Propertius

Sextus Propertius (ca 55 BC -- after 16 BC), foremost of ancient Latin elegiasts, was born into a wealthy family in Assisi in Umbria. His father died while he was still a small child, but his mother oversaw his education, which was good even by the standards of wealthy Romans. Part of the family's property was seized in 40 BC and used to pay the soldiers of Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. This reduced their income considerably, although it appears that Propertius never was bothered by having to make a living.

In 34 BC the family moved to the city of Rome, and Propertius took on the dress and habits of adulthood. He showed no interest in the law law, politics or army life. He befriended poets such as Ovid as Bassus.

In 29 BC Propertius published his first book of elegies, known as Cynthia after the woman who was their main subject. It was immediately popular, and remained the most sought-after of his works, and are still the most popular today, despite the fact that his later three books of elegies, less single-minded in the love-struck pursuit of romance, are often regarded as his best work. Propertius published a total of four books of elegies during his lifetime. They were sold together, or the first book, Cynthia, could be bought by itself; therefore, it was sometimes referred to as Monobiblos. Propertius himself seems to have been a little embarrassed to be so often associated only with Monobiblios, and he protested that he could do more than just sigh and moan over a woman. His later works often treat mythological subjects including but not limited to the founding of Rome, which the ancient Romans did not refer to as mythological whether they knew better or not.

The popularity of Propertius' first effort brought him to the attention of the wealthy literary patron Maecenas, which in turn led to his friendship with Vergil and Horace, and to the favour of the Imperial family, and this led to some poems which extravagantly praise Augustus.

The earliest surviving written copies of Propertius' poems are graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, which seem to confirm the impression that he was very popular indeed in his own time. Then in the 2nd century, Apuleius mentions him, and opines that Cynthia's real name was Hostia. But overall, not many mentions of Propertius have been found between his own time and the mid 12th century, when he is his praised and quoted by John of Salisbury. The oldest surviving complete manuscript of his poems, referred to as N because it had spent some time in Naples, was made shortly before AD 1200. The second is known as A and was made around AD 1250. A number of 14th- and 15th-century manuscripts survive, most or all of which seem to derive ultimately from either N or A. After a thousand years in which there apparently was very little interest in his work, Propertius has been one of the most highly-regarded Latin poets from the Renaissance down to our own day. Just another reminder that literary tastes sometimes change considerably.

Classical Latin Literature Which is (Currently) Lost

When we see an iceberg in the ocean, we know that about 9/10 of it is underwater. When we look at the remains of Classical Latin literature, we don't know how much of it there once was.

In the case of individual literary works we very often do not know whether what we have today is the entire work, or almost all of it, or a small fragment of it or what have you. We have some ancient descriptions of the length and scope of certain literary works, but such helpful descriptions are rare. It's more common that we have the work itself, and must decide whether it seems to us to be a finished work. If it seems unfinished, does that mean that the author never finished it, or that a page or more is missing from the copies we have?

One more thing to think about: did Latin authors 1800 or 2000 years ago have ideas about what constituted a finished literary work which were similar to the ideas we have today?

Sometimes the existing manuscripts have big holes in them, or are nothing but tiny scraps, and so leave no doubt that something is missing. But how much is missing? That is very often a difficult question.

Is the author correctly identified? In many cases scholars have concluded that works are misattributed. In further cases, passages from an ancient work are quoted in an ancient or Medieval collection. Sometimes they are extremely helpful missing pieces from an author's work. In other cases, they are falsely attributed. Yes, it'd be wonderful if that was a passage written by Trogus, but...

Trogus was a Roman historian who lived in the 1st century BC and wrote a history of the Macedonian Empire, founded by Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. Ancient writers praised Trogus' history very highly. All we have of that history today is a condensed version, referred to as an epitome, written by a certain Justinus some time around the 3rd century AD.

Scholars today painfully feel the lack of Trogus, but still, we have that epitome by Justinus. In the case of many other ancient Latin writer who were highly praised by their peers, all we have today is that praise.

And how many more may have been praised in pieces of text which have disappeared? That sort of question is somewhere between extremely difficult and entirely impossibly to answer accurately.

The problem of that ignorance is compounded by other things we don't know, such as our ignorance of how exactly these texts we'd so very much like to have, vanished. In trying to explain a certain disappearance, we face the hazard of assuming that we know things which we do not know. Let's take the example of Tibullus, Propertius and Statius. Tibullus and Propertius were Latin poets who lived in the first century BC. They are both very highly esteemed today, sometimes so highly that they are spoken of as among the handful of the very greatest ever to write in Latin. And only a few dozen pages of each of their work has survived, from so few manuscripts that their work very nearly did not survive at all. Statius, on the other hand, a Latin poet of the 1st century AD whose works are not nearly so highly-esteemed, has works surviving today in many hundreds of manuscripts, which together are many times the length of the surviving works of Tibullus and Propertius together.

A scholar today may look at how many manuscripts of Statius we have, and how few of Propertius and Tibullus, and conclude that this shows have great a role chance plays in the survival of ancient literature. But, never mind the lukewarm readership of Statius today, many Medieval texts survive which praise him very highly indeed. It may seem strange to us, but in the Middle Ages Statius may have had a much higher literary reputation than either Propertius or Tibullus.

My point is that literary tastes, opinions about which writer is better than which, sometimes change enormously from one era to another. We must guard against imposing our own opinions upon people of another time, for this may cloud our understanding of what went on in that other time.

And my point in this essay has been merely to point out a few of the factors which make it difficult for us to know how much Classical Latin literature is currently lost, and why, and therefore to urge caution, if one is ever tempted to estimate the amount of this literature which once existed.