[Sidenote: Propertius.] 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. 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. [Sidenote: The poems of Propertius.] Propertius is a poet of love, who expresses as few poets have done the tender emotions of the heart. His poems are passionate and sensual, without the pensive melancholy of Tibullus or the frivolity of Ovid. The object of his love is Cynthia, whose real name was Hostia. She was a courtesan, but educated and refined in taste, beautiful and attractive. She it was who inspired his first poems, and only in the last book does she cease to be the chief theme of his verses. The poems are handed down to us in four books, the second of which is, however, made up of two incomplete books. The appearance of the first book made Propertius famous and introduced him to the circle of Mæcenas. Naturally Mæcenas wished him to sing the praises of Augustus and the Roman Empire, and from this time Cynthia is no longer the exclusive subject of his poems. In the fourth book (the fifth in many editions) there are four poems on Roman antiquities, in imitation of the Αἴτια (_Causes_) of Callimachus. Love is, however, throughout the subject to which Propertius naturally turns. His poems are full of learned mythological allusions, and the situations described or depicted are doubtless for the most part imaginary, yet the passionate nature of the poet’s love is manifest through all his learning and his invention. Even though he did not pass through all the hopes and fears, the changes of love and hate, the joy and sorrow, the jealousy and the reconciliations which the poems depict with such wealth of illustration and such beauty of language, he knew as few have known them the varying passions of the lover’s heart. For the modern