Her locks to loose, and sorrow o’er my bier.
So the poem begins. The poet laments his enforced delay at Corcyra, where he is detained by illness. There follows a list of the bad omens that warned Tibullus not to set out from Rome, then a prayer to Isis for aid. A brief description of the Golden Age is introduced, and the poet prays that Jove may grant him life:
But, if the Sisters have pronounced my doom,
Inscribed be these upon my humble tomb:
“Lo! here inurn’d a youthful poet lies,
Far from his Delia and his native skies,
Far from the lov’d Messalla, whom to please
Tibullus followed over land and seas.”
The remainder of the poem consists of a description of the lower world and an appeal to Delia. No translation can render exactly the qualities of expression which make Tibullus one of the greatest among the lesser Roman poets. It is only after repeated reading of his poems that one learns to appreciate the lightness of touch and the technical perfection of this sweet singer of soft themes.
Sextus Propertius was born in Umbria, probably at Asisium (Assisi), about 50 B. C., for he was younger than Tibullus and older than Ovid, whose birth was in 43 B. C. Propertius. His family was of some importance and must have been wealthy, for although Propertius, whose father was already dead, lost part of his property in the confiscations of 41 B. C., enough remained to support him and give him a good education. His mother took him to Rome, where he studied law for a short time, but abandoned it for the pursuit of poetry. After the publication of the first book of his elegies, Propertius was introduced to Mæcenas, to whom he afterward addressed two poems (II, i; and III, ix). He appears, however, to have been less intimate with him than were Horace and Virgil. Propertius nowhere mentions Horace, and if Horace refers to him at all it is without mentioning his name. He was a warm admirer of Virgil and a friend of Ovid. Little is known of his life, and it is only because his poems contain no allusions to events later than 16 B. C. that his death is supposed to have taken place about 15 B. C. From two passages in the letters of the younger Pliny, in which a certain Passenus Paullus is said to be descended from Propertius, it appears that the poet married and left at least one child.