Properz

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Elegies of Properz in a manuscript by the humanist Coluccio Salutati . Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 36, 49, fol. 57v

Sextus Aurelius propertius (German Properz ; * approx. 48 BC ; † 15 BC ) belonged together with Cornelius Gallus , Tibullus and Ovid to the representatives of the Roman love strategy , which in the second half of the first century BC Its short bloom.

Life

The date of birth of Sextus propertius is not known. The working date of his first works and his inclusion in the circle of poets of Maecenas suggest that he was around the middle of the first century BC. Was born in BC. His birthplace is in Umbria (Perugia or Assisi). Presumably his family belonged to the knighthood and owned land. This can be one reason why Properz was able to finance his poetry at a young age. Like the poets Tibullus and Ovid later , he renounced the political office career . In the year 41 BC Properz lost part of his land through the land distributions and expropriations of the triumvirs.

Properz composed elegies . The distichic songs, which emerged from grave epigrams and dealt excellently with topics about love, pain and rejection, were in the middle of the first century BC. After the poet Catullus, it became a new genre of Roman poetry, in which many younger nobles tried their hand at. Cicero called these poets disparagingly Neoteroi (= young men), which led to the generic name Neoteric . With their poems, these neoterics consciously turned away from the political and military events of their time and took refuge in private dream worlds and love adventures. But they were particularly keen to experiment when it came to composing small poetic forms. The young Properz showed the same enthusiasm for experimentation with his first elegy book. There, building on the epigram, he expanded the motifs of the old genre with great ingenuity. The first work attracted such attention that the poet was accepted into the circle of Maecenas .

The date of death of the Properz is not known. Since his name is mentioned in a catalog of poets by Ovid, he probably died before the birth of Christ, because according to ancient practice, such a mention presupposed the death of the poet.

More recent research is of the opinion that the elegiac ego must not be equated with the poet and that both persons and contents of the elegies are of a fictional character. The life of the author can only be inferred from the work with great caution.

Lore

While contemporaries found the style of Properz to be just as elegant and fluid as that of Tibullus or Ovid, the text that has survived today is in many places difficult to understand. Because of the obvious breaks in both the language and the train of thought of the elegies, researchers today are convinced that the original text is largely contaminated. The healing of the text has already been attempted by many scholars; some see the eradication of entire verses as inevitable; These verses would initially have been noted as comments by readers in the margin and then inserted into the actual text as they were copied. But there are also voices from researchers who want to stick to the traditional text as much as possible.

Elegies of Properz in the manuscript Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek , Gudianus 224, fol. 2v (late 12th / early 13th century)
Auguste Jean Baptiste Vinchon, propertius and Cynthia at Tivoli

plant

Only elegies have come down to us from Properz. The first of his four books, also called Monobiblos , is believed to be before 28 BC. Has been published. The main theme of the 22 elegies is the elegiac self's love for a girl named Cynthia. In the first elegy, Cynthia is portrayed as a mistress who has captured the poor lover through her lovely eyes. According to Apuleius, a certain Hostia is said to be hidden behind the pseudonym of Cynthia .

Cynthia is also the main character of the second book , which was published shortly after the death of Gallus, around 26 BC. BC, appeared. With its 35 elegies it is the longest book, but the limits of the traditional elegies are disputed. There are divisions between 34 and 49 elegies. Poetry itself is discussed more than in the first book.

The third book was published around 23 BC. Published. In the first poem, the work follows the Hellenistic poets Callimachos and Philetas. Cynthia is now the central theme in only five elegies. Properz often resorts to recusatio (apologetic rejection) by rejecting the writing of a praising epic on Augustus in favor of the smaller poetic genre (here the love elegance). The interpretation of the individual recusationes is highly controversial in research . Today the recusatio is mostly understood as a refined form of the praeteritio (Latin: to pass over), in which the object is named and then skilfully passed over, i.e. indirectly appreciated.

