Cynthia, facundi carmen juvenile Properti, Accepit famam nec minus illa dedit. The date of the poet’s death is unknown, but the probability is that he died young. Although Propertius was a contemporary and friend of the Augustan poets, he may be considered as belonging to a somewhat different school of poetry. His taste, like theirs, was educated by a study of Greek literature; but the Greek poets whose works he took for his model belonged to a later age. Horace, Virgil and Tibullus imitated and tried to rival the Greek classical poets of the noblest ages: they transferred into their native tongue the ideas of Homer, Pindar, and the old lyric poets. Their taste was formed after the purest and most perfect models. Propertius, on the other hand, was content with a lower flight. He attempted nothing more than to imitate the graceful but feeble strains of the Alexandrian poets, and to become a second Callimachus or Philetas.[729] Roman perseverance in the pursuit of learning, and the spirit of investigation in the wide field of Greek literature, had raised up this new standard of taste, which was by no means an improvement upon that which had been hitherto established. The imitations of Propertius are too studied and apparent to permit him to lay claim to great natural genius. Nature alone could give the touching tenderness of Tibullus or the facility of Ovid—in both of which, notwithstanding his grace and elegance, he is deficient. The absence of original fancy is concealed by minute attention to the outward form of the poetry which he admired. His pentameters are often inharmonious, because they adopt so continually the Greek rules of construction; awkward Greek idioms, and a studious display of his learning, which was undoubtedly great, destroy that greatest charm of style, perspicuity. According to Quintilian,[730] the critics of his day somewhat overrated his merits, for they could scarcely decide the question of superiority between him and Tibullus. This, however, is to be expected in an age of affected rhetoric and grammatical pedantry, when nothing was considered beautiful in poetry except that which was in accordance with the arbitrary rules of cold criticism. They appreciated his correctness, and did not miss the warm heart of his rival. His poetry is not so polluted with indelicacy as that of Ovid, but still it is often sensual and licentious. It is worthy of remark that the fourth elegy of the third book, entitled “Arethusa to Lycotas,” deprives Ovid of the credit of being the inventor of the elegiac epistle. ÆMILIUS MACER. The poem of Æmilius Macer is only known through two verses in the Tristia of Ovid,[731] which state that it treated of birds, serpents, and medicinal herbs: Sæpe suas volucres legit mihi grandior ævo Quæque necet serpens; quæ juvet herba Macer.