"Tell her from fool to fool to run, Where'er her vain caprice may call; Of all her dupes, not loving one, But ruining and maddening all. "Bid her forget--what now is past-- Our once dear love, whose ruin lies Like a fair flower, the meadow's last, That feels the ploughshare's edge, and dies." In Cynthia, whose love and beauty inspired the pen of Propertius, is seen the sympathetic helpmate as well as the mistress. She was the granddaughter of Lucius Hostius, who wrote a poem on the Illyrian War. She inherited her ancestor's love of literature, and there consequently existed between her and Propertius that fellowship in poetic labor which is the most perfect companionship known to human experience. Though of the highest type of that class of women, she was a courtesan; which accounts for the fact that the poet could not, as he desired, make her his lawful wife. Her house was situated in the Suburra, which was the centre of "Bohemian" life in Rome and the quarter especially favored by women of her class. The intimacy between her and Propertius lasted for six years; but, notwithstanding their sympathetic tastes, those years were not passed in unbroken concord. Cynthia, besides other faults, seems to have possessed a violent temper, and in some outburst of this Propertius was banished. After this, though their friendship was renewed, neither was faithful to the other. During the illness which preceded her death, they were again reconciled to each other, which fact, more than anything else, indicates the hold that Cynthia must have had upon the sincere affection of the poet. In the seventh poem of his last book, Propertius gives an account of a dream he had of Cynthia after her death; and from certain allusions therein contained it may be inferred that she left to him the duty of disposing of her property and arranging her funeral. Women like Cynthia were not in any degree conspicuous among their contemporaries; they were nothing more than ciphers in the estimation of those great ladies who took a part in the game of politics. They are only known to us because their names chanced to be embalmed in the writings of the men whose companions they were; but from this distance, whence the names of the women of Rome may be seen as divested of that fictitious glory which was a mere accident of their birth, a Cynthia gains more interest from her connection with a poet than does a Julia from her relation to an emperor.