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Umbrian Rimbaud

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

L. A. Mackay
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Extract

How old was Propertius when he wrote the Cynthia? It makes a difference to our understanding and appreciation of the poems. The poet's handling of language, and the lover's relations with his mistress, will be differently viewed if we guess his age at the date of publication as twenty-five or twenty-six, and if we calculate it at fifteen or sixteen, as seems to me more probable. The date of his birth is unknown; topical allusions in the poems indicate a date before which a poem would not have been written, but do not indicate how much later it was published as part of a book. ‘The Augustan poets—and, probably, other poets in other ages—when they published a book did not trouble to bring every detail in it “up to date” or to eliminate from it everything that had been appropriate at the time of writing but proved less appropriate at the moment of publication’ (E. Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford, 1957), 287). Nor have we any assurance that a poem published in Book Two or Book Three was written later, whether in its original or in its final form, than any poem in Book One. A poem rejected, for whatever reason, from an early collection, may fit quite well, perhaps after reworking, into a later one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , October 1970 , pp. 177 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1970

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References

page 177 note 1 For a critical survey of biographical speculation on Propertius see ‘Sunt qui Propertium malint’ by Allen, A. W., in Critical Essays on Roman Literature—Elegy and Lyric (ed. Sullivan, J. P., London, 1962), 114–18.Google Scholar

page 178 note 1 e.g. ‘nudus amor formae non amat artificem’ (i. 2. 8) and ‘solus amor morbi non amat artificem (ii. 1. 58).

page 178 note 2 CPh lviii (1963), 238.Google Scholar

page 178 note 3 Catalogues of Propertius' faults are generously supplied in all serious work on the poet. Let it suffice to quote from two recent publications:

‘Propertius wrote in a style that was frequently turgid and sometimes tortured and bombastic. Words under his guidance are compelled to take on unusual meanings; the syntax is twisted; his mythological allusions are often involved, obscure, and almost always demand study’ (Elder, J. P., Essays [see p. 177 n. 1], 67).Google Scholar

‘Not infrequently he succeeds in fusing erotic mythology with his own situation… But Propertius is also prone to an unselective padding with mythical illustrations which add, as far as we can see, little or nothing to the poem's poetic logic and in fact distract considerably from its development’ (Sullivan, J. P., Ezra Pound and Sextus Propertius [Austin, 1964], 44).Google Scholar

page 179 note 1 Arthur Rimbaud was born in 1854; his first published poems appeared in 1870; Le Bateau ivre in 1871Google Scholar; Les Illuminations, written c. 1872, published 1886; Une Saison en enfer, published 1873.

page 179 note 2 The status of a minor sui iuris and his curator is expounded by Berger, A. in Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., 1953), 583Google Scholar; see also Declareuil, J., Rome the Lawgiver (London, 1927), 149Google Scholar; Girard, P. F., Manuel elementaire de Droit romain (Paris, 1929), 247–55.Google Scholar

page 180 note 1 ‘All the elegists… were of equestrian rank, and if their property had been diminished, they were still well off’ (Elder, J. P., Essays [see p. 177 n]. 1, 68).Google Scholar

page 181 note 1 Normally, cum with the indicative (egit) is a dating phrase, ‘at the time when’ or ‘at the moment when’; but Propertius, who makes much use of the perfect indicative with cum (30 examples, against 27 with present indicative and 25 with imperfect subjunctive), sometimes uses it for ‘accompanying circumstance’, even with an intimation of cause. The temporal reference can certainly go with what precedes; I suggest it is also intended to go with what follows.

page 182 note 1 El. ii. 31Google Scholar is little or no help in dating. The reference may be to the dedication of the portico (?24 B.c.), not the main temple (28 B.c.) as O. Richmond, L. suggests, JRS iv (1914), 200.Google Scholar In any case, there is no knowing what time elapsed between the composition of the poem and its publication in a book. It reads like a technical exercise, inappropriate certainly to the Cynthia, perhaps reworked, and negligently adapted to a collection of amatory verse by the first five words. Such laying aside and rewriting is nothing exceptional in poetic practice. It is possible that iv. i. 133 ‘pauca suo de carmine dictat Apollo’ is a specific reference to this poem. If so, we have here Propertius’ earliest preserved composition; but the reference may, as is usually supposed, be more general. One could readily believe that only in extreme youth might Propertius have written verse 5 as ‘Hic Phoebus Phoebo visus mihi pulchrior ipso’, and that not even in youth would he have written hic equidem etc.; but most likely he wrote hic Linus et (Damon, P. W. and Helmbold, W. C., California Publ. in Classical Philology, xiv, 6, 247 n. 70).Google ScholarEt, we may suppose, was glossed equidem, to show that its use was intensive, not additive, and subsequently equidem displaced Linus et. H. J. Last's careful reconstruction of the building complex (JRS xliii [1953], 27–9) assumes that the statue of ii. 31. 5 was a statue of Apollo, but this is pure assumption. The assumption of Linus as introductory figure makes a better pattern, and a better verse.

El. i. 6. 19–20 offers no precise dating. This Tullus was to try to outdo, in the same region, his uncle's previous achievements. ‘It is not probable that Tullus was in his uncle's retinue’ (Butler and Barber, ad loc.). Verse 20, ‘vetera oblitis iura refer sociis’, seems to imply that some time had passed; things had slipped since the elder Tullus' time (30–29 B.c.); the presence of Tullus will recall the happy days of his uncle's administration. W. A. Camps in his note on the passage has argued vigorously for the earlier date; but conare anteire is a desperately odd way of saying incipe sequi or even para te ad comitandum, and elsewhere in Propertius conare in such a sense is used absolutely; accepti imperil (34) permits, but does not require a reference to the uncle; if this is the reference, the meaning is ‘their grateful memory will link you with your uncle's regime’.

In ii. 34. 91–2, Propertius does not in fact speak of ‘the recently deceased Gallus’; modo goes not with mortuus but with the whole sentence, and rather with lavit than with mortuus; indeed mortuus goes closely with lavit — ‘found in death a solace for his love’. This hardly affects the timing, but it does affect the emphasis. The sentence must be taken in context. It is the last in a series of references to amatory poets: Varro, Catullus, Calvus, whose lament for Quintilia leads easily, by inverted association, to the death of Gallus. In the context, modo means rather ‘more recently, not long ago’ than ‘quite recently, a few days ago’. Even if several years had elapsed, the death of Gallus was recent in comparison with the others.