Propertius 2. 29. 38

Extract

The most recent commentator on this line, D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Propertiana, p. 124), states that ‘spiritus is breath rather than odour’ and he has the support of some commentators, Marcilius, for example, who amends notus to motus, and Hertzberg, who takes it as sweet breath, citing Mart. 3. 65. 1. So also most translators (e.g. Phillimore—‘Look, there is no such heavy breathing at all in me anywhere as is usual when guilty paramours have met’): an exception is D. Paganelli who translates ‘aucun souffle, aucune odeur d'adultère’. However, the parallels cited by Shackleton Bailey are irrelevant to this situation: Afranius 243 (Ribbeck), Ach. Tat. 2. 37. 9, and Claud. Carm. Min. 29. 33 all refer to the period just before, during, or immediately after the sexual act (cf. Ov. A. A. 3. 803 Quod iuvet, et voces et anhelitus arguat oris). It is most unlikely that this is the case in Propertius' poem. Propertius has come to see if Cynthia has spent the night alone; it is not a question of catching her inflagrante delicto, but of finding some rival there or the evidence of his stay not yet removed (v. the opening line—Mane erat, 1. 23). Cynthia is indignant at her lover's suspicions and lest he should think that his rival had left earlier, she coarsely specifies the evidence that Propertius might expect to find, including spiritus admisso notus adulterio.