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LOVE ELEGY
After a brief but not unhappy affair with a woman whom he calls Lycinna
(3.15) Propertius fell in love with Cynthia. He speaks of her naming eyes
(2.13.14), her auburn hair (2.2.5—6), her long fingers and her striking figure
(2.2.5-6). She was well read, musical, wrote verse herself and danced. Later,
Propertius admits that he exaggerated her beauty (3.24 and 25), and after
Cynthia's death her ghost gives a cruel assessment of Propertius, the lover,
in a magnificent poem (4.7) which represents a supreme effort at self-criticism
and self-irony by the poet; the result is a gentle but gripping evocation of the
real Cynthia, nostalgic and without bitterness on his part.
His own image, as Propertius projects it, is that of a pale, intense young man
(1.5.21), something of a dandy with perfumed hair and a slightly affected walk
(2.4.5—6), who enjoys parties (3.5.19—22) and all the other pleasures of city
life; the country does not attract him as much as it does Tibullus (but cf. 2.19).
In later years, he seems to have become ' respectable' without losing his ability
to view himself with irony (4.1).
The poems of Book 1 made him famous (a succes de scandale; cf. 2.24A.ifF.),
and after Maecenas became his patron, the house of the Emperor was open to
him. He wrote funeral elegies for two persons close to Augustus: 3.18 for his
nephew Marcellus, and 4.11 for Cornelia. It speaks for Maecenas that he was
capable of friendship with men as different as Virgil, Horace and Propertius
(we know too little about the other members of his circle, such as L. Varius or
Valgius Rufus). Propertius himself had the greatest admiration for Virgil, and
around 25 B.C. he hails (2.34) the great new Roman epic in progress, though he
probably knew little of the shape into which it grew. He never mentions
Horace, though the influence of the Odes is fairly obvious, especially in the
elegies of Book 3; 1 and Horace never mentions him by name, unless the slightly
foppish elegist caricatured in Epist. 2.2.9off. happens to be Propertius. Neither
he nor Tibullus mention each other, but it is difficult to imagine that they
ignored each other's work. Propertius 1 and Tibullus 1 may, in fact, be independent
of each other, but Propertius 2 and 3 seem to show the influence of
Tibullus r, and his Roman Elegies (in Book 4) owe something to Tibullus 2.5.
Propertius sees himself as the great romantic lover. Like Byron, like
D'Annunzio, he flies or wants to fly from woman to woman, always ready to
offer, though not always giving, all of himself. To play this role (for it is a role)
it is not enough to be passionate and tender: one needs a kind of contemptuous
pride, an air of mystery; and behind the lover the reading public must feel the
hero always engaged in fighting against the jealousy of the gods, the man who
is greater than his destiny. Love, to him, is a transcendental power, and all
accepted values — nobility, power, wealth — are revalued by love. Three lines,
1
Cf., for example, 3.9.1 with Horace, Odes 1.1.1; 3.2.17 with Odes 3.30.2; 3.9.17 with Odes 1.1.x;
3.13.60 with Epod. 16.2 and on the whole question Wili (1947) i8iff.; Solmsen (194S) iosff.
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