SOURCE: An introduction to The "Monobiblios" of Propertius: An Account of the First Book of Propertius Consisting of a Text, Translation, and Critical Essay on Each Poem, D. S. Brewer Ltd., 1977, pp. 5-15.

[In the following essay, Hodge and Buttimore provide an overview on the-life of Propertius, consider the dating of the poems in his first book, and discuss his use of mythological elements.]

I

The life of Propertius and the biographical question.

We have very little external evidence for the life of Propertius, as is the case with most ancient poets. However, although he is not often clearly and anecdotally biographical in the manner of Horace, some information can be securely derived from the poems themselves. The date of his birth can be established within limits from what he says of himself in IV i 120 ff. There he implies that when he assumed the 'toga virilis' he had already lost part of his paternal estates in the confiscations of 41-40 B.C. The toga virilis was not usually taken after the age of 17, so the earliest date for the poet's birth would then be about 57 B.C. In the same passage in Book IV he says that he lost his father in boyhood and his mother in early manhood. He also implies that his family was of equestrian standing, a social advantage which distinguishes him from his contemporaries Horace and Vergil. He was born in Umbria probably near Assisi (see I xxii and IV i 121-6). He was still alive in 16 B.C., since the eleventh poem of Book IV celebrates a Cornelia who died in that year. But by A.D. 2 he had died, since Ovid speaks of him in the past tense in the Remedia Amoris (line 763), which belongs to that year.

Some of the experiences implied by this sketchy history clearly enter into his poetry and colour the tone of his relationships. This is particularly obvious in the case of those poems addressed to Tullus in the first book (see below on VI, XIV, XXII). The experience of the confiscations, the consciousness of having been on the wrong side in the civil wars, a feeling of loyalty to his dead cousin (XXI, XXII), all these are significant factors in his relationship to Tullus, an Italian of consular family who happened to be on the winning side. This kind of interaction between poetry and life is relatively easy to perceive, but for other aspects of Propertius's biography, and particularly for the affair with Cynthia, two problems face the scholar and critic. The first is the elusive nature of the evidence where the source is largely poems, the second, a sense that all such speculation is in any case irrelevant to the study of the poems as poems. Clearly if the second is felt to be the case, the first problem ceases to be of any critical importance. This is essentially the position argued by A.W. Allen in an influential article.' Allen, however, concentrated on a particular target, the speculative biography that derives from Barth and Lachmann, which is an attempt to establish a chronology of the affair with Cynthia from scattered references in the poems. Allen conclusively demolishes such theories, showing in detail how this attempt is doomed to failure because of the nature of the evidence. All proponents of particular schemes have been guilty of going wildly beyond the literal meaning of the evidence and of wilfully ignoring what goes against their own thesis.

But not even Allen seems to have realised how trivial and perverse an enquiry these scholars have engaged in. To seek to reduce a long and involved relationship to a series of dates is the extreme of pedantic irrelevance. Such a list of dates is hardly likely to help the understanding of any of the poems. Conversely, the failure to establish a chronology from the poems alone proves much less than Allen thinks about Propertius's life or poetic intentions. The poems are certainly not arranged in chronological sequence, but not every narrative begins at the beginning and plods through to the end. This may irritate scholars, but we can hardly blame Propertius.

There is in fact a danger here of over reacting against the apparently lightweight and unintellectual nature of the biographical knowledge sought; at best it may seem gossip, even if it is obtainable. But it is especially true of Propertius's poetry that the connections between literature and life, between the pressures of experience and the exact literary form, are too important to be ignored, however difficult they are to follow. If they are so ignored, a gravely impoverished reading of the poems results. Propertius's poems are supremely allusive; some of the allusions are to other literature and scholars pursue these where they can: others are to his unique personal experience, and the scholar is bound to follow these as well, again as far as he can.

