SEXTUS PROPERTIUS (50?-15? B. C.) BY GEORGE MEASON WHICHER ITTLE is known of Propertius beyond the scanty information to be gleaned from his own works. He was a provincial, like so many prominent literary men of the day; of a good Umbrian family. Most of his life seems to have been passed in Rome, where he came to complete his education; but scarcely an event in it can be dated with certainty. The latest allusion in his works seems to refer to events of the year 16 B. C., and it is surmised that he was born about the year 50. It is a matter of comparative indifference, however, whether these and other conjectures are correct or not. His five short books, mostly love poems, sufficiently reveal the man; and there is little in them which we could read with greater interest for knowing who walked behind lictors when it was written. SEXTUS PROPERTIUS Propertius was one of that group of poets who enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Mæcenas, and who undertook to create a new school of Latin poetry by following still more closely Greek models. While Virgil meditated "something greater than the Iliad," and Horace wedded Æolian song to Italian measures, the younger and more ardent Propertius devoted himself to erotic poetry and the perfecting of the elegy. Gallus and Catullus had already naturalized this form of poetry at Rome; Tibullus was winning great applause with it at this very time; but with characteristic ambition and self-confidence Propertius claimed it as his own especial field. The success of his first volume, devoted to the praises of his mistress Cynthia, had won him the favor of the all-powerful Mæcenas. In the three or four succeeding books,- the division is uncertain,- he feels little doubt that he has vindicated his right to be called the Roman Callimachus, the "first initiate into the rites of Philetas's sacred grove," as he expresses it. It was only with much doubt that so good a critic as |