This is the OCR-endorsed publication from Bloomsbury for the Latin AS and A-Level (Group 3) prescription of Ovid's Amores 1.1 and 2.5, Propertius 1.1 and Tibullus 1.1 with the A-Level (Group 4) prescription of Ovid's Amores 2.7 and 2.8, Propertius 1.3 and 2.14 and Tibullus 1.3, giving full Latin text, commentary and vocabulary, with a detailed introduction that also covers the prescribed text to be read in English for A Level. Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid are our three main writers of Latin love elegy. The selected poems depict the bitter-sweet love affairs of the poet-lovers and their mistresses, from the heartbreak of rejection to the elation at love reciprocated. While Propertius's and Ovid's setting is the city and their poems show us such details of urbane Roman life as drinking parties and elaborate hair-dressing, Tibullus introduces the idyll of the countryside to the genre. Their sophisticated poems combine intense emotion with wit and irony, and celebrate the life of love and their mistresses, Propertius's Cynthia, Tibullus's Delia and Nemesis, and Ovid's Corinna.

These ardent, even obsessed, poems about erotic passion are among the brightest jewels in the crown of Latin literature. Written by Propertius, Rome's greatest poet of love, who was born around 50 b.c., a contemporary of Ovid, these elegies tell of Propertius' tormented relationship with a woman he calls "Cynthia." Their connection was sometimes blissful, more often agonizing, but as the poet came to recognize, it went beyond pride or shame to become the defining event of his life. Whether or not it was Propertius' explicit intention, these elegies extend our ideas of desire, and of the human condition itself.

Of the Greek and Latin love poets, Propertius (c. 50-10 B.C.) is one of those who holds the most immediate appeal for the twentieth-century reader. His helpless infatuation for the sinister figure of his mistress Cynthia forms the main subject of his poetry, and is analyzed with a tormented but witty grandeur in all its changing moods--from ecstasy to suicidal despair. This study includes English verse translations of his work, along with a chronology, explanatory notes, and a brief bibliography.

This volume offers a strikingly innovative account of Propertius' relationship with Virgil, positing a keen rivalry between two of the greatest poets of Latin literature, contemporaries within the circle of Maecenas. It begins by examining all of the references to Greek mythology in Propertius' first book; these passages emerge as strongly intertextual in nature, providing a way for the poet to situate himself with respect to his predecessors, both Greek and Roman. More specifically, myth is also the medium of a sustained polemic with Virgil's Eclogues, published only a few years earlier. Virgil's response can be traced in the Georgics, and subsequently, in his second and third books, Propertius continued to use mythology and its relationship to contemporary events as a vehicle for literary polemic. This volume argues that their competition can be seen as exemplifying a revised model for how the poets within Maecenas' circle interacted and engaged with each other's work - a model based on rivalry rather than ideological adhesion or subversion - while also painting a revealing picture of how Virgil was viewed by a contemporary in the days before his death had canonized his work as an instant classic. In particular, its novel interpretation offers us a new understanding of Propertius, one of the foundational figures in Western love poetry, and how his frequent references to other poets, especially Gallus and Ennius, take on new meanings when interpreted as responses to Virgil's changing career.

The Latin poet Propertius (ca. 50–16 B.C.) is considered by many to be the greatest elegiac poet of Rome. Long neglected because of the obscurity of his thought and the vagaries of his syntax, Propertius has now emerged as a writer of compelling originality and intellectual power. In this authoritative edition of Propertius’s elegies, L. Richardson, jr, makes these challenging poems both intelligible and accessible. For students of literature and history alike, Propertius offers insights into the intellectual world of Augustan Rome and Roman society. His perplexities and frustrations, his struggles with himself and with his domineering and capricious mistress Cynthia, and his exhilarations and depressions all strike a surprisingly familiar chord for the modern reader. Through an in-depth introduction and explanatory notes, Richardson strives to make the poems as readable as possible, at the same time examining the complexities and textual difficulties of the texts. Each elegy is accompanied by an introductory note providing a literary interpretation of the poem, followed by full and detailed commentary.

A radical new edition of the Augustan poet Propertius, based on the latest research into the manuscript tradition. The English preface contains important comments on the way texts are edited and read. Some important emendations discovered in the papers of A. E. Housman are published here for the first time.

Latin love elegy is one of the most important poetic genres in the Augustan era, also known as the golden age of Roman literature. This volume brings together leading scholars from Australia, Europe and North America to present and explore the Greek and Roman backdrop for Latin love elegy, the individual Latin love elegists (both the canonical and the non-canonical), their poems and influence on writers in later times. The book is designed as an accessible introduction for the general reader interested in Latin love elegy and the history of love and lament in Western literature, as well as a collection of critically stimulating essays for students and scholars of Latin poetry and of the classical tradition.