Propertius's poems in Book I are distinctively written out of a specific situation which itself is a stage in the single relationship that dominated his life. This supremely important and highly complex relationship is, however, very rarely displayed directly. It becomes the invisible centre of most of the poems, indicated with a brevity disproportionate to its structural importance. The principle of composition here could be termed eccentric, since the real centre is outside the poem, a real experience that can be communicated only imperfectly and must be supplemented by the reader's own experience. This is not an anachronistic view—Propertius saw his only comprehending audience as lovers, especially a 'neglectus amator' like himself (I vii 13). An analogy can be taken from sculpture: this used to be thought of as a matter of solids receiving shape, but now it can be seen as a system of voids and volumes. In these terms, the 'voids' in some of Propertius's poems, the precise but compressed indications of an immensely important experience outside the occasion of the poem, are their most significant feature. Some works of art aspire to autonomy: these poems are not like this and are arguably greater because of this fact. They are not self-contained and can hardly be understood solely by a contemplation of their words in isolation.

So it is clear what kind of knowledge we need and how we should use it. The knowledge is of two kinds, neither of which has the inert quality of dates: (a) facts that help us to understand the dynamics of the key relationship, the pressures that lie behind the tensions and quarrels that Propertius writes out of but so rarely about; (b) something of the background of the addressees, Cynthia of course, but the others as well. It is true that the character of the addressee usually emerges in broad outline simply from a close attention to an individual poem, but even so it is hard for a poem to interact closely with a construct derived solely from itself. The poems gain in definition and dramatic force when the addressee is felt as a real person whose presence has modified the poem crucially, but who still remains to some degree independent of it.

So what do we know about Cynthia? The single solid fact that used to be taken for granted was that she was a 'meretrix', a high class courtesan, whose name was Hostia.² G. Williams however has recently shown that the arguments for the meretrix belief are wholly inadequate.³ He maintains a different view, that she was of high social standing and probably married. The traditional case rests primarily on inference from II vii. In this poem Propertius refers to the repeal of a law that would have impeded their relationship. He is not explicit, however, and the law does not survive. The meretrix case hypothesises that there were provisions in the lost law that would have forced him to marry and prevented him from marrying Cynthia. She must have belonged to a forbidden class, so the speculation goes, because she was a courtesan. Williams exposes the tenuous nature of this speculation, pointing out that an adulterous union would very likely have been forbidden and is a more probably source for Cynthia's concern. This at least nullifies the value of this particular piece of evidence, even if it does not itself prove anything. In support of Williams's thesis is II xxiii which unmistakeably talks as though Cynthia is married (see line 20), and Propertius is tired of the problems involved in an adulterous relationship. No other poem so explicitly describes her as a courtesan (charges of promiscuity are, of course, a very different matter). The general caveat against using poems as evidence remains: this may be merely a literary performance on a conventional theme, quite unrelated to Cynthia's real position. However, supporters of the meretrix case must sound unconvincing when dealing with this poem: Butler and Barber say on line 20: 'Ostensibly the husband of his mistress … But on the natural assumption that Propertius is describing the difficulties besetting his liaison with Cynthia and in view of the fact that she is a courtesan and unmarried, we must regard the 'husband' as being the successful lover by whom she is kept for the time being'. They merely accept the traditional case without question; otherwise they would have seen the inadequacy of their account here. None of the evidence that Williams puts forward proves his case beyond a shadow of doubt, but it is a much stronger case than the alternative. It is also a more satisfactory account of the relationship behind the poems, a more powerful and illuminating explanation of the tensions involved in general and even also in particular details.

Adultery is a much more subversive kind of relationship, though association with prostitutes may be more undignified. The popularity of the meretrix case may have something to do with the fact that it would have been less offensive to Victorian morality. Prostitution has been described as a safety valve required to preserve marriage;⁴ adultery is the destruction of marriage. Moreover, Propertius never suggests that he is at all degraded by the relationship, and he is not conscious of himself as having betrayed a high social position. On the contrary, he seems inferior in status to both Tullus (see e.g. VI 19-20) and Gallus (see e.g. V 23-4), his two principal male addressees in this book. He may also have been Cynthia/Hostia's social inferior: that would have added to the tensions of the relationship more than if she had been a relatively lowly if promiscuous prostitute. In two poems at most of this first book, II and possibly XV, Cynthia is talked of as though she is a prostitute, but at other times she seems a kind of wife (see e.g. III, XVII). If she was in fact a prostitute, the implications of II and XV would be true, and these other poems would be a representation of a pathetic wish to create a quasi-marriage relationship in an area where society disapproved. The barrier to this desired union would be his real acceptance of social sanctions against it, added perhaps to a recognition that Cynthia could not be trusted.

