Sextus Propertius was born in Italy near Assisi, later
home to Saint FRANCIS OF ASSISI. His parents belonged
to the wealthy equestrian class, and although
his family lost properties in the confiscations of 41
B.C., Propertius never needed to pursue a profession
to earn his living, nor did he require a patron,
as did his contemporaries VIRGIL and HORACE.He established
an enduring friendship with the wealthy
statesman Maecenas, who was patron to several
other artists and who accepted Propertius into his
literary circle. Though the precise dates in which
his books appeared are not known, one of his elegies
is addressed to a woman who died in 16 B.C. OVID,
writing the Remedy for Love in A.D. 2, implies that
Propertius was dead by this time.
Propertius is known for four books of Elegies, a
total of 92 poems. The fame of these books earned
him a place alongside CATULLUS and Ovid in the
tradition of classical love poetry. QUINTILIAN considered
him second only to Tibullus as an elegiac
poet. The elegiac meter had become the accepted
form for poetry as early as Mimnermus (ca. 630
B.C.). Though it was also used for martial verse,
dirges, and lamentations, it was most widely used
for love poems.
Traditionally, the love poets professed enslavement
to one woman, an attachment that the 12th-
century TROUBADOURS of southern France would
imitate and that DANTE would continue in his
poems addressed to Beatrice and Petrarch in his
sonnets to Laura. Catullus addressed his mistress
as Lesbia, Cornelius Gallus wrote to Cytheris, and
Tibullus professed devotion to Delia. Propertius’s
love was a Roman lady whom he named Cynthia.
The first book is completely dominated by
Propertius’s experience of falling in love with Cynthia;
as he declares in the very first poem: “No girl
but Cynthia ever caught my eye / or stormed by my
heart or felled my passionate pride.” These initial
poems portray love as an external force that has
thoroughly overcome the poet, and, in keeping
with tradition, he grows ill with unrequited love.
Passionate descriptions of Cynthia’s worth and
beauty alternate with declarations of despair over
her coldness and neglect. The second book also addresses
Cynthia. Propertius opens this book by declaring
that even if he were gifted enough to write
of gods, heroes, and epic battles, he would still
write of Cynthia because, he says,
To die for love is glory; glory also
to love one only; I would have that joy.
His Cynthia is more constant than Helen, more enchanting
than Circe, more beautiful than any of
the goddesses.
By his third book, Propertius has widened the
scope of his art. The poet’s voice here seems more
often disenchanted with love and concerned for
the things that do last. Mournfully he remarks in
the second poem of the third book, “from remembered
genius, fame shall flower. / It is only wit that
death does not devour.”
The fourth book contains only the rare reference
to Cynthia, and the poet turns his attention to
the legendary past of Rome, occasional poems, letters,
and an elegy.More than any of the others, this
book demonstrates Propertius’s professed identification
with the aesthetics of the Alexandrian poet
CALLIMACHUS. The fourth book shows the true
breadth of Propertius’s talent, and together the Elegies
chart the maturation of a poet, his struggle to
learn from his experiences, and his quest to discover
and define his own personality.
Translator Constance Carrier calls Propertius a
“daring, difficult, experimental writer.” Scholar
Margaret Hubbard concludes that Propertius has
no characteristic or distinguishable style, but
rather draws on a variety of influences and is
highly inventive, especially in his use of imagery
and metaphor. Though not as often read in later
centuries as the EPIC poets, whose ranks he declined
to join, Propertius is nonetheless remembered
in the Roman Elegies (1788) by Goethe and
in Homage to Sextus Propertius (1917) by Ezra
Pound.
English Versions of Works by
Sextus Propertius
Propertius: Elegies. Edited by G. P. Goold. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Propertius: Elegies. Translated by R. I.V. Hodge and R.
A. Buttimore. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2002.
Works about Sextus Propertius
Benediktson, D. Thomas. Propertius: Modernist Poet
of Antiquity. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1989.
Carrier, Constance. The Poems of Propertius. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1963.
Hubbard,Margaret. Propertius. London: Bristol Classical
Press, 2001.