Poems Page 16

  Titans … giants: Both waged unsuccessful wars against the gods, according to Greek mythology. The giants piled Mt Ossa on Mt Olympus, and Mt Pelion on Ossa (all mountains in Greece) in an attempt to reach heaven.

  Xerxes: The (historical) Persian king who, in his second campaign against Greece in 480 BC, cut a canal through the Mt Athos peninsula.

  Romulus: The legendary first king of Rome, supposedly suckled, along with his brother Remus, by a she-wolf.

  Carthage: A power centre in what is now Tunisia, against which Rome fought the Punic Wars in the third and second centuries BC. Its biggest threat came when Hannibal invaded Italy.

  Cimbri: A Germanic tribe who made an incursion into Italy in 102–101 BC but were defeated by the Roman general Marius. Ezra Pound’s rendering of ‘Cimbrorum minas’ (the threats of the Cimbri) as ‘Welsh mines’ sparked ridicule from classical scholars.

  Modena …: After Julius Caesar’s assassination, Modena, north of Bologna, was the scene of an early clash between rival factions in 43 BC. The Battle of Philippi, where Octavian and Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius, came the following year. In 36 BC Sextus Pompeius, son of Caesar’s rival Pompey the Great, was defeated in a naval battle off northern Sicily. The following line mentioning the ‘ancient Etruscan race’ raises again the fighting at Perugia mentioned in Book One. All these references are ambivalent since the battles concerned were still open wounds for many Romans, and we know from I.22 (qv) that Propertius felt strongly about the Perugian slaughter. Slightly less controversial, perhaps, is what happened later. Octavian finished off the challenge from Antony and Cleopatra at the naval Battle of Actium in 31 BC. He went on to conquer Egypt, including the island of Pharos, off Alexandria, the site of a lighthouse that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. He staged a triumphal procession in Rome in 29 to mark his Egyptian victory, progressing along the Sacred Way through the Forum towards the Capitol. The Nile, symbol of Egypt, would have been portrayed in a model including the seven channels of its delta.

  Callimachus: The acknowledged master of the third-century-BC Alexandrian school of Greek poetry, who lived from c. 305–c. 240.

  Jupiter’s showdown with the giant: Another reference to the war between the gods and giants. Propertius names the giant Enceladus, who was struck by Jupiter with a thunderbolt and confined under Mt Etna in Sicily.

  Trojan forebears: Augustus was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, whose family traced its origins back to Aeneas of Troy, hero of Vergil’s Aeneid.

  Dulce et decorum est …: I was not able to resist conflating Propertius’ ‘laus in amore mori’ (there is glory in dying for love) with the ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ (it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country) of Horace (and Wilfred Owen).

  Phaedra …: The wife of Theseus who attempted to seduce her stepson Hippolytus, as related in Euripides’ Hippolytus and (in an updated form) in Jules Dassin’s 1962 film Phèdre, starring Melina Mercouri and Anthony Perkins. Circe, who detained Odysseus on his way home from the Trojan War, and Jason’s lover Medea were described as witches, but the use of love potions by the three women is mentioned only by Propertius.

  Philoctetes: A Greek fighter at Troy who suffered a poisoned leg, which was cured, according to Propertius, by the warrior-physician Machaon, mentioned in Homer. The Centaur Chiron restored sight to Phoenix, who had been blinded by his father. The ‘doctor god’ Aesculapius resurrected Androgeon, son of King Minos of Crete. Telephus, king of Mysia in Asia Minor, was wounded by the spear of Achilles but healed by application of rust from the same weapon.

  Tantalus: For disclosing the secrets of the gods, he was tempted forever in the underworld by fruit (or in other versions, water) that constantly withdrew from his grasp (hence the word ‘tantalise’). The daughters of Danaus, who killed their husbands, were condemned to try to fill with water a jar that always leaked it out. The demi-god Prometheus, for giving the gift of fire to mortals, was punished by being chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountains, where every day a bird of prey tore out his entrails, which grew again overnight – as told in the play Prometheus Bound, attributed to Aeschylus.