However, if she was really married, both sets of implications are false, and the poet's position is inherently self-contradictory. He aspires after a relationship with all the permanency and total commitment of an ideal marriage, but this can only be created out of the destruction of an already existing marriage. Cynthia must be a harlot to her husband to be a wife to Propertius, and this dual character is central to their union. The poet's anxiety and love are polarising reactions to Cynthia's two aspects. He makes extreme demands on her and extreme accusations, both unreal.

So the accusations (always implicit) of harlotry gain a different significance and serve a different poetic function. Their truth is subjective—they are expressions of Propertius's acute anxiety. So poem II's force is not 'You are a prostitute, but for Heaven's sake don't show everyone' but 'you are behaving in a manner unworthy of you, like the prostitute I have made you'. The ambiguous quality of feeling in that poem can be seen as basically a response to the ambiguities of his own position as an adulterous mate demanding total fidelity from the wife he has seduced. In II vi the polarisation of Cynthia as wife and harlot is more acute. He begins by comparing her house to those of the legendary prostitutes, Lais, Thais, and Phryne, but finishes hoping for 'loyalty' from her and swearing 'semper amica mihi semper et uxor eris' (II vi 42 'You will be my mistress for ever and for ever my wife'). It is a lesser poem than I ii but more explicit about Cynthia's paradoxical status, and Propertius's vulnerability in face of it.

Book I is full of poems of departure, to which Propertius seems resigned in strange ways. The difficulties especially concern VIII and XI, where Cynthia proposes to depart or has departed. If Cynthia was a professional prostitute at a place as notorious as Baiae, as in poem XI, the poet's doubts about her fidelity ought to have been certainties. A girl has to live, and Propertius seems to have been able to provide only poems. Poem VIII is a more interesting case. A rival is referred to in line 3 as 'quicumque est' ('whoever he is'), and is then apparently forgotten and assumed irrelevant. This is strange, unless he had proved himself irrelevant over some period of time. Only the cuckold husband could be as 'safe' as this. A detail later in the poem also seems inexplicable (or simply irrelevant) unless this is her husband. She is said to prefer Propertius and Rome to 'the ancient realm that was Hippodamia's dower and all the wealth that Elis won by its steeds' (lines 35-6). If this involved and specific allusion means anything at all, it can only suggest that for Propertius's sake she has rejected both her dowry and the wealth she has acquired from other lovers or admirers: that is, wealth committed to a parentally arranged marriage plus the spoils of her own conquests. This would make her a married woman of great wealth and position, as well as character and beauty. Propertius offers her poems instead of wealth, and the eternal devotion of a lover-husband, but if she had the reality of everything that he could offer only in simulacrum, it is no wonder he felt insecure.

II

The dating of poems in Book I

The latest probably dateable reference in Book I is in poem VI, which refers to the pro-consulship of Lucius Volcacius Tullus, the uncle of the addressee. This was in 30-29 B.C., when he went to take up the governorship of the province of Asia. The book as a whole must have been published after that, though how soon is difficult to say (and what exactly was involved in ancient publication is difficult anyway). Enk argues that the publication must have been fairly soon afterwards, since Book II contains a poem, XXXI, which, he claims, refers to the dedication of the temple of Apollo on the Palatine on the 9th October, 28 B.C.⁵ But as Rothstein argues on this passage, it is not at all certain that it is the dedication of the temple that is being referred to, but possibly merely the opening of a section of it for public use after the decoration had been completed. So this date is not very useful. But in II X, Octavian is referred to as Augustus, which dates this poem as later than 27 B.C. Another poem which is significant in this respect is II XXIV, where Cornelius Gallus is said to have died lately and this implies a date around 27-6 B.C. It is on the whole likely then that Book I was completed before 27 B.C. and not earlier than 30 B.C. It is impossible to be more specific than that.

