Propertius had a large number of friends and acquaintances, chiefly literary, belonging to the circle of Maecenas. Amongst these may be mentioned Virgil, the epic poet Ponticus, Bassus (probably the iambic poet of the name), and at a later period Ovid. We hear nothing of Tibullus, nor of Horace, who also never mentions Propertius. This reciprocal silence is probably significant. In person Propertius was pale and thin, as was to be expected in one of a delicate and even sickly constitution. He was very careful about his personal appearance, and paid an almost foppish attention to dress and gait. He was of a some what voluptuous and self-indulgent temperament, which shrank from danger and active exertion. He was anxiously sensitive about the opinion of others, eager for their sympathy and regard, and, in general, impressionable to their influence. His over emotional nature passed rapidly from one phase of feeling to another; but the more melancholy moods predominated. A vein of sadness runs through his poems, sometimes breaking out into querulous exclamation, but more frequently venting itself in gloomy reflections and prognostications. He had fits of super stition, which in healthier moments he despised.
The poems of Propertius, as they have come down to us, consist of four books containing 4,046 lines of elegiac verse. The first book, or Cynthia, was published separately and early in the poet's literary life. It may be assigned to 25 B.C. The dates of the publication of the rest are uncertain, but none of them was published before 24 B.c., and the last not before 16 B.c. The unusual length of the second one (1,402 lines) has led Lach mann and other critics to suppose that it originally consisted of two books, and they have placed the beginning of the third book at ii. 1o, a poem addressed to Augustus, thus making five books, and this arrangement has been accepted by several editors.
The subjects of the poems are threefold : amatory and personal, mostly regarding Cynthia-72 (6o Cynthia elegies), of which the last book contains three; (2) political and social, on events of the day—I3, including three in the last book; (3) his torical and antiquarian—six, of which five are in the last book.
The writings of Propertius are noted for their difficulty and their disorder. The workmanship is unequal, curtness alternat ing with redundance, and carelessness with elaboration. A desultory sequence of ideas, an excessive vagueness and indi rectness of expression, a peculiar and abnormal latinity, a con stant tendency to exaggeration, and an immoderate indulgence in learned and literary allusions—all these are obstacles lying in the way of a study of Propertius. But those who have the will and the patience to surmount them will find their trouble well repaid. For power and range of imagination, for freshness and
vividness of conception, for truth and originality of presentation, few Roman poets can compare with him when he is at his best. And this is when he is carried out of himself, when the discordant qualities of his genius are, so to say, fused together by the electric spark of an immediate inspiration. His vanity and egotism are undeniable, but they are redeemed by his fancy and his humour.
Two of his merits seem to have impressed the ancients them selves. The first is most obvious in the scenes of quiet descrip tion and emotion in whose presentation he particularly excels. Softness of outline, warmth of colouring, a fine and almost voluptuous feeling for beauty of every kind, and a pleading and melancholy tenderness—such were the elements of the spell which he threw round the sympathies of his reader, and which his compatriots expressed by the vague but expressive word blanditia. His poetic facundia, or command of striking and appropriate language, is more noticeable still. Not only is his vocabulary very extensive, but his employment of it extraor dinarily bold and unconventional. New settings of use, idiom and construction continually surprise us, and, in spite of occa sional harshness, secure for his style an unusual freshness and freedom. His handling of the elegiac couplet, and especially of its second line, deserves especial recognition. It is vigorous, varied and even picturesque. In the matter of the rhythms, caesuras and elisions which it allows, the metrical treatment is much more severe than that of Catullus, whose elegiacs are comparatively rude and barbarous; but it is not bound hand and foot, like the Ovidian distich, in a formal and conventional system. An elaborate symmetry is observable in the construc tion of many of his elegies, and this has tempted critics to divide a number of them into strophes.
Propertius's poems bear evident marks of the study of his predecessors, both Greek and Latin, and of the influence of his contemporaries. He tells us himself that Callimachus and Philetas were his masters (iii. 1, seq.), and that it was his ambition to be the Roman Callimachus (iv. 1, 64). But, as Teuffel has said, his debt to these writers is chiefly a formal one. Even into his mythological learning he breathes a life to which these dry scholars are strangers. We can trace obligations to Meleager, Theocritus, Apollonius, Rhodius and other Alexandrines, and amongst earlier writers to Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus and others. Propertius's influence upon his successors was considerable. There is hardly a page of Ovid which does not show obligations to his poems, while other writers made a more sparing use of him.