  British chariot: ‘A fast two-wheeled vehicle used by Gauls and Britons as a war-chariot, but taken over by the Romans for pleasure and travel.’ (Commentary by W. A. Camps).

  II.2

  In ‘A Thought from Propertius’, Yeats adapted part of this poem (apparently thinking of Maud Gonne): ‘She might, so noble from head / To great shapely knees, / The long flowing line, / Have walked to the altar / Through the holy images / At Pallas Athene’s side, / Or been fit spoil for a Centaur / Drunk with the unmixed wine.’ (The couplet from which Yeats’ last two lines are taken is considered by the Oxford and Loeb editors to have strayed in from some other poem and is not in my translation).

  The Gorgon: The three Gorgons had snakes for hair and their glance turned men to stone. One, Medusa, was slain by the hero Perseus and her head was taken by the goddess Athene (Minerva to the Romans) to wear on her breastplate.

  You goddesses: In the famous judgment of Paris, the goddesses Hera (Roman Juno), Aphrodite (Venus) and Athene stripped naked on Mount Ida, near Troy, for the shepherd Paris to decide which was the most beautiful. He chose Aphrodite, who rewarded him with the most beautiful woman in Greece, Helen, thus precipitating the Trojan War.

  Sibyl of Cuma: A prophetess said to have lived for more than 700 years.

  II.3

  ‘You said …: Medieval manuscripts were thin on punctuation, but modern editors agree that the first four lines of the poem represent an address to Propertius by an imaginary acquaintance, or perhaps by his alter ego. Hence my quotation marks.

  Another book …: This phrase is taken as confirmation that here we are near the beginning of Propertius’ second volume of verse. While readers would surely have assumed that Cynthia was the woman hyperbolically praised in this poem, she is not actually identified here and her name does not appear until the fifth poem of the book. It is mentioned significantly less in the second book than in the first.

  Ariadne: After being abandoned by Theseus (see note to I.3) and rescued by Bacchus, Ariadne is portrayed by Propertius as leading the dances of Bacchus’ maenad followers.

  Sappho: The seventh-century-BC Greek lyric poet from the island of Lesbos. What little remains of her verse confirms her high reputation in antiquity.

  Corinna: A sixth-century-BC poet from the Boeotia region of Greece.

  Erinna: Another Greek woman poet, contemporary with Sappho and also from Lesbos. The name, however, is a conjecture for an obscure reading in the manuscripts.

  Signalled a good omen: The Latin text literally says ‘sneezed a good omen’. Sneezing was seen by the ancients as presaging good luck. Jupiter was known for his conquests among the beauties of Greek mythology, but not among the women of Roman legend.

  Helen’s beauty: Helen, wife of the Greek prince Menelaus, eloped with her lover Paris to Troy (also known as Pergamum). The Greek campaign to get her back became the Trojan War. In Christopher Marlowe’s phrase, hers was ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’. Achilles, the leading Greek warrior, was killed in the conflict. Priam was the king of Troy and the reference here is to a passage in Homer’s Iliad in which he says it is not surprising that Greeks and Trojans should make war over a woman such as Helen.

  II.4

  The text of this poem is most uncertain. Heyworth prints it as a series of fragments (his lacunas represented by dots in my translation) and indicates he does not think it either begins or ends where the manuscripts have it. Since the theme is unified – falling in love with a woman spells trouble – the disjointed thought sequence will perhaps be less bothersome to today’s general reader.

  Perimede: Mentioned as a sorceress by the third-century-BC Greek poet Theocritus.

  The pleasures of a boy: This and I.20 (about Gallus’ passion for a boy named Hylas) are Propertius’ only significant references to pederasty, although bisexual
ity was taken for granted by many other Greek and Latin poets. It is noteworthy that in both poems, love of boys – whatever its merits – is mentioned as something for other men. Propertius consistently portrays himself as, for better or worse (in this case, clearly for worse), an unreconstructed heterosexual.

  II.5

  Juno: The patron of marriage, and hence of relationships.

