The Elegies – Sextus Propertius

The Elegies – Sextus Propertius – 23 B.C.

Reviewed by: Michael Sympson             Date: 15 September 2001

A modern poet in ancient times.

After years of civil war, Roman patrons had found again leisure and means to sponsor talent and art. After Catullus’ early experiments, Gallus was the first to borrow directly from the Alexandrians whose poets 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 rabbi’s daughter – responded with the “Song of Solomon,” which is not just ostentatious poetry, but a bit of a rabbinic crossword puzzle: how many allusions and direct quotes from the Bible, will the 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 Callimachos’ “Lock of Berenice.” 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 in a vastly different tone.

Gaius Sextus Propertius’ data are very uncertain: born sometime between 54-47, he died sometime between 15-02 BC. All we know of Propertius’ life is that he had grown up near Perugia, that his family’s estate, like Vergil’s, had been confiscated for Augustus’ 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 intellectual kinship and modernity in the older author.

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 Propertius’ technical brilliance in a series of articles. But before Ezra Pound’s “Homage To Sextus Propertius,” there was barely any awareness of Propertius’ existence in the reading public. The simple fact remains: Propertius is a poet’s poet. Not for trying to be difficult, but for following a convention that has practically vanished from our historical awareness.

We still use mythological patterns and characters to typify human behavior, even so for most people it is biblical mythology that has replaced the pagan paradigm. However the correlative changes in the underlining concepts of man and his purpose has led to inevitable losses in sentiment and reference. For instance the only positive example for pederasty in the Bible is the story of Jonathan and David. Pagan mythology on the other hand offers hundreds of references and developed a code of romantic love entirely based on pederasty.

In poem No. 20 we can compare Propertius’ method with two of his Alexandrian models. In his epic on the Argonauts, Apollonios of Rhodes tells the tale of the drowning of Hercules’ boyfriend Hylas. Hylas has left the camp to fetch some water. The water nymphs see him, fall in love, and drag him under. Hylas screams, but sadly Hercules arrives too late, and fails to rescue his beloved. Theocritus tells the same tale, but focusses more on the erotic intensity between the lovers and the story of the drowning itself. Theocritus addressed his poem to his own boyfriend, Nikias. Propertius found yet another angle to the same myth.

The essential difference is in Propertius’ depiction of Hylas. Theocritos simply makes him a youth who went to fetch water and was kidnapped. Propertius paints Hylas as a youth of indolence – who is not at all coy to signal his sexual availability. In addition, we also see Hylas from the nymphs’ perspective. So he warns his friend Gallus to keep a close eye on his little lover, lest he loses him to rabid nymphs, as Hercules lost Hylas. This poem is a good example for Propertius’ use of multiple perspectives. But his poems must be read in their designated context.

Especially the first book betrays an immense effort to interlink the poems to a cycle of exploration. Elegiac poetry got its name from the metrical unit – the elegiac couplet. It is composed of alternating lines of verse in dactylic hexameter followed by a pentameter. Dactylic hexameter is the meter used in epic poetry but by combining it with a pentameter, the poetry is constantly deflated, because for every bold, frontal statement in the first line, there follows a second lime lacking in metrical grandeur. Propertius is recognized as metrical genius, the equal of Vergil.

Propertius cycle of poems is a story of grace and possessive addiction. Granny Nature’s sly way to make her creatures go is clearly recognized for what it is and how it creates a conflict with acceptable conduct in polite society. But unlike Rousseau and the Romantics, Propertius does not romanticize the savage in us, nor condemn culture as an evil. Love is a divine gift, but it has a destructive side to it. And where Ovid laughs away the pains of love as a mere party game, Propertius’ darker temperament wrestles with a profoundly troubling affliction.