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Propertius 3. 7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Kay Morsley
Kay Morsley
Affiliation:
University of New EnglandN.S.W.
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Extract

In their mangled versions of this poem Baehrens and Housman have both anticipated the first of these changes whilst lines 19–20 are placed as I suggest by Housman and Postgate and lines 21–4 are placed before line 39 by Scaliger, Housman, Butler, and others. Nevertheless I recall these transpositions here, primarily because my third change is intelligible only through them, but also because their correctness has been generally neglected amid the confusing assortment of wholly unnecessary transpositions that this poem has suffered. My reasons for recommending the above changes are these.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , December 1975 , pp. 315 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1975

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References

1 Westlake, H. D., Individuals in Thucydides (1968), 108.Google Scholar

2 I do not, in any case, believe this. See Westlake, ibid.. Also I am not convinced by Marshall that the soldiers were willing to do Demosthenes' will unbidden. There is no evidence that these troops had any special loyalty to him. What is more, he had been out of office since his return from Acarnania (4. 2. 4) and although his victory in Amphilochia had clearly done something to erase from Athenian minds the memory of his defeat in Aetolia (3. 114. 1), so much so that he was given permission to use around the Peloponnese the ships that were destined for Sicily, one does not have the impression that he was enjoying any undue popularity.

1 At least four certain examples of the omission of the vocative in a sudden change to the second person may be found in Propertius alone (2. 9. 15, 2. 12. 17, 2. 34. 67, 3. I I. 37–8); but the peculiarity of this phenomenon at 3. 7. 11–12 is the prominence of the second person in the preceding lines, where its function is different.

2 D. Paganelli, for example, translates in the Budé edition (p. 98): ‘C’est toi qui envoies Pétus, toutes voiles dehors, vers Pharos et l'Égypte: une fois, deux fois, la mer est demontée et l‘engloutit.’

3 Camps, W. A., Propertius: Elegies Book III (Cambridge, 1966), 82–3.Google Scholar

1 Against Scaliger, Housman, Postgate, and Butler and Barber, all of whom separate lines 39–42 from 43–6 in their reconstructions of the poem, I agree with Camps, p. 86, that 43–6 go with what precedes and refer to Ulysses, not Paetus. To the arguments of Camps I add that Paetus is depicted in the following lines as of delicate nature (47 f.) and accustomed to luxury (49 f.); he is hardly likely to have ploughed fields (43). Moreover, lines 43–6 are in keeping with the character of Ulysses as representative of avari. The presence of Penates in the home of the Greek Ulysses causes no difficulty (cf., e.g., Virg. Aen. I. 527 ‘Libycos Penates’).

2 Surely the comparatively unknown Argynnus is not the point of the example (as Butler and Barber, in their criticism of the reading of lines 25–4 after line 38, seem to think), but the famous Agamemnon deprived by the sea of his boy-love and, indirectly, of his daughter.

3 So Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Propertiana (Cambridge, 1956), 151.Google Scholar

4 So Butler and Barber, 278.

5 Op. Cit. 151.

6 Mnem lii (1924), 415f.

1 e.g. Scaliger, Housman, Postgate, Vivona, Richmond, Tremenheere.