Life (c. 50 BCE -- c. 2 CE)
Born of an equestrian family in Umbria, probably in Assisi; part of his family estate confiscated 41/40 BC. When he was still young he rejected rhetoric in favor of poetry; he was closely associated with Ovid. Maecenas became his patron, so we know he was acquainted with Vergil and Horace, as well as with Augustus. He mentions Vergil's Aeneid-in-progress at 2.34. Other names are ascribed to him in the MSS, namely Propertius Aurelius Nauta, of which Aurelius is impossible (acc. to the Cambridge History) and Nauta is based on a corruption of poem 2.24b (reading nauita for non ita in line 38). The praenomen Sextus has Donatus' Vita Vergilii as a witness, and is probably credible.
Works
Four books of elegies, of which book I was probably published first as an independent unit; critics often refer to it as the monobiblos, and it is generally conjectured that it was titled Cynthia, the poetic pseudonym of Propertius' lover (whose real name was Hostia). Most of the elegies focus on erotic love, although a number of elegies in book IV, the so-called Roman elegies, take up historical and patriotic themes.
Bibiliography
Commentaries
Criticism
Benedektson, D. T. Propertius, Modernist Poet of Antiquity (Southern Illinois University Press, 1989).
Commager, Steele. A prolegomenon to Propertius (delivered April 7 and 8, 1971. University of Cincinnati, 1974).
Davis, John T. Dramatic pairings in the elegies of Propertius and Ovid ( Paul Haupt, 1977).
Morgan, Kathleen. Ovid's art of imitation: Propertius in the Amores (Brill, 1977).
Papanghelis, Theodore D. Propertius: a Hellenistic poet on love and death (Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Stahl, Hans-Peter. Propertius, Love and War: Individual and State under Augustus (University of California Press, 1985).
Warden, John. Fallax Opus. Poet and Reader in the Elegies of Propertius (University of Toronto Press, 1980).