The fourth and final book , consisting of eleven elegies, was published around 16 BC. Chr. Erotic and aitiological elegies alternate (the latter have original legends on customs, names or the like on the subject); only two elegies (7 and 8) are addressed to Cynthia. In Elegy 7, the late Cynthia appears to the poet as a ghost in his sleep, insults him for his repeated infidelity and insufficient wake, demands that he burn all the poems about her and only asks for a short epitaph on the bank of the Anio ; in Elegy 8 she is then alive again and surprises Properz when he tries a threesome , but fails due to erectile dysfunction . Cynthia drives off the two women, beats up Properz, atoned for the bed and reconciled with the (again potent) poet. The German classical philologist Peter Habermehl interprets the two poems as related to one another: At the end of the apparently exhausted theme of elegiac love, he goes "once again on the whole [...], in a grandiose dramatic condensation of the material into a diptych , in the vital contrapostal minor and major, civil tragedy vs. Who's Afraid of Cynthia Woolf? ". The elegy 6 on the sea ​​battle at Actium forms the center of the book; the closing elegy is a speech by the late Cornelia, daughter of Augustus' second wife. As not only the last two elegies show, Properz presents himself in the fourth book as an Augustan poet who no longer only makes love (as especially in his early work), but also historical and mythological subjects on a larger scale as subjects of his works.

role models

Properz names the Hellenistic poets Callimachos and Philetas of Kos , Mimnermos and (in the second book) the Romans Catullus , Calvus and Varro Atacinus as models . Because of parallels to Tibullus and Virgil's tenth eclogue , Gallus is also accepted as a model. The influence of Greek epigrams such as the collection “Der Kranz des Meleager ” can also be seen.

Text output

literature

Overview display

  • Michael von Albrecht : History of Roman literature from Andronicus to Boethius and its continued effect . Volume 1. 3rd, improved and expanded edition. De Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-026525-5 , pp. 647-662

Introductions and general presentations

  • Francis Cairns : Sextus propertius. The Augustan Elegist. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, ISBN 0-521-86457-7 .
  • Niklas Holzberg : The Roman power of love. An introduction. 2nd, completely revised edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-534-15041-4 .
  • John P. Sullivan: propertius. A critical introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1976.
  • Margaret Hubbard : propertius. Duckworth, London 1974.

Investigations on individual topics

  • Jean-Paul Boucher: Études sur Properce. 2nd Edition. De Boccard, Paris 1980 (very good processing of the influence of Gallus as well as the relationships with Maecenas and Augustus).
  • Bernhard Georg: Exegetical and decorative seals in the first Properz book. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2001, ISBN 3-506-79067-6 .
  • Hans-Christian Günther (Ed.): Brill's Companion to propertius. Brill, Leiden 2006, ISBN 90-04-13682-7 .
  • Micaela Janan: The Politics of Desire: propertius IV . University of California Press, Berkeley 2001.
  • Robert Karacsony: Properzens Vertumnus Elegy (4.2) and the poetry program of the fourth book. An intertextual comment . Hamburg studies on societies and cultures of the premodern. Volume 3. 2018. ISBN 978-3-515-11881-1
  • Maria Ruhl : The representation of emotional developments in the elegies of Properz , Göttingen 2000. ISBN 978-3-89873-015-0

reception

bibliography

  • Paolo Fedeli, Paola Pinotti: Bibliografia Properziana 1946–1983. Accademia Properziana del Subasio, Assisi 1985.

Web links

Wikisource: Sextus Aurelius Autovermietung  - Sources and full texts (Latin)
Wikiquote: Properz  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.gottwein.de/latbio/prop01.php
  2. ↑ Peter Habermehl: Death and Transfiguration. Cynthia's last appearance in the Elegies of Properz (4,7 and 8) . In: Antike und Abendland 59 (Issue 1 (2013), ISSN 1613-0421, pp. 58–79, the quotation on p. 71 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
personal data
SURNAME Properz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sextus Aurelius propertius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Latin elegiac poet
DATE OF BIRTH around 48 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 15 BC Chr.