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Propertius Consults his Astrologer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

D. A. Kidd
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Extract

In current texts of Propertius the first elegy of Book 4 is printed as one continuous poem of 150 lines. But at the same time most editors show a break after line 70 and supply a subheading, such as the name HOROS (Butler and Barber, Schuster, Barber in the Oxford text, Luck, Fedeli, Pasoli) or IA (Butler) or IB (Camps), to distinguish the second half of the poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , October 1979 , pp. 169 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1979

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References

Notes

1. Butler, H. E. and Barber, E. A., The Elegies of Propertius (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar; Schuster, M., Sexti Propertii Elegiarum Libri IV (Leipzig, 1954)Google Scholar; Barber, E. A., Sexti Properti Carmina (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar; Luck, G., Properz und Tibull, Liebeselegien (Zurich and Stuttgart, 1964)Google Scholar; Fedeli, P., Properzio, Elegie Libro IV (Bari, 1965)Google Scholar; Pasoli, E., Sexto Properzio, Il libro quarto delle elegie (Bologna, 1967)Google Scholar; Butler, H. E., Sexti Properti Opera Omnia (London, 1905)Google Scholar; Camps, W. A., Propertius, Elegies Book IV (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar.

2. Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 1976, ed. Cairns, F. (Liverpool, 1977), pp. 141–53Google Scholar.

3. Op. cit., p. 46.

4. Sullivan, J. P., Propertius: a Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 1976), p. 141Google Scholar.

5. CQ 12 (1962), 264–71Google Scholar.

6. HSCP 71 (1967), 92Google Scholar. Boucher, J. P., Études sur Properce (Paris, 1965), p. 386Google Scholar, after some hesitation, expresses a preference for editing 4.1 as two separate elegies.

7. A reminiscence of Catullus 4.1, as the commentaries point out.

8. With the editors I accept Baehrens's cantans here: it suits the sense of the context as I see it.

9. e.g. Sandbach, , op. cit., p. 266Google Scholar.

10. Butler, and Barber, , op. cit., p. 327Google Scholar, explain fata as the destinies of Rome, though these are in the past.

11. Camps, ad 87–8, which he transfers after 68; Marr, J. L., CQ 20 (1970), 164Google Scholar.

12. See the commentaries and, e.g., Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), p. 488Google Scholar.

13. BICS 16 (1969), 73–80Google Scholar.

14. Op. cit., p. 146.

15. Ibid., p. 152 n. 28.

16. See Butler, , op. cit., p. 337Google Scholar.

17. Lachmann, K., S. A. P. Carmina (Leipzig, 1816)Google Scholar; Baehrens, A., S. Propertii Elegiarum Libri IV (Leipzig, 1880)Google Scholar; Tremenheere, S. G., The Elegies of Propertius (London, 1931)Google Scholar. SeeSmyth, G. R., Thesaurus Criticus ad Sexti Propertii Textum (Leiden, 1970), p. 130Google Scholar.

18. Smyth, , op. cit., p. 130Google Scholar.

19. Op. cit., p. 234.

20. e.g. after 52 (Müller), or 68 (Marcilius), or 70 (Scaliger).

21. Op. cit., pp. 271–2; cf. Marr, , op. cit., pp. 166–7Google Scholar.

22. e.g. after 2 lines (Marr), after 4 (Lütjohann, Richmond, Camps), after 12 (Heimreich, McLeod).

23. e.g. pellax (Heinsius, Housman, Goold), felix (Broekhuysen).

24. I know of no other example of the noun uncus meaning ‘talon’, but the adjective is used by Lucretius of lions' claws (5.1322) and by Virgil of the Harpies' feet (Aen. 3.233). It is at least more plausible than ansa in this sense.

25. Apart from the commentaries, see Lefèvre, E., WS 79 (1966), 427–42Google Scholar; Nethercut, W. R., WS 4 (1970), 110–17Google Scholar; Marquis, E. C., WS 7 (1973), 126–33Google Scholar.

26. e.g. Butler ad loc, quoting Manilius, 4.165–6.

27. Philadelphia, 1954, p. 88.

28. More far-fetched are the suggestions of Nethercut, op. cit., involving references to Cancer as the house of the Moon and to Praesepe, or the Asses, at 10 degrees of the sign.

29. Cf. Butler and Barber ad 107–8: ‘Propertius shows no real acquaintance with astrology in this poem.’

30. Camps mentions this as one possibility.

31. Cf. Catullus 76.25, ‘taetrum hunc deponere morbum’; Petr., Sat. 42.7Google Scholar, ‘sed antiquus arnor cancer est’.

32. So Housman, quoted by Butler and Barber ad loc.

33. This article is a revised form of a paper given at a N. Z. Classics Conference in Dunedin in May 1978.