Many an Umbrian town prides itself on being the birthplace of Propertius. The people of Spello have even placed a tablet in their walls to claim him as her son; but the Assisans, ignoring the rivalry of others, very quietly point to the many inscriptions of the Propertius' family collected beneath the portico of the Temple of Minerva. One may be noticed referring to C. Passennus Sergius Paullus Propertius Blaesus, said to be a lineal descendant of the poet, who is supposed to have married after the death of the fair Cynthia, and returned to his native valley to pass his last days in domestic tranquillity. Angelo Poliziano, on the margin of an early edition of the poet's works now in the Laurentian Library of Florence, has made a note to the effect that Propertius, as well as St. Francis, was born at Assisi; and certainly modern writers assign the honour to Assisi. The somewhat vague utterances of Propertius as to his native town seem to show that the position of Assisi, with regard to Perugia and the plain, more nearly coincides with his description than that of any other city in the valley or on the hills. To one inquisitive friend he answers: "Tullus, thou art ever entreating me in the name of our friendship to tell thee my country and my descent. If thou knowest Perusia, which gave a field of death and a sepulchre to our father and in Italy's hour of affliction, when domestic discord drove Rome's own citizens one against the other--(Ah! hills of Etruria, to me beyond measure have ye given sorrow, for ye suffered the limbs of my kinsman to be cast aside unburied, and denied the handful of dust to cover his bones)--there it was that, close above the margin of her plain spread below, Umbria, rich in fertile domains, gave me birth."[2] The kinsman spoken of here is a certain Gallus, who lost his life in B.C. 41, when Lucius Antonius was besieged in Perugia by Augustus. The horrors of the general massacre which followed the fall of the city left sad memories in the mind of Propertius, then a mere child. In the general confiscation of property after the battle of Philippi his family lost their estates. But poor as they were, Propertius was sent to Rome to study, where, recognised as the leader of a new school of poetry, he remained until shortly before his death, at the age of thirty-five. His paternal estates having been restored to him, he forsook the splendour of the Augustan court, the patronage of Maecenas, the friendship of Virgil, and returned to the Umbrian country where his first inspirations had been awakened. The contrast between a house and garden on the Palatine hill, in the midst of the stir of Roman life, and a farm by the silent stream flowing through the stillest of valleys, must have been great. But, judging from his description of the country, he seems to have fallen readily into rural ways, and loved to watch the herds of white oxen, dedicated to the service of the goddesses, grazing close to the banks of the Clitumnus.