Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 99 h The Red Sea and the Luxury of the Roman Women: A Literary Study Although the Mediterranean Sea was the center of Greek and Roman life, the Red Sea tells another story of the West trying to catch up with Eastern refinement. The trade of the Red Sea has again and again been called into question where extensive bibliography can conveniently be found. My present study, in a way, continues this interest, but with a crucial shift of emphasis. The trade of the Red Sea is not my particular concern as such, though it remains important. My purpose is to weigh how the luxury trade of the Red Sea appeared in Augustan poetry. 1 It is a subject on which two principal lines of thought can be traced: : First : How did this luxury trade affect the literary perspectives of the Roman poets in connection with women? Second : The Roman poets’ reflections on this trade. Time and again, I would assist my argument by references to other sources outside the Augustan poetry to give emphasis to the Augustan poetical view. 2 Many Latin texts address the issue of female adornment. Our knowledge of the Roman women's extravagance of getting the luxury products of the East comes from a variety of literary sources, usually and mainly Pliny the elder, Seneca the younger, and the satirists Juvenal and Martial. I would suggest, in this context, to illuminate the evidence of Roman love elegy. 3 One of the fairly frequent themes which many Roman poets of theAugustan Age concerned themselves with, was that of the life of luxury. 4 The growing wealth of Rome was due to the expansion of the Empire, 5 so it is interesting 1 It is significant to see the interesting relations between history and literature through Habinek’s following words: T. Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome (Princeton 1998) 5: “ But for all that literature is part of history, it seems important to recognize that history can be part of the pleasure of literature”. 2 Latin literature of the Augustan Age reflects both a new attitude to women and a new kind of woman, for this point, see: E. Fantham et al., Women in the Classical World, Image and Text (NewYork and Oxford 1995) 281ff.; Magda El-Nowieemy, “Woman and Music in Ancient Rome” (in Arabic), Studies in Honour of Ali Radwan , Vol. 3 (Supreme Council of Antiquities, Cairo 2005) 153ff. 3 I focus on the evidence of three elegiac Roman poets of the Augustan Age: Tibullus (c. 55–19 B. C.), Propertius (c. 54–16 B. C.), and Ovid (43 B.C. — 17 A.D.). 4 See: Horace ( Odes 2.15; 2.18; 3.6; 3.16; 3.24), Tibullus (1.2; 2.3; 2.4). 5 In Satire 6, Juvenal says: nunc patimur longae pacis mala, saevior armis Luxuria incubuit victumque ulciscitur orbem . (Juv. 6.292–3) “We are now suffering the maladies of long peace, luxury, more cruel than wars, dwelled (here) and avenged the conquered world”. According to Juvenal, luxury was one of the miseries of eternal peace of the Principate. Juvenal argues that once luxury has settled in Rome, it punished the Romans for conquering the world.