Me sine, quem semper voluit Fortuna jacere, Hanc me militiam fata subire volunt. Lydia Factoli tingit arata liquor, Seu pedibus terras, seu pontum carpere remis Tum tibi si qua mei veniet non immemor hora, 25 30 35 VII. Dum tibi Cadmeæ dicuntur, Pontice, Theba, Atque, ita sim felix, primo contendis Homero, should ever lie prostrate;' he begs, therefore, that his friends will not attempt to raise him. The metaphor is from a prostrate wrestler or gladiator. -longinquo is here for longo, diuturno; the confusion between words of time and space is sufficiently common. 30 This is the only warfare fate has destined me to engage in,' i. e. amoris. 31 Tendit, se extendit.-tingit, here in its proper use, being the Greek Téyyet. Others refer it to the colour of the golden sands. 34 Ibis carpere, see sup. 1, 12. Hertzberg's explanation of the following words is satisfactory:-' pars eris imperii grati tibi, utpote viro bellicoso unus imperantium eris.' Any one holding a situation-even a subordinate one-in a governor's retinue is pars imperii.-accepti might per- VII.-To Ponticus. This Ponticus was a writer of hexameter verses, and the author of a lost Thebaid. He is mentioned in Ovid, Trist. iv. 10, 47, already quoted on El. IV. The poem appears to be a reply to the exhortation of his friend to resign elegiac for epic composition. 2 Fraternæ militia, Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Edipus.-tristia, because fatal to themselves. The epithet is used however (as elsewhere durus) in opposition to mollis versus (v. 19.) See inf. 9, 13. 'I, quæso, et tristes illos compone libellos, Et cane quod quævis nosse puella velit.' Sint modo fata tuis mollia carminibus,- Hic mihi conteritur vitæ modus; hæc mea fama est; Te quoque si certo puer hic concusserit arcu,- Longe castra tibi, longe miser agmina septem 4 One might suspect a slight irony in this, as if in return for the fastus (v. 25) of Ponticus, and as a contrast to the prediction of his own immor. tality (v. 22). 'You rival Homer, if only your verses are destined to survive.' But the success of a poet is here spoken of as dependent on fate as much as on his own merits. 5 Consueo for consuesco is probably 2 ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. Or is it an equally unique instance of contraction for consuevimus?-in dominam, i. e., ad expugnandam dominæ duritiem. 7 'I cannot, like you, indulge the bent of my poetical genius freely, but am obliged to make my verses (elegies) subservient to the expression of my grief, and in them to bewail my hard lot.' 11 Docta puellæ (dat.) i. e. Cynthia, herself a poetess and a musician, supra, 2, 27.-solum placuisse, i.e. to have been preferred to my rivals through the eloquence of my verses.— laudent, like aivŵ (aio) for prædicent. 5 IO 15 16 The MSS. agree in eviolasse, which Jacob retains and attempts to explain. I cannot doubt that Lachmann, Barth, Hertz. and Kuinoel have rightly edited evoluisse. The sense is thus clear: If Cupid should hereafter strike you, as he has me; which however I trust that the gods who rule our destinies have not designed for you; then &c.'—nostros deos Barth and Kuinoel take for Venus and her attendant Cupidines. Rather, I think, the Fates who in common govern the destinies of friends. Persius, Sat. iv. 45-50. 17-20 'You will then lament the late enslavement which forces you to lay aside your unfinished Thebaid, and to try, though without success, to write love ditties to your mistress.' 18 Situ, neglect.' Both sinus a nook,' and situs in its various senses, are from sino (eav as opposed to KIVET.) The 'site' of a building is the place where it is suffered to lie. The result of lying by is mouldiness or Et frustra cupies mollem componere versum, Tu cave nostra tuo contemnas carmina fastu: 20 25 VIII. Tune igitur demens, nec te mea cura moratur? Et tibi jam tanti, quicumque est, iste videtur, Fortis, et in dura nave jacere potes? decay, the more usual sense of the latter word. 22 Præferar, i.e. tuo judicio. But, from the general sense which the words will bear, the poet passes to the prediction of his popularity with other youths in the same circumstances as Ponticus. 24 Jaces. An expression of regret, like ὦ φίλε, κείσαι, Theocr. xxiii. 44. 25 Cavě. Similarly used i. 10, 21; iii. 4, 41. VIII.