Sextus Propertius: great poet of the Augustan age

• Prologue poem, addressed to Tullus
• Cynthia was the first. She caught me with her eyes, a fool
• who had never before been touched by desires.
• I really hung my head in shame
• when Love pressed down on it with his feet.
• He taught me to hate chaste girls!
• He was cruel when he told me to live without plan.
• It’s already been a whole year that the frenzy hasn’t stopped.
• Even now, the gods are against me.

• Milanion wasn’t afraid of anything, Tullus,
• when he crushed hard Atalanta’s savagery.
• He wandered mad in Parthenian caves,
• face to face with hairy beasts.
• Another time, shocked by a wound from Hylaeus’
• stick, he groaned loudly on the Arcadian cliffs.
• That’s how he was able to dominate that brilliant girl:
• in love, you’ve got to pray a lot and do a lot.

• But in me Love is slow, does not stimulate any art,
• and he forgets to go on ways he used to know
• You who do that trick with the moon,
• who perform rites on magic altars,
• change my mistress’ mind,
• make her face more pale than my own!
• Then I’ll believe in you, that you can lead stars
• and Medea’s streams from their paths with songs.

• But you, who called me too late as I was slipping, friends,
• get help for the insane.
• Bravely will I endure knife and savage fires,
• just let me say whatever I want in my rage.
• Take me to exotic peoples, across the waves,
• where no woman may know my path.
• You stay, to whom the god has easily consented,
• stay equal always, throughout your love.
• On me old Venus works bitter nights,
• and Love is at no time absent.

• Don’t do what I do, I’m warning you. Keep to yourself,
• don’t move from an accustomed love.
• Because if anyone should turn slow ears to my warnings,
• you’ll see how they’ll come back to haunt him!

• Addressed to Cynthia
• So you’re crazy, and my heartache does not delay you?
• Or is it I’m nothing compared to frozen Illyria?
• And is he, what’s-his-name, already so important to you
• that you’ll go wherever the wind blows, without me?
• Are you strong enough to listen to the sea’s savage crash,
• can you sleep on a hard bunk?
• Can your tender feet brave the frosts?
• Can you, Cynthia, bear the bitter snows?

• I wish the time of winter frosts could be doubled,
• and the sailor sit inert with the Pleiads absent.
• If only your rope would remain tied to the Etrurian beach,
• and an unfriendly breeze not make light of my prayers.
• But I wouldn’t want to see such winds subside,
• when the wave hurtles your ship forward,
• as long as I am allowed, fixed on the empty shore,
• to keep calling you, cruel girl, threatening with my fist!

• But whatever you deserve from me for your lying,
• may Galatea not be contrary to your path.
• May you sail past Ceraunia easily
• and reach Oricos on placid seas.
• No woman will be able to corrupt me.
• Indeed, love, on your doorstep I will mourn your absence.

• I’ll grab the sailors, saying, “Tell me,
• in which port is my girl detained?”
• and I’ll say, “Whether she camps on Atrax’ shores
• or with the Hyllei, she is my future.”

Sextus Propertius (c. 50-45-c.15 B.C.) was a Latin Poet, born in Assisium (modern-day Assisi, in central Italy) and one of the last great poets of the Augustan age. His work consists of four books of elegies, written as laments to love for a woman named Cynthia. Friends with fellow Latin poets Gallus and Virgil, he shared with them the patronage of Maecenaus – and through this powerful man of Rome, that of Caesar Augustus. His entire corpus of verse was written in the elegiac couplet, a form used by Catullus in the previous generation of poets and also by his contemporary, Ovid. His poetry suffered obscurity throughout the Middle Ages but was revived by Goethe and, in the 20th century, by Ezra Pound.