And, honoring one so great, for him prepare
And serve the banquet with her own white hands.
Fond dream! which now the east and south winds bear
Away to far Armenia’s spicy lands.”
Cranstoun.
Propertius.—With the name of Tibullus is often linked that of Propertius, who was born about 50 B.C. at Assisium, among the Umbrian mountains. In this lovely spot he was prepared for the study of the law, which he afterward adopted as his profession at Rome. But Propertius found this calling distasteful; relinquishing it, accordingly, for the pursuits of literature, he aspired to be a Roman Callimachus, and grounded himself in the principles of Alexandrian verse. But too much study made him artificial, and his numerous mythological allusions and digressions encumber rather than embellish. He lacks the sweetness, simplicity, and tenderness, of Tibullus.
Catullus had his “Lesbia;” Tibullus, his “Delia;” and Propertius, profiting not by the example of his brother bards, lavished his affections on the accomplished but fickle “Cynthia,” who played him false as soon as a rich prætor laid a fortune at her feet. Cynthia was the single theme of our poet’s love-lays, all rapture or gentle reproach. In an elegy to Mæcenas, who had pressed him to attempt an epic, he sings:—
“You ask me why love-elegy so frequently I follow,
And why my little book of tender trifles only sings:
It is not from Calliope, nor is it from Apollo,