-This elegy is addressed to Cynthia (with what success appears from v. 27, &c.), to deter her from going a voyage to a half-civilised province with a certain Prætor, whom Propertius appears equally to hate and to fear as a rival. See on iii. 7, 1. 'Prætor ab Illyricis venit modo, Cyn 5 Tu potes insolitas, Cynthia, ferre nives? Sed quocumque modo de me, perjura, mereris, disparage,' Persius Sat. 1, 6; inf. iii. 26, 58, is slightly different, being a metaphor from the lighter scale of the balance. is absurd:-'qui enim per pruinas | reddat. The use of this verb for 'to nivesque incedunt, eorum pedes hauriuntur, atque ita recte pruinas superjectas fulcire dicuntur.' This double sense of a verb, arising from the association of ideas, is not without examples. Thus arceo to keep off or away, means to keep in (coerceo) as a flock of sheep from a wolf: recludo implies, as it were, the contrary action to claudo, not so much from its real meaning, as from the idea inseparable from it. Hertzberg reads ruinas with the best MSS. i.e. omne quod e coelo ruit.' ΙΟ That the sailor may remain inactive from the late rising of the Pleiads.' This constellation rises in spring and sets in autumn, so that while it is invisible the season is unfavourable for sailing. II Tyrrhena arena, i.e. from the west side of Italy. The rhyming sound of these words induced Scaliger (followed, as usual, by Kuinoel), to introduce the correction in ora. They ought at least to have read ab ora. A similar instance is absenti-venti, i, 17, 5. 12 Elevet, 'carry aloft,' i. e. irrita 15 Patiatur, i.e. unda. undam poeta precatur, ne committere velit, ut in litore desertus ipse-amicam crudelem frustra vocet.' Hertzberg; who reads patietur on the conjecture of Passerat. Nothing can be more awkward than non videam ventos subsidere, cum auferet unda et (cum) patietur,' &c., nor is it easy to agree with him in explaining infesta manu by 'despecta et ludibrio habita' a Cynthia. It is quite natural, that a lover, when his mistress persists in leaving him in spite of all his entreaties, should make angry gestures to her with his hand, by way of finally denouncing her. The sense is:'may the unfavourable state of the sea give me the opportunity as I stand on the shore, to reproach her and call her many times over (sæpe vocare), before the ship can get clear of the land.' Kuinoel's reading ut me patiaris is without authority. 19 Pravecta is the vocative; ac Accipiat placidis Oricos æquoribus. cipiat te, Cynthia, prævecta Ceraunia. 22 The MSS. reading verba querar has been altered with much probability into vera querar, which Lachmann labours to refute, and corrects fida for vita. The meaning is, 'no new object shall engage my affections in your absence, or prevent me from throwing myself on your threshold and giving utterance to my grief.'verba queri is thus opposed to tacite queri. Hertzberg admits vera; but his explanation of it is far-fetched :non alienus amor me ita corrumpet, ut tibi injuriam faciam, et ante tuas fores (ut solet improba turba) inique : 20 25 querar,' which, he adds, really means: querar quidem in limine, sed non nisi justa.' A simpler rendering would be, No other engagement shall prevent me from upbraiding you justly.' For a new love would induce him to resign a former one with indifference. 23 The impersonal use of deficiet is worthy of attention. citatos, i. e. quamvis festinantes. Hertz. Others uuderstand it to mean vocatos et compellatos. I rather incline to the latter, on the ground of testem citare being a conventional phrase. 25 Whether she is staying, from stress of weather, among the Autarii in Illyria, or on the coast of Elis, she will yet be mine.' The common reading is Atraciis; but as Atrax was a mountain in Thessaly, and the Autarii are mentioned by Strabo vii. v., Ιλλυριῶν δὲ Αὐταριᾶται καὶ ̓Αρδιαῖοι καὶ Δαρδάνιοι, Hertzberg is probably right in admitting the shrewd conjecture of Pucci in the edition of 1481. With this verse Lachmann and others conclude the present elegy, though in all the MSS. it is continued as in the text. Jacob fancifully suggests that jurata in the next line appears to imply that the poet had just extorted from her own lips a promise to remain, as if the request had been preferred by him personally. The fact probably is, that the whole of the elegy was |