If this were all, it would not perhaps be very important, but there is also evidence of an internal kind in Book I which suggests a dating of the poems relative to each other. It has long been noticed that the percentage of pentameters ending in a polysyllable decreases from Book I to Book IV, and in particular there is a fairly marked decrease between the first two books from about 36% to about 9%. A tendency towards a more consistent use of disyllabic endings is consequently a feature of his developing style. In Book I itself there is a fairly wide variation between individual poems in this respect—the figures are as follows: I 37%, II 44%, III 61%, IV 21%, V 13%, VI 39%, VII 31%, VIII 22%, IX 6%, X 13%, XI-XII 36%, XIII 6%, XIV 50%, XV 67%, XVI 75%, XVII 21%, XVIII 25%, XIX 8%, XX 54%, XXI 60%, XXII 60%. On the basis of these figures, one may reasonably divide the poems into three main groups: early poems (75%-50%) XVI, XV, III, XXI, XXII, XX, XIV: Middle (a) (44%-30%) II, VI, I, XI-XII, VII; (b) (25%-21%) XVIII, VIII, XVII, IV: late (13%-6%) V, X, XIX, IX, XIII. It is not on general principles very likely that a difference of less than 10% is very signicant, so some poems are on the borders between groups; the central point one may make is that most of the poems in each of these three groups were written before most of those of any later group.

The evidence of the pentameter endings has to be used circumspectly. Where it confirms conclusions of relative dating reached on other grounds, it performs a useful corroborative function. The most obvious case is that of poems VII and IX, where the latter is clearly the sequel to the former. Here the pentameter test is confirmatory, though the question was not one admitting of much doubt. More significant and useful information is given by the fact that the last three poems of the book all fall into the earliest group. One might suspect on other grounds that these poems, all of which are new and interesting treatments of Hellenistic genres and are therefore probably experimental, are early; the language of XX shows qualities of strain and the poem is not perhaps fully realised (see our discussion). Here the evidence of the pentameter endings provides an important kind of confirmation. But this evidence by itself may be misleading. For example, it seems to us that poem XV is probably later than II (for the arguments see our discussion below) although the percentages here are 67% for XV and 44% for II. Other types of evidence which validate themselves in more purely rational ways than the numerical must weigh more heavily than the pentameter endings. However this is another tool which a critic can use, so long as its limitations are respected.⁶

It has become fashionable recently to suppose that the poems of Book I are arranged in a particular kind of symmetrical pattern. In fact Courtney⁷ specifically says 'An elaborately symmetrical arrangement… is now established as Propertius's deliberate intention'. No voices have been raised in protest, and so the basis of this orthodoxy demands careful scrutiny.

The theory in its strongest form, as e.g. presented in Courtney's article, argues that poems I-XIX are arranged chiastically in four blocks; A¹ (I-V), B¹ (VIIX), B² (X-XIV), A2 (XV-XIX), and in this version B¹ and B² even have an identical number of lines. The Mss unfortunately give us 142 lines in B¹ and 140 in B²: to achieve symmetry, Courtney transposes VII 23-4, which, he says, is logically out of place. But there are notoriously many couplets in Propertius whose logical connections with their context are not immediately clear. Before transposing, one ought to try to look for some other kind of connection, perhaps not exactly logical, that may exist. This couplet is not especially difficult to account for in its place, but the real danger here is that a Courtney might accept one's argument and the tradition on VII 23-4, and remove another couplet instead. He might then turn his attention to A¹ and prune its 176 lines to 172 to match A². The theory in this extreme form is a Procrustean bed.

Weaker forms of the theory at least accept the transmitted text. Of these, however, it must be said at the beginning that the idea itself is implausible and almost entirely gratuitous, adding little to the value or significance of the poems or of the book as a whole. The book was probably composed over a period of time, and no-one claims that most of the poems were written to fill out some symmetrical scheme. The only proposition at all plausible is that the poet arranged them in this order, in many cases long after they had been written for quite different reasons. The only parallel for the symmetry that has been adduced is Ovid Tristia V: but even if the case were true for that book, Ovid is later, a much more prolific and artificial poet, and this work is only a small proportion of his large output. All arguments from parallels are weak, and this is a weak parallel. The case must be proved for Propertius independently.

