Propertian poet-lover hurries through the city to meet his beloved. But his itinerary stalls when passing the site of the celebrations for the opening of Apollo’s Portico on the Palatine. Propertius’ trajectory from imperial monument to beloved’s bed is interrupted, or stayed, in a moment of delay which suspends in tension the two elements of the elegist’s persona, citizen and lover. Movement through an elaborately choreographed imperial scenery (or more accurately, loitering on its stage) leads to the emergence of an interstitial space between lover and citizen that allows for the reconsideration of the power and freedom and the limitations of both the citizen and the lover.