Propertius is socially grander than Virgil and Horace and strikes a provocatively unconventional stance in life and literature
(these two facts will not be unconnected). He seems never to have been so devoted or complete a member of Maecenas' circle
as Virgil and Horace were.
Pragmatic Roman attitudes held that a man should do something serious with his life: conventionally, in the upper classes, he
should advance it either in political or in economic terms. That was one position that Propertius confronted. But our period
also sees, as I have said, poets regaining their classical status as civically committed, useful to the state, estimable creatures.
Propertius confronts that idea too. He professes himself unemployed and unemployable in any conventional sense outside
poetry, and 'useful' as a poet in ways which the conventional would regard as worse than useless. Whereas, therefore,
Catullus the man had been prepared simply to be at leisure, Propertius declares it assertively, makes a manifesto of it;
whereas Catullus the poet had occupied a position of unconcerned aestheticism, Propertius, in the new climate of artistic
commitment, makes an I aggressive statement of what in effect was non-commitment. I look at these points separately.
In a sequence of poems in Book 1 (1,6, 14), Propertius declares his position on life and love. In contradistinction to Tullus,
his addressee, Propertius cannot, he I says, engage upon an active career. He must devote himself to love, and neither military/
political nor economic advancement can distract him. He represents his love as something without sense, mad even; a disease,
degradation. He takes upon himself all the condemnatory terms that Roman society customarily assigned to a hopelessly lost
romantic lover. He even accepts for himself a title that society was not accustomed to fling around; he is the slave of his
mistress. And yet he insists: this is for me. His position remains much the same in Book 2, and in some poems of Book 3. The
commitment to love may be taken seriously; the self-condemnation less so. Later Romantics were to find that a willing
espousal of wrong could be satisfyingly provocative. Propertius presents a programme of life designed to provoke-and to
provoke not only stern moralists, but discreet proponents of acceptable amour such as Horace. Here was exactly what Horace
decried: love, which should be the occupation of leisure, usurping the serious business of life, indeed becoming coterminous
with life.
Before we consider Propertius' views on poetry we must consider the woman of whom he writes. Who is Cynthia? She is
quite fully sketched: among other things she is described as a woman of fine artistic accomplishments, but fond too of the
lower sympotic pleasures. Her exact social status is hard to pin down: she sounds like a high-class courtesan, but she may
have been perhaps a divorcee or a widow of dubious morals. The point to be stressed about her is that she is sexually
independent, or relatively so. Unlike the bought objects of Horace's erotic world she can and does dominate; she can
dominate the besotted Propertius simply by the power of being able to say 'No'. She is an important figure. Without such a
figure, the Propertian type of 'life of love' could not exist.
How does Propertius view his role as poet? In Book 1 (poems 7-9) he phrases it with a provocativeness to match the
provocativeness of his programme for life. He bases himself on his premiss that love equals life. That allows him to describe
the traditionally grand genre of epic as useless. Meanwhile, he claims, his elegy can perform the vital task of winning round a
recalcitrant or errant mistress; and, because of the knowledge and experience it contains, it can benefit others. In other words,
within the 'life of love' (the only life for Propertius), elegy is useful and indeed educational, in contrast to epic's uselessness.
We should mark what Propertius is doing here. He is managing to assign to his poetry the traditionally esteemed functions of
usefulness and edification, while denying them to their traditional recipient, epic. It is a neat turnabout; non-commitment is
nicely phrased as commitment. In Book 3 we find him similarly misassigning, misusing (some would say) a grand view of
poetry's function, the grand idea that poetry can immortalize. Poem 2 boasts the power of Propertian elegy to immortalize a
girl. Horace would certainly be among those who would call this a misuse; and, a nice touch, Horace's own language of
immortality is imported to phrase that misuse.
Such statements as these are designed to provoke rather than to offer serious information on the nature of Propertius' poetry.
His love poems tend, particularly in Book 1, to be either dramatic, a 'staged' interaction between himself and Cynthia or
another character, or rhetorical, speeches of indignation, pain, joy, and so on, to various addressees. They all frequently
exploit mythological comparisons, the resonance of the mythical world. And their achievement is to offer insight into the
personalities of Cynthia and Propertius, insight into their feelings and relationship, insight into love.