But the scheme which has won acceptance does not stand up to close examination. Firstly it does not include all the poems of this book—XX-XXII are normally treaded as addenda. If Propertius did not take the schema seriously enough to extend it throughout the whole book, doubts must arise as to whether it was really important to him. But the basic objection to these schemes is that they rely not on one ordering principle but on two. These are said to "complement" each other, but in practice this means that they are invoked intermittently and arbitrarily in support of such symmetries as can be found. The first principle is objective—the choice of addressee: this gives a pattern for VI-XIV as follows:

• Tullus
• Ponticus
• Cynthia
• Ponticus
• Gallus
• Cynthia
• Gallus
• Tullus

This is neat enough, although too few poems are involved for it to be unmistakeably the product of design not chance. Outside these poems, however, this principle not only needs to be "complemented" by an alternative, largely subjective principle, but is also on many occasions overridden by it. Ponticus is not addressed elsewhere in the book, but Gallus, Tullus and Cynthia are. The pattern that emerges for the book as a whole, or up to XIX, to accept that unsatisfactory expedient for saving the theory, is untidy and unsymmetrical. Poems I, V, and XIV, to Tullus, would be connected; so would V, X and XIII, to Gallus (and XX, also to Gallus, clamours to rejoin the rest of the work, with XXII putting in its claim also with Tullus as its addressee). Poems II, VIII, XI, XV, XIX to Cynthia also ought to be connected. The pattern now looks random, suggesting that the apparent patterning of VI-XIV was in fact fortuitous.

• Tullus
• Cynthia
• ?
• Bassus
• Gallus
• sTullus
• Ponticus
• Cynthia
• Ponticus
• Gallus
• Cynthia
• Gallus
• Tullus
• Cynthia
• ?
• ?
• ?
• Cynthia
• Gallus
• ?
• Tullus

The ordering principle invoked instead of this relies on a perceived similarity of subject in pairs of poems. This principle has the merit of allowing interesting things to be said about individual poems, but it is far too subjective to support any rigid theory of order. To take the most interesting example, Brooks Otis's connection between II and XV illuminates both poems. Otis has done a useful service in pointing it out, but there are innumerable other connections that could be made. The setting of XV, for example, is Propertius's imminent departure; as such it contrasts with VI (to Tullus) where Propertius is refusing to go, and with VIII and XI, where Cynthia is the one proposing to go or has actually already gone. Again in XVII he seems to have gone on a voyage himself and to have regretted doing so. There are innumerable connections of this kind that can be made, far too many to be fitted into a tidy symmetrical scheme, unless for some prior reason it has been decided to notice only connections that give rise to a symmetrical scheme—but that would be arguing in a circle. The fact is that the two ordering, principles conflict in several cases, and poems I and XIX have neither theme nor addressee in common.

So the arguments that can be brought forward to support this theory are entirely inadequate. It is most unlikely that such a scheme exists for this book and the theory can do nothing but harm. It attaches undue importance to certain connections which coincide with the scheme, at the expense of the innumerable points of contact the poems naturally have with each other. This web of interconnections is far richer and more satisfying than any straightened symmetry, whose only merit is to gratify an undisciplined desire for tidiness.

IV

Propertius' Language

The normal preconceptions about the language of poetry with which scholars set out to study Propertius have been inadequate and misleading. The prime assumption is included in the belief that all Latin poetry is rhetorical. Ancient prose is rhetorical, and much ancient verse is rhetorical, but not all. Nor is it sufficient to assume that any particular poet is rhetorical: this is something that has to be shown in each individual case. In practice, what is generally meant by saying that a poet is rhetorical is that he uses words as equivalents of their synonyms. This is the usual assumption of the commentaries and it is normal for a word in the text to be glossed by a more usual word in the note. The serious critical consequence of this is that all strange locutions of the poet come to be seen as simply 'metri gratia', as devices for filling up the line. Any striking qualities the language may have are simply normalised out of existence by this procedure, and Latin poetry becomes in the eyes of the critic a sort of superior crossword puzzle, composed in the same way as modern scholars compose Latin verses. This is the implicit assumption of most commentaries. Nowadays, attempts are made to break free from this assumption, but it is very difficult to do so, since all early training with the use of standard editions has unconsciously drilled it into the basic mental procedures of most Latinists. The. disease is not always recognised and it has in fact been instrumental in the overvaluing of Horace as compared to Propertius, since if the process of writing poetry is the fitting of unexceptional statements into complicated metres, then the more complicated the metre, the better the poet.

