LIFE OF PROPERTIUS.

FAR from the noise and bustle of Rome, by the homes of mountain Asisium, amid the quiet seclusion of Mevanian pastures, and near the sources of the Clitumnus, sometime between the years A.U.C. 700-710, was born the celebrated Umbrian poet, Sextus Propertius.

i. 22, 9, 10; v. . 63-66, 121

126.

The exact date of his birth is unknown; but we learn that he was younger than Tibullus and older than Ovid. We can- Ov. Trist., iv. not, therefore, be far wrong in assuming A.U.C. 705 as 10, 51-54. about the time when he first saw the light. The gentile name of Aurelius seems to have been given to him by his earliest editors without the slightest foundation, and perpetuated through subsequent editions of his works without receiving, till very recently, either consideration or investigation. Doubtless the reason lies in the resemblance of his name to that of Aurelius Prudentius, a late writer; or perhaps it may be that Aurelius is a corruption of Amerinus, Ameria being by many considered the birthplace of the poet. The stupid agnomen Nauta, with which he has been credited, seems to rest on no better foundation than a false reading of a verse in one of the elegies. His parents were of the middle class, and had owned an extensive and rich estate, of which they had been deprived in one of the agrarian divisions that cursed the country at this stormy period (A.U.C. 713). pertius was ingenuus is clear from his mention of the aurea bulla, the golden amulet or toy worn by the children of the freeborn; but it is too much to claim for him patri

iii. 16, 22.

iii. 16, 21, 22;

26, 55; v. i. 127, sq.

That Pro

V. I, 131.