The Poems

Sextus Propertius was born in a northern Italian family in 60 BC. In his early childhood he would have heard reports of Caesar's conquest of northern Gaul. In his teen years he would have watched the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, and by the time of his death c. 10 BC, he had seen Octavianus found the Roman Empire and declare himself Augustus. Propertius himself, for all the eventful happenings of his fifty year life,was a man of little importance. He held no important goverment offices, nor did he ever serve in the military. He was basically a Roman middle class 'guy-on-the-street'. It was with his talent as a poet, however, that he gained recognition amongst at least some of the literary elite of his day. Propertius' poems are translated and made to rhyme in English in this great title by Penguin Classics. Propertius' best poems came from the early years of his life, when he was infatuated with a girl named Cynthia. Most of his poems, and all his best ones, are odes to Cynthia, in which he praises her beauty but condemns her fickle and contrary behavior. Though the content of some of these poems would seem almost 'kinky' to modern ears (at least to modern ears unfamiliar with Propertius's contemporary Ovidus), and his devotion to Cynthia sometimes seems rather pitiful, the poems have not lost their luster after 2000 years and are enough to take your breath away. Propertius also wrote poems on mythology and on the countryside of his beloved Italia, and these are enjoyable as well. For me personally, one of the neatest things about Propertius' poems is how they offer a first-hand look at the life of a middle class inhabitant of Rome-he is neither wealthy nor poor, he leads a fairly comfortable but obscure existence, and is thus his day's version of many of us. To me this can make some of his writings, even on the mudane situations of his day, seem profound. In short, though Propertius was not the best, much less the most famous of his day's writers, he provides us with a unique look at the changing Republic in which he was born and at love and sexuality for the common man in the Roman world, and this Penguin translation offers it in a well-organized and readable fashion.

I found this a fine and useful translation to read along side the Latin text of Propertius in the Loeb Classical Library (where the facing translation has as its prime aim to help the reader understand the latin; it gets a little dry). Unfortunately, this Oxford World Classics edition does not contain a facing Latin text, like the Oxford World's Classics edition of Catullus (also translated by Guy Lee). Nonetheless, Lee's introduction has to be one of the most interesting and absorbing introductions around, a far cry from the usual jargon-laden tedium that passes for an intro to most paperback classics nowadays. Lee is good on Propertius life and times, and on what he himself is trying to accomplish in the translation - basically, stay as close to the Latin as possible yet still preserve some style to the English. Lee's translations are always elegant on their own and helpful to the "mature student" teaching himself Latin. Try Guy Lee's translations of the Eclogues (Penguin - with facing Latin) and his Catullus (Oxford World Classics - with facing Latin). For a wonderful, well-written account of Propertius and the other great poets of the Augustan era (Virgil, Horace, etc), seek out Jasper Griffin's Latin Poets and Roman Life; like Guy Lee's introduction, Professer Griffin's book is jargon-free, well-written and extremely absorbing - concentrating all the time on the poetry itself and what it has to say (rather than literay theories, etc).

After CatullusÕ early experiments, Gallus was the first to borrow directly from the Alexandrians whose poets, more than a century earlier, had introduced a new sensibility and the conflict between urbanity and the urban concept of nature - preferably in a bucolic setting, as in Theocritus idylls. An innovation, to which even a Hebrew poet - perhaps a rabbiÕs daughter - made a contribution with the ÒSong of Solomon,Ó which is not just ostentatious poetry, but a bit of a rabbinic crossword puzzle: how many allusions and direct quotes from the Bible, would a reader recognize? The undisputed Doyen of Hellenistic poetry was Callimachos, a scholar employed by the library in Alexandria. He had experimented with new prosodic patterns, wrote hymns, epigrams, court poetry, and especially etiological works. Catullus created for himself a pedigree by translating CallimachosÕ ÒLock of Berenice.Ó But it was Cornelius Gallus who began imitating the bucolic urbanity we find echoed in Vergil's Eclogues. We know that Vergil admired Gallus. Eclogue X addresses him directly. Then came Propertius and claimed Mimnermos as his literary pedigree; he adapted the Greek poet's meter, but in a vastly different tone. Gaius Sextus PropertiusÕ data are very uncertain: born sometime between 54-47, he died sometime between 15-02 BC. All we know of PropertiusÕ life is that he had grown up near Perugia, that his familyÕs estate, like Vergil's, had been confiscated for AugustusÕ veterans, but that unlike Virgil he was able to subsist on his own means. In his poems he obsesses over a woman he called Cynthia. The emotion is intense, the expression refined, and full of the aroma of daily life. He is aware that he is an innovator. His poems ripple with a confusingly complex sensitivity. And that exactly is the problem for a modern reader! Propertius prided himself on being learned. He often used versions of myths obscure even to erudite Romans. A reader without a grip on the lore of Antiquity, is simply lost if he tries to appreciate in detail all the hints, innuendos, and references. But who, in our days, has such a grasp? My own edition uses 160 generously spaced pages for the actual poetry and 320 pages for a tightly packed index of personal names, biographical notes and all the mythological and geographical references. Reading these poems is an experience surprisingly similar to reading certain modern authors - surprising for the degree of intellectual kinship and modernity that bridges a gap of 2,000 years. Unlike Ovid, who was a favorite of the Elizabethans, Metaphysicians, and practically everybody ever since, Propertius came to light rather late. In the English speaking world, it was A.E. Housman, the English poet and self-taught Latinist, who was the first to champion PropertiusÕ technical brilliance in a series of articles. But before Ezra PoundÕs ÒHomage To Sextus Propertius,Ó there was barely any awareness of PropertiusÕ existence in the reading public. The simple fact

Propertius' political poetry is entirely superfluous; he is at his best when writing odes to Cynthia. Of course, like all love-elegists, he is highly indebted to Catullus, but still he manages to have a charm and lyricism all his own.