Rhetorical assumptions are equally in evidence when it comes to the treatment by commentators of the mythological exempla employed by Roman poets. These are often dismissed as simply decorative, though in recent years a rather closer attention has been paid to them than in the past.⁹ The same point may be made as was made in respect of language: that one ought not to assume that myth passages are simply ornamental until one has examined the other possibilities very closely. Propertius's employment of myth is functional, and though it may be difficult to discover completely the significance of a particular exemplum, it is usually clear that it has some significance and is not simply detachable from its context. The importance of being aware of the story from which the exemplum is derived is easy to see, for example, in the myth section in poem II. There the poet draws attention by the language he uses to elements not explicitly mentioned. The words 'succendit', 'discordia'. 'patriis, 'falso' (lines 15-19) all warn the reader to be alert for nuances of tone that arise out of the background of these stories.¹⁰

So mythological elements in Propertius are not like extended Homeric similies; they do not contain simply one point of comparison. This is usually unrecognised even nowadays, and it is customary to note one obvious point of comparison in the myth passages and ignore what is not immediately obvious. The point is that in this area, as well as in the wider area of use of language, the conscious or unconscious assumption that Propertius is 'rhetorical' totally inhibits serious criticism.

A different kind of mistaken criticism arises out of a critical virtue, namely a' rational approach. But the extreme rationalism of critics like Housman (and a sterile rationalism of the type he represents is wholly inimical to the criticism of poetry) refused to contemplate the possibility of an argument proceding by any means other than the strictly rational. Consequently they were led frequently to emend, since they could not tolerate what they regarded as anomalies in the text of so subtle and complex a poet as Propertius. But a poem may develop its own logic by which to validate its argument. An obvious example is the famous crux 'persuadent' in II 13, where the word is so much the mot juste, so appropriate and brilliant in its context, that it is inconceivable that such felicity should have been arrived at through scribal error. The basic point is that the skills required in understanding a poet's language are the skills of literary criticism and so the criteria for establishing the text, given the tradition, are predominantly literary critical also.

In Propertius's case, there are two major sources of difficulty. One is the erudition he demands from his reader. He calls Cynthia 'docta puella' ('well-educated girl') and she needed to be if she was to catch the full range of his often oblique allusions. But most of his poems are not even addressed to Cynthia, but to a set of male friends, a highly sophisticated and literate group. He claimed to Ponticus, aspiring writer of epics, that he was 'more slave to sorrow than skill' ('nec tantum ingenio quantum servire dolori', VII 7), but he was a very self-conscious poetic craftsman, aware that his poetic virtuosity reflected credit on his mistress and himself. But the virtuosity was never simply to impress, an end in itself. The other source of difficulty with Propertius's poetry comes from the reality and complexity of the experience out of which it grew, a highly intelligent and cultivated young Roman's encounter with the deeply problematic and often contradictory emotions generated by his relationship with Cynthia.

Notes

¹ 'Sunt qui Propertium malint': in Sullivan 'Essays' pp.130 ff.

² The evidence for the name is Apuleius Apologia 10: there is no obvious reason for disbelieving him.

³ Pp. 529 f.

⁴ Consonant with Cato's view as recounted by Horace Satires I ii 31-35.

⁵ Pp. 16 f. of his edition of Book I.

⁶ It is surprising that the pentameter endings have not been used before as a means of relative dating. Camps (p. 10 note I of his edition of Book I) comes close to doing so without being explicit.

⁷ P. 251 'Cl. Phil.' 1968. The other principal articles discussing this feature of the poems are E. Solmsen, 'Cl. Phil.' LVII (1962), 0. Skutsch 'Cl. Phil.' LVIII (1963), and Brooks Otis 'H.S. Cl. Phil.' 70 (1965).

⁹ Cp. Allen, in the article already cited.

¹⁰ For a full discussion, see below.