Umbrian Rimbaud

Abstract

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.