Propertius 4.5 is the poet–lover’s vindictive fantasy against the lena, the character who is most inimical to him in the dramatic scenario of love elegy. He expresses his hostility towards her by depicting her as a profoundly grotesque creature, wicked and revolting in every way. Propertius enables the poet–lover to be mercilessly punitive and to use images likely to generate a strong emotional reaction. The images contemplated by the poet–lover in his rage are the same ones contemplated by us, Propertius’ readers, as we move through the text. Being expressions of a rejected lover, such images are likely to generate a sequence of vehement emotions, both within the narrative and in the reading experience, while our gaze and the poet–lover’s both remain fixed on the lena as an embodied source of the dark passions that course through the poem. We would miss the genre’s signature of authenticity if we did not conclude that the grotesque is implicit in and central to the Propertian elegy.