final attempt to consecrate the domus. Such appropriations of the Roman household are best interpreted as a means by which the amatores locate themselves outside the Augustan vision of normative family relationships.