  Cynthia so lovely …: Reading the conjecture ‘verna levis’ (literally ‘a flighty slut’) for the insult in the second half of the line. The manuscripts have ‘verba levis’, which would mean Cynthia’s word was unreliable, but this seems too feeble to make her blanch for the rest of her life. At this distance, it is hard to judge exactly what tone Propertius was trying to convey, or how it would have been taken by his readers.

  II.6

  Lais … Thais … Phryne: Three celebrated courtesans in historical Greece. Lais, from Corinth, lived in the fifth century BC. Thais, born in Athens in the fourth century BC, accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns and is said to have instigated the burning of Persepolis. She was the subject of a Greek comedy by Menander (342 – 291 BC), a line from which is quoted in the New Testament at 1 Corinthians 15.33: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ She is not to be confused with the Thais (also a former courtesan) who lived in Egypt in the fourth century AD and was the subject of an 1890 novel by Anatole France and an 1894 opera by Jules Massenet. Phryne, famed as a great beauty despite her unflattering nickname (‘toad’ in Greek – her real name was Mnesarete), was born in Boeotia around 371 BC. Propertius alludes to the story that she became so rich that she offered to pay for the reconstruction of Thebes, which had been flattened by Alexander in 336. Her condition, apparently not accepted, was to put up an inscription: ‘Destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan.’ Another sensational, if unverifiable, story is that she was tried for impiety but acquitted after her lawyer lowered her dress to bare her breasts before the judges. Phryne was said to be the model for the sculpture Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles (one of her lovers). All three women inspired paintings by artists from the Renaissance onwards.

  The Centaurs: In Greek mythology, Centaurs were invited to the wedding feast of Pirithous and Laodamia (not to be confused with the woman of the same name in I.2, qv) of the Lapith tribe. They got drunk and attempted to rape the bride, leading to a battle.

  Romulus: See note to II.1. The well-known story of the rape of the Sabine women (the primary meaning of the Latin raptio is in fact ‘kidnapping’) in 750 BC, three years after the foundation of Rome, relates how the Romans abducted women from the Sabine tribe, living to the north-east, to make good a shortage in their new city. The theme has been abundantly treated in painting.

  Temples of Chastity: See note to I.16.

  Wives of Admetus and Ulysses: In mythology, respectively Alcestis, who gave her own life in place of her husband’s after he offended the goddess Artemis (Diana), and Penelope, who waited ten years for her husband to return home after the Trojan War.

  II.7

  The law: While this poem may not be autobiographical, it does glance tantalisingly on the reality of love and marriage in ancient Rome, in contrast to what we read in literature. Propertius is apparently referring to the abrogation of a law promoting matrimony introduced in the Triumviral period in the 30s BC. Augustus was concerned by the low birth-rate among ethnic Romans and Italians compared with that of foreign immigrants. He returned to the issue after this poem was written, passing in 18 BC the Julian Law on Marriage, which sought to ban unions between different social classes and penalise bachelors and childless couples. Similar laws, with more stringent penalties, were introduced later, to great opposition.

  Split us up: The narrator appears to say that the law would have compelled him to marry, thus ending his liaison with Cynthia. Critics have asked: why could ‘Propertius’ not have married ‘Cynthia’ herself? The answer, presumably, is that a well-born Roman man could not have married a woman of her profession.

  Castor’s great horse: A mighty steed, Castor being a famed horse-breaker. Propertius returns to the metaphor of love as a kind of warfare, one much worthier than the conventional kind. The poem is remarkable for its contemptuous references to Augustus’ military goals, even allowing for the traditional nature of the militia amoris pose.

  II.8

  My friend: The friend is not named. Propertius goes on, later in the poem, to address first himself and then Cynthia.

  Haemon … Antigone: In the story made famous by Sophocles’ play, Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, illegally buries her brother Polynices after he is killed in a bid to seize the throne of Thebes from another brother, Eteocles, who also dies. The new ruler, Creon, orders Antigone to be shut up in a vault, where she kills herself. When her fiancé Haemon, Creon’s son, finds her body, he too commits suicide.

