Author: PROPERTIUS
Biography:
PROPERTIUS, Sextus Aurelius (fl 30-15 BCE: Encyclopaedia Britannica)
In the introduction to his voluminously annotated dual-language edition of the First Book of the Elegies of Propertius, John Nott (q.v.) wonders that so fine an “amatory” Roman poet should have been so neglected in the English-speaking world. He proposes, if his translation should be approved, to translate the remaining books. MR and CR however united in praising his scholarship but disparaging his translation, and he did not persist. Nott referred to the work of the Swiss scholar Vulpius (1629-1706) for details of the life of Propertius, but almost all of them are based on inference from the works of Propertius himself or of his close contemporaries, and he remains an obscure figure. That is still the case. What seems to be reliable is that he was born to a well-to-do Umbrian family near Assisi, but that his father died when he was still a child and the estate was confiscated to reward veterans of the first battle of Philippi in 42 BCE. He nevertheless received a very good education and went to Rome about 34 BCE to live the life of a libertine. His liaison with the courtesan Hostia, known as “Cynthia,” lasted from 28 to 23 BCE and perhaps longer. It is the subject of his first (monos) collection of poetry. Its success gained him a high reputation, a patron (Maecenas, q.v.), and a starry circle of literary friends. After leaving Cynthia he may have married and had at least one child. Nothing is known of the date or circumstances of his death. Nott’s translation is recognised as the first in English; Charles Abraham Elton (q.v.) also included some Propertius in his Specimens of the Classic Poets in 1814. (Encyclopaedia Britannica [1911] 22: 439-40; John Nott, ed. [Monobiblos]; MR 66 [1782], 416-20; CR 53 [1782], 93-6) HJ