poems of Propertius, or to discuss at length the vexed question of the years of his intimacy with Cynthia. We will only endeavour to give, as succinctly as possible, a statement of the main facts in his love-career, so far as they are necessary to a clear understanding of the elegies. Indeed it would be hopeless to dream of determining the period at which many of the poems to Cynthia were written. Barth, Kuinoel, Lachmann, Hertzberg, and others,* have, with more or less show of probability, tried to reconcile them with their own views; but no theory as yet propounded is in âll respects satisfactory. iii. 6, 44. iv. 20, 11, 12. The poet's first meeting with Cynthia seems to have occurred about A.U.C. 723; at all events, he was not successful in his suit till after the battle of Actium (2d Sept. A.U.C. 723). It is evident, moreover, that this success was in summer. We are thus driven to the conclusion that it did not occur earlier than the summer of A.U.C. 724. A few elegies, full of passionate desire, signalise this season of rapture. But thorns soon began to spring and noxious weeds to grow in his garden of delights. The demon of jealousy entered his bosom, and the open faithlessness of his mistress drove him to misery and despair. Besides a number of less formidable rivals, a rich Illyrian praetor was a source of great annoyance and i. 8; iii. 7. anxiety to him. Apart from his wealth, the praetor had but little to recommend him to an educated and accomplished woman like Cynthia. But avarice was her ruling passion; and she seems to have been on the outlook periodically for this gentleman, with a view to replenishing her purse and gratifying her extravagant and expensive tastes. At first Propertius was successful in weaning her from his society; but ere long he turns up again to make sad havoc of his peace. i. II. Not long after their union, Cynthia paid a visit to Baiae an event which drew from the poet an elegy of great beauty and tenderness, in which he cautions her to beware of the gay society and seductive allurements with which she is surrounded. Making all allowance for the loftier vein and nobler * 'Paley, in his preface to the second edition of his' Propertius,' p. ix, says the poet was "born circa 50 B.C.;” and in an introductory note to the ist Book, p. 2, distinctly states that "it was both written and published by its author A.U.C. 728 (B.C. 26), probably at the early age of twenty years"! So difficult is it to avoid confusion where all is uncertain. h purpose of some of his later productions, we are inclined to consider the elegies written at this time, in respect of sweetness, tenderness, and real pathos, as the masterpieces of his genius. i. 1, 5, 6, 35, About the year A.U.C. 725 a rupture took place which lasted for a year, during which Propertius led a roving life, frittering away his time in morbid passion and What led to the separation matters little; suffice it to say that Propertius throws the blame on himself. Before the middle of A.U.c. 726 he published his 1st Book, and in less than a month thereafter he was engaged upon a second. Whether this 2d Book should contain the 2d and 3d in the arrangement we have followed, is not quite clear. Lachmann divided what till his time had been considered the 2d Book, for two reasons: (1.) the proemial character of the poem beginning ii. 7. ii. 3, 3, 4. iii. I, I. Sed tempus lustrare aliis Helicona choreis ; and (2.) a line in one of the succeeding poems— iii. 4, 25. Sat mea sat magnast, si tres sint pompa libelli. While following his arrangement, mainly from the fact that it has been adopted by all the recent editors of the elegies, we must state that Lachmann's arguments, though extremely plausible, are by no means conclusive. For we know, in fact, nothing as to the order in which the elegies- - excepting, of course, those in the 1st Book, where all is clear and consistent-would have appeared, had they been edited by the poet himself. Whatever theories editors may set up, the publication of the 1st Book alone during the poet's lifetime is absolutely certain; for neither the line above quoted, nor even the following from one of the later poems v. 7, 50. Longa mea in libris regna fuere tuis can be held as evidence of publication. The poem beginning 'Sed tempus, &c.," has, moreover, a fragmentary look about it. Its date, from verse 16, would seem to be A.U.C. 729—the year in which the expedition of Aelius Gallus to Arabia was contemplated. It is thus the latest of the elegies in the original 2d Book, with the exception of the concluding elegy, which evidently, as Professor Munro remarks, was from time to time undergoing corrections and receiving additions, and was left unfinished at the poet's death. The remaining two Books, the 4th and 5th, contain some of the earliest as well as the very latest of the works of Propertius. Of the former class are notably the 20th Elegy of the 4th Book-written evidently before he had conferred on Hostia the pseudonym of Cynthia-and some of the legendary poems in the 5th Book. In the 4th Book we see the downward progress of Cynthia, and her fall in the affections of the poet. At last, stung with shame and bitter anguish, and a loathing in which, however, vestiges of the olden love still linger, and actuated for the time by better impulses and nobler aspirations, he addressed to her his final farewell, as he thought, after having faithfully (but this must not be taken too literally) kept by her for five years. The biographers of Propertius seem to think that the separation was indeed final; but it is