  Achilles …: In the myth behind Homer’s Iliad, Achilles, the principal Greek fighter at Troy, sulks in his tent and refuses to campaign after his slave and concubine, Briseis, is taken from him by the Greek commander, Agamemnon. As a result, the Trojans, led by Hector, threaten to overwhelm the Greeks. Hector kills Achilles’ best friend, Patroclus. Briseis is finally returned, after which Achilles goes back to the front and kills Hector. Propertius’ version differs slightly from Homer’s, which has Achilles initially refusing Agamemnon’s compensation but returning to the fray after Patroclus dies. Propertius also mentions Achilles’ mother, the sea-goddess Thetis, and the armour specially made for him by the smith-god Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan).

  II.9

  Penelope: See also note to II.6. The Trojan War lasted ten years and Ulysses’ wanderings around the Mediterranean another ten, as recounted in the Odyssey. Penelope successfully fended off suitors who argued Ulysses must be dead. One of her tricks was to say she must finish a funeral shroud for her ageing father-in-law, which she wove during the day and unpicked at night. The suitors took three years to tumble to the ruse.

  Briseis: See note to II.8. Achilles was killed in the Trojan War by an arrow that pierced his vulnerable heel.

  Simois: A river near Troy, thought to be now the Dumrek in north-western Turkey.

  Styx’s waters: The ancients believed the dead had to cross the River Styx to reach the underworld. Propertius is saying Cynthia nearly died, presumably of an illness. As usual, we need not see historical facts here, but there is a contrast with I.15, where Propertius claims Cynthia was slow to show up when he was in grave, but unspecified, danger.

  Libyan shoals: Sandbanks off the coast of Libya were a notorious hazard. Propertius mentions the Syrtes after which the modern Libyan town of Sirt is named.

  The stars …: These two lines pick up a commonplace of ancient poetry, the lover waiting through the night outside the closed door of his beloved (see I.16).

  II.10

  Heyworth and some other scholars believe lines have been lost before the start of the poem as transmitted by the manuscripts (where the Latin text begins with the word ‘But’). In addition, some take the theme, with its teasing promise to move from erotic verse to epic at some future point, as confirmation that what we now have as Book Two was originally two books. If so, this poem would have been the last one in the first of those two volumes (or perhaps the first in the second). In any case, Propertius is returning to the issue he broached in II.1 – pressure from the regime to switch subject matter. Here he goes a little further, saying he will do so – only to backtrack almost immediately and protest that he is not yet up to it. The poem’s last word is ‘Love’.

  Helicon: A mountain in the Greek region of Boeotia, north of the Gulf of Corinth (modern Greek Elikonas). According to legend, two springs on it were sacred to the Muses, hence the mountain became a metaphor for poetry. It was also associated with the Greek poet Hesiod, who grew up in the small town of Ascra on its slopes. The principal surviving poems of Hesiod, who is thought to have lived in the eighth or seventh century BC, are the Theogony, on the origin of the universe,
and the Works and Days, which praises labour, especially agriculture. Propertius, at the end of the present poem, signifies his inability to rise to epic by saying he has not yet climbed the heights of Helicon, but only got as far as a stream named Permessus, which flowed at its base.

  The Leader: Augustus.

  The Euphrates …: The Parthians were an Iranian people who, at their height, controlled swathes of the Middle East. The Romans fought them on and off for centuries, without ever subjugating them. In the Battle of Carrhae, near what is now Sanliurfa in south-eastern Turkey, in 53 BC, the famously wealthy Roman commander Marcus Licinius Crassus and his son were killed, and the army’s standards captured, a major humiliation. Some 20,000 Roman soldiers died in one of the worst military defeats in Roman history. The Euphrates River, which rises in Turkey and flows through Syria into Iraq, passes to the west of the battlefield. Augustus prepared a major campaign against the Parthians, but eventually cut a deal with them, whereby the standards were returned in 20 BC. Propertius refers to a battle tactic often mentioned by Roman writers, in which the Parthians pretended to retreat, then fired arrows backward at their pursuers.