evident, from the 7th Elegy of the 5th Book, either that Cynthia died before the separation actually took place, or that there was a reunion. Paley, following Hertzberg, as is his wont, sees clearly in this poem the natural consequences of the separation-effectual estrangement, continued profligacy of the poet, &c. iv. 25, 3. Effectual estrangement there cannot have been, if any weight is to be attached to the following passages : Cum mihi somnus ab exequiis penderet amoris, Eosdem habuit secum, quibus est elata, capillos, V. 7, 5, sq. The meaning of the second line here is surely unmistakable; and how could Propertius tell anything about her appearance in death, and how she had her hair when she was carried out, unless he had been present? True, she upbraids Propertius with negligence—indeed, with shameful neglect—and even alleges that she has been poisoned by her trusted slave Lygdamus and an accomplice. But since her death there is another in her room—one of the frequenters of the Via Sacra, we may presume, from the description: Quae modo per viles inspectast puplica noctes, Et graviora rependit iniquis pensa quasillis, v. 7, 39-48. Nostraque quod Petale tulit ad monimenta coronas, Per nomen quoniamst ausa rogare meum. Here Cynthia's old servants are ill-treated and beaten for having the audacity to speak well of her. Propertius has allowed his new mistress to appropriate Cynthia's golden brooch. Now, to what does all this plainly point? To her living with Propertius immediately before her death, assuredly. For how else could he have to do with the disposal of the ornaments upon her person as she lay on the funeral pile? These considerations lead us to think that death alone brought about their final and effectual separation. Cynthia's funeral was of the humblest description; and it is certainly very singular that it was not attended by the poet. Her remains were interred by the apple-fringed banks of the murmuring Anio, where her ghost instructs him to raise a little pillar to her memory with the charming v. 7, 85, 86. inscription: v. 7, 23-34. IX. 2. Hic Tiburtina jacet aurea Cynthia terra: Accessit ripae laus, Aniene, tuae. We do not imagine that it is at all likely that after her death Propertius contracted a lawful union, notwithstanding the younger Epist., vi. 15; Pliny's mention of one Passennus Paullus, a splendid knight, and townsman of the poet, as a lineal descendant (vera soboles), and inheritor of his genius. Cynthia, we know, had no offspring; and even if she had had issue, iii. 9, 33. such would not have been recognised as legitimate. Propertius himself makes no reference to his marriage-or, indeed, to any mistress of his heart, save Cynthia-in his writings, at least, verifying his tender prediction i. 12, 20. Cynthia prima fuit, Cynthia finis erit. How he spent the last years of his life we know not. The poems that unquestionably belong to that period exhibit an elevation of moral tone considerably higher than we find in his earlier writings. It is therefore only charitable to assume that he had relinquished the recklessness and foibles of his youthful days, and taken to those philosophic studies which he had long before laid out as occupation for his maturer years. iv. 5, 23, sq.; iv. 21, 25, sq. V. 11, 66. From his own writings we can trace his life no farther than A.U.C. 739. As to whether he ceased to live when he ceased to write, it is vain to speculate; nor need we waste words in idle theorising. At the early age of thirty-four his sun had set for literature and poetry,—four years after Virgil and Tibullus had gone to their rest; while Horace and Ovid were basking in the very noontide of the brilliant Augustan age, and in the heyday of their popularity and fame. A few words on the work, genius, and character of the poet, and we have done. i. 7, 23, 24; iv. 1; iv. 2; iv. Propertius even from his youth was ambitious of immortality -indeed of being considered by posterity the great exemplar in Roman Elegy. And hard to gain was the crown for which he strove. Catullus had preceded him in the field-in verse ruder, it is true, but breathing throughout genuine poetic fervour and wondrous intensity of feeling. Gallus, too, had won distinction in the same walk. Tibullus wore the laurel now. The star of Ovid was just rising in the poetical horizon. But, nothing daunted, he sang the sweet, sad story of his love; the time-hoary legends of Rome; the praises of Maecenas and the glory of Augustus; the untimely fates of Paetus and the young Marcellus; the devoted affection of Aelia Galla and the stainless honour of Cornelia,—giving to Roman elegy a freshness and variety hitherto unknown. While most of his predecessors had attempted different forms of verse, Propertius, with consummate wisdom, confined himself to elegy alone. An avowed imitator of Callimachus and Philetas, he resolved to drink from fresh fountains of song, and to lead down the Greek Muses from the high places of Helicon to Roman choirs and the green banks of Italian streams. And no one who has read him even cursorily requires to be told how powerful an instrument elegiac verse became in his hands, as well for descriptive purposes as for the delineation of the master-passion in its varied phases of tenderness, ecstasy, grief, jealousy, and despair. In the poetry of pure passion he is second to Catullus alone. He lacks the sweet grace and tender melancholy that lend such an exquisite charm to the elegies of Tibullus, and the easy flow and melodious chime that lead us lovingly along in Ovid; but his verse has a strength and |